Giordano's just kind of there. I liked Andrea Chénier, not so much Fedora, but for whatever reason, I struggle to have any kind of opinion about him. He existed. He lived from 1867 to 1948. He wrote some operas. Those are my opinions about him. But in any event, I saw this lesser-known Giordano opera. The DVD was cheap, probably.
Pretty simple plot: there's this guy Giorgio, the crown prince of some foreign country who's in disguise slumming it in Paris. He meets Marcella, this virtuous woman, and they fall in love and they're living together for a while in a happy fashion, but DISASTER! A representative of his country shows up and explains that his father is sick and being influenced by the bad vizier and it's not good times and he needs to come back to sort things out. So, well, what can he do? He reveals his identity to Marcella, asks him to come with him, she won't because their stations don't match, there is angst, he leaves, she's sad.
I do think it kind of overplays Marcella's excessive innocence at the beginning in kind of an infantilizing way, and as for the climax, it reminds me of Puccini's La rondine, and with the same issues: first, do they REALLY need to be separated? Is the reason for this adequately justified? And secondly, even if so, I mean, is it really the end of the world? Sure it sucks when you have to leave someone you love, but it happens to most of us, an most of us eventually get over it! Anyway, presumably Giorgio can at least make sure she's not poor anymore. That ought to soften the blow a little.
But on the whole, I thought this was pretty good, actually. If you don't think too hard about it and just go along with the opera logic, the last act is quite dramatic and pretty affecting, and the whole opera goes by in a fleet sixty-five minutes, so it doesn't outstay its welcome. You definitely could do worse.
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