Umberto Giordano: La Cena delle Beffe (1924)

Opera in quattro atti. Running Time: 1 hour 30 minutes.

Giordano’s penultimate opera was one of his successes of esteem. With a libretto by playwright Sem Benelli (adapting his own successful play) it was unlikely to completely fail like most of his other operas. The opera was a triumph at La Scala in December 1924, and within the next five years had seen productions in over 40 cities around the world. However, it failed to take off at the New York Met and since the Second World War has seen sporadic productions but never completely dropping from the repertoire. Like most of the Giordano works, the opera consists of four extremely brief acts. The score is extremely conservative, sounding at times closer to 1884 than 1924 and this was deliberate on the part of Giordano in order to amplify the old fashioned nature of the rather grim plot. The primary tenor role of Giannetto is extremely taxing, being on stage for most of the opera and requiring a wide tessitura over heavy orchestration. Giordano also avoided the usage of a chorus. Instead, the opera boasts 15 singing roles although only six are not minor. Here I am reviewing a live performance video from the 1988 production in Piacenza.

SETTING: Florence, 1470s or 80s, May. The plot revolves around the revenge extracted by Giannetto Malaspini (tenor) upon the brothers Neri (baritone) and Gabriello (tenor) Chiaramantesi who had previously tied up Giannetto in a sack, pricked him with their swords, and then dumped him into the Arno river. In the meantime, Neri also started sleeping with Giannetto’s mistress, Ginevra (soprano) so Giannetto tricks her, under cover of darkness, into sleeping with him, twice. She apparently doesn’t realize it is Giannetto until the next morning, when she is delighted! Neri discovers them and is dragged off to a dungeon, where Giannetto has multiple people who have been wronged by Neri torment him including one of his former mistresses Lisabetta (soprano) who takes pity on Neri and tells him to fake being insane. Neri does this, convincing Giannetto, who sleeps with Ginevra a second time. Neri bursts into Ginevra’s bedroom and murders her and the man she is in bed with, who turns out to be his own brother Gabriello! who had been convinced by Giannetto into thinking that Ginevra is actually attracted to him. Neri then goes completely insane and Giannetto realizes that his revenge has gone too far, but it is too late.

ACT 1: The house of Tornaquinci (bass), a night dinner banquet prepared on the order of Lorenzo di Medici. (22 minutes, act starts at 6:28)

6, 11, 19: The opera starts off with a repeated rising theme which starts off in the brass and moves to the woodwinds and then the strings and gets alternated throughout much of the early part of the scene which mostly consists of a load of plot exposition between Tornaquinci and Giannetto (mostly the latter, in a VERY high tenor which tends to come close to shouting). The first item of any note is a theme which resembles Fasolt and Fafner in Rheingold * as Neri, Gabriello, and Ginevra come on resulting in what seems like a very brief reconciliation ensemble *. The two brothers end up screaming at each other, until stopped by Ginevra, and then everyone leaves excluding Giannetto, who plots out his re-seduction of Ginevra before the curtain falls. Unfortunately, the act really is just needed plot exposition and shouting over very heavy orchestration apart from a drinking song from Neri * towards the end of the act, which is certainly the weakest of the four.

ACT 2: Ginevra’s bedroom, the next morning. (18 minutes, starts at 31:02)

0: Ginevra sings happily in post-coital glow *, not realizing that she has just been freshly ravished by Giannetto (in spite of the fact that until months before she was already his mistress). Much of the early part of the act consists of a dialogue between Ginevra and her maid Cintia before Giannetto reveals his identity to the two women.

4: The first good passage in the opera comes from Giannetto as he serenades Ginevra after their night of unbridled sex **. This is actually rather beautiful and forms the heart of the act, with rather good orchestral effects and a strong vocal line for the tenor, even if it feels a little derivative. It goes into an equally good second verse as well, and then a passage for Ginevra. Certainly this is the best music in the opera so far.

14: As with the first act, the only real action occurs in the last four minutes or so of this act when Neri arrives and threatens Ginevra and is captured by Giannetto’s men *. Much of this mickey-mouses its way around to the curtain.

ACT 3: An underground dungeon. (27 minutes, starts at 52:57)

0, 2, 5: The act starts with a grim prelude * followed by an oddly sparkling dialogue between Giannetto and the bumbling doctor he hires to declare Neri mentally insane *. There is one passage for Giannetto when the orchestra and tenor line fly **, but otherwise it bumbles about amusingly and oddly passionately.

10: Neri is brought in and systematically tormented by those he has previously wronged *. When this finally moves into ensemble, it is dominated by Lisabetta’s high soprano. The scene could have been out of a modernized Donizetti opera.

15: Lisabetta is left alone with Neri by Giannetto and she embarks on a rather lovely bit of exposition about what her previous relationship with Neri was like **. Neri expresses remorse, and Lisabetta takes pity on him and tells him to pretend to be mad so he might be released and he might return to her.

22: Giannetto returns, Lisabetta claims that Neri is crazy now, and this results in him upbraiding her and a rather lovely trio led by the tenor (as usual) ** as they fight over Neri’s sanity (or lack there of). Eventually, Giannetto starts to relent, feeling that he is taking his revenge too far, and tries to convince Neri that he is not actually going insane. He eventually reveals that he will be spending the night with Ginevra to Neri, before having the man taken out.

ACT 4: Same as Act 2, but the following morning. (21 minutes, starts at 1:23:53)

0: The best number in the opera is Ginevra’s Hymn to May which opens the final act **.

6: Suddenly, the loveliness is broken by scary music rushing towards Ginevra, it is Neri, who comes and stabs her! This takes a long time, as the confrontation scene * about how she has been two-timing him with former lover Giannetto takes a while to get through. He stabs her then stabs the guy in her bed. He then realizes that it is actually his brother Gabriello.

13: Giannetto serenades Ginevra off-stage **, provides a bit of filler before the stabbings and motivates Neri to the last acts of madness. He then leaves the room, only to find Giannetto, very much alive, at the other side of the door. He then reveals that he tricked Gabriello into going to Ginevra’s bedroom with a fake letter from her inviting him to a sexual tryst. He had only intended for Neri to murder Gabriello, not Ginevra (apparently) and realizes that his revenge has gone too far. Neri loses his mind and is taken out, screaming for Lisabetta. Curtain as Giannetto is left alone with the bodies and the orchestra pulls out very mildly.

COMMENTS:

La Cena delle Beffe is Giordano at his most short-winded. All four of the acts a brief, 90 minutes is extremely short for a four act opera. It is also oddly more melodic (at least in regards to the role of Giannetto and to a lesser extent Lisabetta) than much of Giordano’s work ever was. The first act is extremely weak, however, the opera does rapidly improve with the rather brilliant love duet (dominated again by Giannetto), and then in the third act by more work for the tenor. The few non-tenor highlights are Lisabetta’s scene with Neri and then the opening of act four with Ginevra’s Hymn to May which has an unusually haunting melody for Giordano. The unusual melodic invention, which isn’t that strong, it is just strong for Giordano since the melodies themselves aren’t really all that original, they are merely better that usual Giordano, along with the well constructed and brief libretto, is what makes the opera’s dramaturgy work as well as it does, although the brevity also works against any real character development apart from Giannetto and Neri. It is a beta minus.