Edgar (Puccini)

 Giacomo Puccini, more or less, disavowed his second opera, Edgar, premiered at La Scala in 1889.  He expressed embarrassment about the it and, certainly, regarded it as a failure --  notwithstanding heroic efforts to reform and revise the thing.  (Originally, four Acts, Puccini stripped down the libretto to a three-act opera that can be performed in ninety minutes.)  There's nothing wrong with the opera musically -- it's lushly orchestrated, full of effective if forgettable tunes, and sounds a bit like Verdi staged as a Wagnerian Musikdrama.  The vocal parts are soaring and impressive.  The problem with the show lies in its text; most operas have stupid stories but Edgar is egregiously, irrefragably dumb.  The problems with the libretto, written by a prolific 19th century scribe, Ferdinando Fontana, raise interesting questions about 19th century prejudices and conventions -- in fact, the opera could be staged to refute all of its principle thematic points and cries out, I think, for strategies subverting the libretto.  By accident, as it were, the show is fascinating because, to modern eyes, it seems to controvert its own avowed ethics.  Unfortunately, the opera isn't really staged by the Minnesota Opera Company (I saw the show on April 19, 2026); the piece as presented as a concert -- that is, the large orchestra occupied the deep stage and the conductor stands at the middle of the musical forces.  There's a populous chorus behind the orchestra standing on some risers and the five performers sing from music stands under the proscenium.  Some effort was made to costume the singers.  Fidelia, the heroine, is clad in flower white and carries a sprig of blossoms in her hands; the vamp, Tigrana, wears a serpentine, tight, scarlet dress -- the opera is very schematic.  After the first act of the show, a week before, the tenor playing the lead role, Edgar, became sick and had to excuse himself from further performances -- his understudy took over for the second two acts.  But, alas, the understudy himself succumbed to illness and had to bow out.  At the show that I saw, some rotund local tenor had been press-ganged into singing the difficult and arduous part.  (The guy did a great job, although when he came out for his bow, he jocularly whisked imaginary sweat of his brow, an endearing gesture.)  Edgar is almost never performed -- it hasn't been staged in the United States for fifty years.  Regional opera companies develop crowd-pleasing shows and, then, rent the sets and costumes to other companies; similarly, the singers develop a repertoire of familiar parts that they can perform without extensive rehearsals -- this is the economic basis for the same core group of operas being performed year-after-year.  But Edgar doesn't afford these opportunities -- no one is going to be staging this work soon and so sets and costumes can't be recycled to Portland or Des Moines or Omaha.  Similarly, a singer who has learned the libretto and music by heart for a stage performance isn't going to get another opportunity to perform this work in his or her lifetime.  Yet regional opera companies don't have big budgets for rehearsal except for with newly commissioned works or for festivals and, therefore, it doesn't make sense to invest the resources necessary for a fully staged performance.  In this context, one must also be mindful that arts like opera, except on the major stages, are chronically underfunded and, worse so, in the era of Trump.  I expect that opera companies will increasingly turn to the expedient of performing works as concert pieces. This doesn't necessarily impair the effectiveness of the performance.  One of the most memorable experiences of my concert-going life was a performance of Wagner's Das Rheingold presented with the orchestra on stage and the singers arrayed like performers at an oratorio -- this was with the Minnesota Orchestra about 1987.  (Wagner is so expensive to stage and the music so effective that you can readily present his works, particularly the relatively short Rheingold in this format.) 

Here is the plot of Edgar, a variation on the time-honored theme of the Mother and the Whore.  Edgar, a medieval knight, has a simpering girlfriend Fidelia.  Unfortunately, a vamp, Tigrana, sets her sights on Edgar and seduces him away from his virtuous betrothed.  Tigrana is sexy, venal, and likes to stage orgies -- in other words, she's a fun date.  Fidelia's brother, incongruously named Frank (this is supposed to be 14th century Flanders), also likes Tigrana.  When Tigrana appears, the two boys, both of whom have a history with the vamp, fight and Edgar wounds Frank.  (In this production, the two doughty knights threaten one another with blades that look like letter-openers).  Frank staggers off-stage in the arms of his father, Gualtiero.  Edgar decamps with the sultry Tigrana.  (During this Act, the chorus acts the part of judgemental and prudish villagers on their way to church as signified by deep organ tones in the music; the chorus keeps shouting at Tigrana to "Get out!" and she responds with the Italian equivalent of "Fuck you!")  In the second act, Edgar is debilitated by his vigorous participation in Tigrana's orgies-- as often with male lovers, ambition exceeds capability.  Poor Edgar wants to escape the insatiable Tigrana and, so, he joins the Marines or some other military unit.  Frank, as it happens has now become a soldier -- in classic soldier male behavior, the boys renounce their female companionship, embrace, and depart the stage as boon comrades.  In the Third Act, we learn that Edgar has been killed in action.  His body is borne back to town in a suit of armor. Everyone sings Edgar's praises as a patriot and hero and Fidelia sings an aria bidding him farewell that was sufficiently effective to be performed as a valedictory piece at Puccini's own obsequies.  Dissenting from the universal praise at the funeral, a contrarian monk sings that Edgar was really a scoundrel, engaged in orgies and theft, and, even, murdered innocent passers-by in the forest to cut their purses.  Tigrana shows up late, in fact, too late to impress the mourners with her sorrow.  The Monk and Frank begin to tempt Tigrana with a precious jewel and necklace.  They ask her to join in the monk's denunciation of Edgar and, indeed, accuse him of treason.  Without too much hesitation, Tigrana concedes the point -- after all, she knows her boyfriend engaged in orgies (she orchestrated them) and knows he betrayed Fidelia; the rest is not that far afield.  After accusing Edgar of high crimes and misdemeanors (including treason), the Monk reveals that he's really Edgar in disguise, that the battered armor is empty, and that the whole funeral was just an elaborate scheme to reveal Tigrana as the greedy, scheming bitch that she is.  Fidelia rushes to the arms of her betrothed.  Tigrana stabs her with what looks like a letter-opener and the opera ends thunderously as the whore is hauled off to be hanged, apparently by Gualtiero, who is apparently her foster-father.  

Among the numerous problems with this ending, the chief is that the most sympathetic and interesting character in the play is Tigrana.  Fidelia, the ostensible heroine, is a complete cipher, wholly lacking in any charisma.  And Tigrana has reasons for the way she behaves:  she is the daughter abandoned in town by "roving nomads" -- my guess is that the libretto says "gypsies" but that this word is now so politically incorrect it can't be uttered.  She has been raised by Gualitiero who is her foster father, but, apparently, not sufficiently affectionate to protect her from being sentenced to death in the last moments of the opera.  Her half-brother, Frank, has apparently been sexually abusing her -- although the libretto suggests, blaming the victim, that Frank is the subject of Tigrana's sexual voracity.  Insulted and injured, Tigrana is a freedom-fighter for the oppressed, using as a weapon the only tool she has -- that is her sexuality.  In the final scene, she is revealed to be venal and disloyal to Edgar -- but the knight is supposed to be dead and, after all, what duties does an ex-girlfriend (who has been abandoned) owe to her dead lover.  In fact, I am completely aligned with her when she trades a denunciation of a "dead hero" for gems that can presumably lift her out of the squalid milieu in which the whole village as the chorus has told her "raus!"  Of course, gypsies are bad in 19th century Europe (and, still, the victims of astonishing discrimination today) and so my interpretation of the opera is perverse.  For me, Edgar has the same flavor as Verdi's La Traviata, an opera so reliant on late 19th century gender roles and sexual mores as to be unwatchable except for the music.  Yet, I suspect that with ingenious staging and a subversive eye on the subject matter, the opera could be revived as a sort of backhanded attack on sexism and discrimination.