Franco Alfano Risurrezione opera to libretto by Cesare Hanau after the novel by Leo Tolstoy. Directed 2020 by Rosetta Cucchi at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Stars Anne Sophie Duprels (Katerina Mihaylovna [Katyusha]); Matthew Vickers (Prince Dimitri Ivanovich Nehlyudov); Leon Kim (Simonson); Francesca Di Sauro (Sofia Ivanovna); Romina Tomasoni (Matryona Pavlovna/Anna); Nadia Pirazzini (An Old Maidservant); Ana Victoria PItts (Vera/Korablyova); Barbara Marcacci (Fenyichka); Filomena Pericoli (The Hunchback); Nadia Sturlese (The Redhead); Silvia Capra (A Woman); Lisandro Guinis (Kritzlov/Second Peasant); Gabriele Spina (Chief Guard); Giovanni Mazzei (Guard); Nicolò Ayroldi (Train-station Officer); Nicola Lisanti (Officer/First Peasant); Egidio Massimo Naccarato (Muzhik); Antonio Montesi (Cossack); Giulia Bruni (Fedia); Delia Palmieri (First Prisoner); Monica Marzini (Second Prisoner); Giovanna Costa (Third Prisoner); as well as Livia Sponton, Sabina Beani, Katja Da Sarlo, and Nadia Pirazzini (Other Prisoners). Francesco Lanzillotta conducts the Orchestra e Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (Chorus Master Lorenzo Fratini). Staging by the Wexford Festival Opera; sets by Tiziano Santi; costumes by Claudia Pernigotti; lighting by Ginevra Lombardo (based on original designs by D. M. Wood). Directed for TV by Davide Mancini; video editing by Metis; audio recording by Claudio Speranzini and Antonio Martino of MASClassica Audio Recording. Sung in Italian. Released 2021, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA
Alfano is the composer who got to finish Turandot. He wrote 11 complete operas on his own. His Risurrezione is written in the Puccini verismo style with a plot (set in Russia based on a novel by Tolstoy) that has a lot in common with the Shostakovich Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. William R. Braun, writing in the August 2021 Opera News (pages 46-47) suggests this could remain the only video of Risurrezione and holds it “does not do the opera a disservice.” Mike Ashman was more enthusiastic in the May 2021 Gramophone (page 74). Ashman calls this “an archetypal example of full-on verismo and an intriguing memory of one of opera’s historic formal styles.” The official trailer below shows how grim the opera is in portraying the fate of poor, abandoned Katyusha. The wheat field and child shown on the keepcase artwork is an invention of stage director Cucchi. Per Ashman, the little girl adds an “element of spiritual hope from Tolstoy’s original story that’s missing in the opera.” Sounds like a tear-jerked.
OR
