Arts & Events

In Verdi’s time-line, Luisa Miller, which premiered at San Carlo in Naples in December 1849, is a fairly early opera, appearing in Verdi’s so-called “middle period.” MacBeth opened two years earlier; and La Battaglia di Lengnano, I Masnadieri, and Il Corsaro all opened prior to Luisa Miller. Yet much of Luisa Miller’s music foreshadows the great Verdi operas to come later. Even in its plot, Luisa Miller foreshadows Verdi’s lifelong interest in issues of paternal relations between a father and his offspring. Here, in Luisa Miller, the relationship of Luisa to Miller, her father, and his relationship to her, occupy the moral center of the opera.  

Based on the play Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love) by the great German playwright Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), Verdi’s Luisa Miller features a splendid libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, who had earlier provided Donizetti with the libretto for Lucia di Lammermoor. Verdi himself would later collaborate again with Cammarano on the libretto for Il Trovatore. The story of Luisa Miller deals with class relations, power relations between generations, and a battle of good versus evil. Rodolfo, the disguised son of Count Walter, loves a simple bourgeois maid, Luisa Miller, who returns his love. At first, this match suits neither Luisa’s father, an old soldier, nor Rodolfo’s aristocratic father. Miller is afraid Rodolfo, known to him as Carlo, may simply be toying with Luisa, while Count Walter has other marriage plans for his son, whom he wishes to marry his widowed niece, Federica. Aware that their fathers disapprove of their love, Rodolfo and Luisa pledge to love one another forever.  

The role of Luisa Miller, first sung by soprano Marietta Gazzaniga, was famously associated in the late 20^th century with Katia Ricciarelli. I heard Ricciarelli sing the role of Luisa in San Francisco in 1974 with Luciano Pavarotti as Rodolfo; and I heard her again as Luisa in 1978 at the Met with José Carreras, and yet again at the Met in 1982 with Pavarotti. For the current San Francisco Opera production of Luisa Miller, Leah Crocetto sings Luisa. A winner of the 2010 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Leah Crocetto possesses a full, luscious soprano voice and a disciplined technique. Yet somehow her singing fails to move me, at least not in any vocally or dramatically thrilling way. On the other hand, this production’s real star is tenor Michael Fabiano, who sings the role of Rodolfo with a muscular tone and intense passion. Fabiano’s Act II recitative which culminates in the bitter fulmination, “Tutto è menzogna, tradimento, inganno” (“Everything is falsehoods, betrayal, deceit”), was delivered in a full-throated outburst of despair; and the aria which follows, “Quando le sere, al placido” (“When in the stillness of evening”), one of the finest arias Verdi ever wrote, was sung with bitter poignancy. As the first singer to win both the Richard Tucker Award and the Beverly Sill Artist Award in the same year (2014), Michael Fabiano has quickly established himself as a leading tenor in the world of opera. 

Ukrainian baritone Vitaliy Bilyy sings the role of Miller, Luisa’s father. I found Bilyy’s performance puzzling. One minute he would sing so softly I could barely hear him, and the next minute he would burst out with power to spare. Dramatically, I could discern no reason for this inconsistency. Australian bass-baritone Daniel Sumegi sings the role of Count Walter, and he was eminently believable as an overbearing father whose maneuverings are always in his own interest though couched as if in the interests of his son, Rodolfo. When Count Walter schemes with Wurm, the villain of the piece, Verdi writes musical phrases that make it hard to distinguish which of these two deep voices is singing. This gives the impression of two schemers planting ideas in each other’s minds. Wurm is here ably sung by bass Andrea Silvestrelli. Russian mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk sings the role of Federica, the woman Count Walter wants his son to marry. Semenchuk’s deep voice is almost that of a contralto; and Verdi wrote the role for a contralto. Finally, current Adler Fellow Jacqueline Piccolino sings the soprano role of Laura, one of Luisa’s closest friends. Music Director Nicola Luisotti conducts Luisa Miller with his usual aplomb. 

The staging, however, leaves a lot to be desired. Francesca Zambello conceived this production, and one might say she totally misconceived it. The sets are by Michael Yeargan, and they are as irrelevant as can be. A single-bed seems to be the only prop, and for what reason it is there who can say? From a large beam hangs a painted panel, now a hunt scene, now a view of thunderclouds. Why these images are there who can say? The walls contain 32 panels, all of which move at one time or another, almost at random. On the panels are images of trees. At one absurd moment a panel depicting trees rose vertically while leaving a patch of blue sky below it, with the trees absurdly suspended above. Laurie Feldman handled the stage direction, such that there was. Luckily, however, one doesn’t go to the opera for stage-scenery. This Luisa Miller may be totally misconceived in its staging, but it is right on the mark musically.