Flagship production of this start of the opera season at the Opéra Nice Côte d’Azur, the extremely rare Edgar by Giacomo Puccini, second lyrical work by the composer whose 2024 celebrates the centenary of his death. A French premiere, presented from November 8 to 12 (a concert version captured in December 2002 on Radio France is distributed by Naïve), the merit of which goes first to the director of the institution, the enterprising Bertrand Rossi, who decided to bring to the stage the original version of this early opera, created at La Scala in Milan in April 1889, the score of which was revised several times before being condensed into three acts.
A Mediterranean village square, an almond tree in bloom in the garden, a long wooden country table, the courtyard church door, askew walls: the unique decor shelters the unfolding of the drama which plays out in the heart of ‘Edgar, torn between his love for the angelic and pious Fidelia, and his attraction for the fatal and sensual Tigrana, abandoned as a child by “Hungarians and Moors” and taken in by a man from the village, Franck, whose obsession she also became.
The young man with the appearance of a poet tried to break up with the seductress, but all it took was a provocative song with imprecatory lyrics on this Easter day for, faced with the hostile violence of the village inhabitants as they left the church, he decides to run away with her, not without having injured his rival in a knife duel and destroying his father’s house by fire.
Torn between flesh and spirit
Nicola Raab’s narrative staging unsurprisingly serves the twisty plot inspired by Alfred de Musset’s poem, The Cup and the lipswhich speaks of fall (debauchery and lust) then redemption. Torn between flesh and spirit, heaven and earth, profane love and sacred love, “between Goethe’s Faust and Wagner’s Tannhäuser”, specifies the musicologist playwright Jean-Jacques Groleau, in the interesting room program, the hero’s journey, from darkness to light, exposes two polar opposite female stereotypes – possessiveness and transgression on the one hand, sacrifice and forgiveness on the other.
Tired of his decadent life, Edgar enlisted in a troop of soldiers (among them, his former adversary, Franck, Fidelia’s brother). His announced death in combat (accompanied by a false funeral and a withdrawal from the world under the monastic habit), his public expiatory confession as a repentant sinner, will reveal the greed of Tigrana and the deep attachment of Fidelia, alone to defend his memory while the crowd wants to deliver his body to the crows. The two women, however, will pay a high price, one stabbed on her wedding day by the second, who will be put to death by the mob.
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