Stiffelio
- Episode aired Dec 27, 1993
- 1h 56m
IMDb RATING
8.4/10
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Ponderous
Verdi composed Stiffelio, to lyrics by Francesco Maria Piave, during his great middle period, the period of Rigoletto, Trovatore, and Triaviata. Its first performance was in Trieste in 1850. A drastically revised version, with the action removed to England, was mounted in 1857, after which the opera sank, score and all, into oblivion. The discovery of a copyist's score in Naples in the 1960's, and of an autograph score in 1992, led to its revival.
The title character, Rev. Muller a/k/a Stiffelio, sung wonderfully in this 1993 Met production by Placido Domingo, is a married Protestant cleric and traveling evangelist living and working in a German-speaking country, rather like Austria, somewhere near Italy. While he is away proselytizing, his wife Lina, here the unremarkable Sharon Sweet, dallies with a count whose dramatic exit from one of their trysts – by leaping from a bedroom window into the river – is witnessed by a boatsman and relayed to Stiffelio. For most of two acts, Lina is traumatized by guilt, Lina's father – a uniformed colonel, wretch of a patriarch, and stand-in for the state – terrorizes Lina and her lover as he takes it upon himself, for the presumed good of his daughter and marriage and the state, to hide the truth from Stiffelio, the count keeps a low profile as he tries to win Lina back, and Paul Plishka, as a church elder, periodically shows up to lift his hands and sing "Pace!" As this summary suggests, the plot – which scandalized the Austrian censors in the 1850's – has little or nothing to say to today's opera-goers. "Get over it. See a marriage counselor. Do you love him or not? Do you love the other guy or not?" we would ask Lina. For today's audience, the state, the church, parents' wishes for and control of their adult children, and even marriage have largely withered away.
Rigoletto is an underdog who truly cares for his daughter; we sympathize with him. The elder Germont is a bourgeois prig, but his son is involved with a demimondaine; if we don't fully sympathize with him, we can at least sympathize with his attempt to reason with Violetta. Otello, of course, deals with presumed infidelity, and he deals with it badly, but it is a personal struggle, so we can sympathize with him. On the other hand there is nothing to sympathize with in Stiffelio, and the music only occasionally echoes – a gavotte here, a choral celebration there - the great scores of Verdi's middle period. Stiffelio is not a masterpiece, but this is a workmanlike production, with some fine singing, that is well filmed.
The title character, Rev. Muller a/k/a Stiffelio, sung wonderfully in this 1993 Met production by Placido Domingo, is a married Protestant cleric and traveling evangelist living and working in a German-speaking country, rather like Austria, somewhere near Italy. While he is away proselytizing, his wife Lina, here the unremarkable Sharon Sweet, dallies with a count whose dramatic exit from one of their trysts – by leaping from a bedroom window into the river – is witnessed by a boatsman and relayed to Stiffelio. For most of two acts, Lina is traumatized by guilt, Lina's father – a uniformed colonel, wretch of a patriarch, and stand-in for the state – terrorizes Lina and her lover as he takes it upon himself, for the presumed good of his daughter and marriage and the state, to hide the truth from Stiffelio, the count keeps a low profile as he tries to win Lina back, and Paul Plishka, as a church elder, periodically shows up to lift his hands and sing "Pace!" As this summary suggests, the plot – which scandalized the Austrian censors in the 1850's – has little or nothing to say to today's opera-goers. "Get over it. See a marriage counselor. Do you love him or not? Do you love the other guy or not?" we would ask Lina. For today's audience, the state, the church, parents' wishes for and control of their adult children, and even marriage have largely withered away.
Rigoletto is an underdog who truly cares for his daughter; we sympathize with him. The elder Germont is a bourgeois prig, but his son is involved with a demimondaine; if we don't fully sympathize with him, we can at least sympathize with his attempt to reason with Violetta. Otello, of course, deals with presumed infidelity, and he deals with it badly, but it is a personal struggle, so we can sympathize with him. On the other hand there is nothing to sympathize with in Stiffelio, and the music only occasionally echoes – a gavotte here, a choral celebration there - the great scores of Verdi's middle period. Stiffelio is not a masterpiece, but this is a workmanlike production, with some fine singing, that is well filmed.
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- GeneSiskel
- May 29, 2010
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