THE OPERATIC ROLES OF IRENE ADLER (Page Three)

To narrow the search, I consulted Brockway and Weinstock's The World of Opera, which catalogues the performance record of 253 operas. Only two of these are recorded as having been performed in both La Scala and Warsaw during the appropriate time period, both of them written by Rossini. The first was La Pietra del Paragone (The Touchstone) and the second was La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie), which contained the contralto-trouser role of Pippo. Thus, there exists the distinct possibility that Irene Adler did indeed perform this role.

This once popular work, termed an opera semiseria, a combination of comedy (opera buffa) and melodrama and potential tragedy (opera seria) has some interesting dramatic and musical elements. There is a march to the gallows which anticipates Berlioz's later orchestration. One of its characters is a peddler named Isacco, whose music is whiningly nasal; he anticipates Verdi's peddler Trabuco in La Forza del Destino. In addition, the use of a fatherly baritone protecting the purity of his soprano daughter will become a dominant motif of Verdi later in the 19th century.

A modern Pippo:

Nerys Jones in 2002

In addition, the outwardly comic role of Mayor Gottardo almost disguises the fact that he is a philanderer who manipulates justice for personal gain; some critics see him as the forerunner of Puc­cini's magnificently malevolent police chief, Baron Scarpia, in Tosca.

 More specifically, Ms. Adler's character, Pippo, while not a major role, is an important contributor to the musical drama: he has the first solo entrance in the opera; in Act II, he is an equal partner to the prima donna soprano in their duet; and his heroic style of singing was limited to aristocratic characters in previous operas.

Furthermore, it is important to remember that dra­matically the opera itself is in some regard a "rescue" opera reminiscent of the most famous of this genre, Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio.

This brings us to the final point, namely the rea­son for Ms. Adler's early exit from the operatic stage. In view of her seeming affinity for male parts, I believe she attempted the foremost trouser role in all of operatic literature, the above-mentioned Fidelio. In this

musical and dramatic masterpiece, Leonora, the wife of Flerestan, disguises herself as Fidelio in order to free her unjustly imprisoned husband. Such a role would have an instant attraction for Ms. Adler. While the role is written for soprano, it can be sung by some mezzo-sopranos; the mezzo Christa Ludwig was one of the finest portrayers of this role dur­ing the middle of the last century. However, it is possible that this role required higher notes than Ms. Adler possessed or could even be trained to produce. If this were true, singing such a role could have seriously injured or ruined her voice permanently, thus causing her early retirement.

Note: For those interested in hearing La Gazza Ladra, there is an excellent recording on

Ludwig van

Beethoven

the Sony label sung by Katia Ricciarelli, Samuel Ramey, and Bernadette Manca di Nissa (as Pippo), con­ducted by Gianluigi Gelmetti. Perhaps the definitive recording of Fidelio is on the EMI label sung by Christa Ludwig (as Fide­lio/Leonore) and Jon Vickers, conducted by Otto Klemperer.