The Iris recording is part of a 2018 5-CD package of restorations from Immortal Performances headlined by the justly famous 1959 San Carlo (Naples) Adriana Lecouvreur. That is one of the resplendent performances of the postwar Italian stage, as its cast of principals (Olivero, Simionato, Corelli, Bastianini) attests, lent further “legendary” réclame by the circumstance of Olivero arising from a post-op bed to take over for Tebaldi on an opening night. Every opera lover should hear it. But since it has circulated widely; is on the face of it self-recommending; and I happen to have written about Adriana fairly recently (see The Return of Adriana, 1/2/19), I’ve opted for Iris, to which I’ve never paid very close attention. Its performance, from RAI-Torino in 1956, has also been on the market more or less continuously. However, this opera has been revived and recorded far less often than has Adriana, and as its cast (except for Olivero) is not starry, its hold has been more tenuous.

Iris was a considerable success in the years following its premiere (at the Costanzi, Rome, 1898). But it has not held its place in the repertory. The reasons usually cited (uneven score, unappetizing libretto, the veristic species of singer going extinct) all have some validity. But I am always interested in works of this era as specimens of a loss of narrative. In Opera as Opera I hypothesize the existence of a redundant narrative (that is, a single plot-and-character conformation) in nearly all the works of our standard repertory after Mozart, and further contend that this metanarrative (rather than musical developments per se) is the generative force behind that body of work. I will not try to summarize that argument here (that would be a reduction even less fair than the one I’m about to lay on Iris), but many of its implications will surface in this discussion. When a governing narrative is perceived as spent, what story or stories can be told with something like the power and aesthetic appeal of those that belonged to the narrative? In opera, that is to ask, first: which will bring forth music and singing that can stand the comparison? And, second: which can be persuasively presented by stage action? The quick answer to both questions is that many are sought and few found, because in the absence of an overarching narrative (which is to say, a story of central importance and urgency to both artists and their audiences, so that it can function as a “mainstream” for their time and place), the artists begin to snatch at whatever swims into view out of the mainstream, over there in the shallows and eddies. And one is frequently moved to ask, as one is of today’s talented and intelligent creators (for opera has never recovered from its loss of narrative), “What could they have been thinking of?”

Here is what happens, dramatically speaking, in Iris. The setting is Japan, in Act 1 a small village with Mt. Fuji in the distance, in Acts 2 and 3 the city of Edo (Tokyo), “in legendary times.” After an orchestral prelude and large-scale choral hymn in praise of the sun as life force, we meet our heroine, bonding with the flowers and flowing waters in the garden of her humble cottage, in the company of her blind father (Il Cieco). She is of an innocence and unworldliness posited only in “legendary” tales, and of rare beauty. She is coveted by a rich sybarite, Osaka. He and his accomplice, Kyoto, a procurer and owner of a fancy brothel, concoct an elaborate plot to abduct Iris during the performance of a theatre piece with puppets, music, and dancers, in which they both take part. They install her in Kyoto’s house of ill repute, where Osaka attempts to make love to her. But she doesn’t really understand, and when pressed wants only to return to her little house and her father. Osaka gives up in frustration, and Kyoto puts Iris on display on the veranda of his establishment, where she is marveled at by the crowd. Osaka, now humbled and newly aflame, casts himself in the mud at her feet amid the throng. But her father, believing that Iris has voluntarily left him for a life in the red-light district (Yoshiwara), makes his way there and, flinging mud at her, curses her. Devastated, Iris leaps from the veranda into an abyss that, in the final act, is revealed as the sewer of the vast city. There, ragpickers and other scavengers search for items of value. Happening upon the finely clad and accessorized body of Iris, they attempt to capitalize on their find, but when she stirs, they flee. Iris, barely alive, asks why all this has befallen her. She is answered in quick succession by the “Egoisms” of Osaka, Kyoto, and her father, all of whom acknowledge their roles in her downfall but excuse themselves on the grounds that “That’s life” (“Così la vita“). Iris dies, but soon the sun appears and re-asserts itself as the source of eternal life. Iris’ soul is lifted to Heaven on a bed of her beloved flowers.