A scene from Luisa Miller at Met Opera Photo: ©2017 Chris Lee/Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera 2018 Season
Sunday 20 May at 6.00pm on RNZ Concert
VERDI: Luisa Miller
This heart-wrenching tragedy of fatherly love is a rarely performed gem from Verdi’s early period.
Luisa............................ Sonya Yoncheva
Federica....................... Olesya Petrova
Rodolfo........................ Piotr Beczala
Miller.......................... Plácido Domingo
Walter.......................... Alexander Vinogradov
Wurm.......................... Dmitry Belosselskiy
Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra/Bertrand de Billy (EBU)
The story centers on the bond between a father and his daughter as they stand together against a hostile world, and much of the dramatic and psychological acumen that would define the mature Verdi is already fully apparent in this earlier work. It is an opera very much like its title character—one that impresses with genuine virtues rather than superficial flashiness.
Placido Domingo at Met Opera Photo: ©2017 Chris Lee/Metropolitan Opera
In a remarkable career spanning six decades in the theater, Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) composed 28 operas, at least half of which are at the core of today’s repertory.
A scene from Luisa Miller at Met Opera Photo: ©2017 Chris Lee/Metropolitan Opera
The opera was originally set during the first half of the 17th century in the Tyrolean Alps (now part of Austria), which reflects the Germanic source of the drama. The non-Mediterranean setting is also typical of an interest in Northern Europe that was a hallmark of the Romantics and other artists of the early 19th century. The Met’s current production updates the setting to rural England in the era of the work’s composition.
As the opera represents a pivotal moment in Verdi’s career, so the score itself has aspects of both the rough vitality of his early works and the refinement of his middle career. Passionate melody is on full display throughout the score, nowhere more than in the tenor’s ravishing Act II aria “Quando le sere al placido.”
