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Siberia(ii)locked

Siberia(ii)locked

  • Julian Budden

Opera in three acts by Umberto Giordano to a libretto by Luigi Illica ; Milan, Teatro alla Scala, 19 December 1903.

The action takes place in Russia and Siberia during the 1850s. Act 1 opens in a palace in St Petersburg where the demi-mondaine Stefana (soprano) has been installed by her latest protector, Prince Alexis (tenor). Stefana is awaited by her anxious housekeeper Nikona (mezzo-soprano). When Alexis arrives with two friends, Nikona tells them that her mistress is still asleep, whereupon they sing her a mattinata (‘O bella mia’) and retire. Stefana returns from a secret assignation with her lover, Vassili (tenor), a young infantry officer who, she tells Nikona, knows nothing of her circumstances (‘Nel suo amore rianimata’). Her manager, Gleby (baritone), ridicules this new passion. It turns out, however, that Nikona is Vassili’s old nurse; and when he comes to bid her farewell before setting out for the Crimean War he and Stefana recognize one another. Their duet is interrupted by Alexis, who draws his sword on the intruder. In the ensuing fight Alexis is wounded. Vassili is arrested and led away to prison.

In Act 2, set at a frontier post on the Siberian border thronged by peasants and pedlars, a party of convicts arrive on their way to a prison camp. Among them is Vassili, condemned to hard labour. He is joined by Stefana, who has come to share his fate. Act 3 begins amid the rigours of a Siberian winter with the lovers longing for freedom. Stefana is startled by the unexpected presence of Gleby among the camp’s inmates. He too has fallen into disgrace and been sentenced to deportation, but he tells her of a hidden escape route through a dried-up well and begs her to join him there. When she refuses he proclaims to all the secret of her past life. She retorts by denouncing him as her first lover, who sold her into prostitution. A fracas is prevented by the appearance of the Prison Governor (bass), who delivers the Easter message. During the evening’s celebration Stefana and Vassili attempt to escape through the well; but the alarm is raised, shots are fired and Stefana, mortally wounded, dies in her lover’s arms.

Siberia was Giordano’s own favourite among his operas. The prestigious première, which it owed to the postponement of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, featured Rosina Storchio (Stefana), Giovanni Zenatello (Vassili) and Giuseppe De Luca (Gleby); the conductor was Cleofonte Campanini. At the opera’s performance in Paris in 1905 Fauré pronounced it the best product of the Giovane scuola . In 1911 Siberia achieved the rare distinction of a performance in French at the Paris Opéra, the first to be accorded to a work by a living Italian composer since Verdi’s Otello (1894). Giordano later revised the opera into its definitive form, first presented at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1927.

Especially notable are the ensembles, from the mattinata of Act 1 for four voices with chorus to the entire second act, which is conceived as a massive genre canvas. No other Italian opera makes such extensive use of authentic Russian melody. The first act opens with an offstage chorus of harmonized orthodox plainchant and closes with the tsarist anthem played by the stage band. Act 2 contains the hymn ‘Slava’, familiar from Beethoven, Musorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, and the folktune ‘Oy, ne khodi, Gritsyu’, also quoted by Donizetti and Glinka and, most strikingly of all, ‘The Song of the Volga Boatmen’ which forms the basis of the prisoners’ chorus. The Easter scene of Act 3 includes a balalaika band which plays a number of traditional tunes including ‘U vorot’, recognizable from Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture. The opera’s only recurring motif is a sinuous theme connoting Siberia that is first heard in the prelude to Act 2 and later forms the opening strain of Vassili’s solo ‘Orride steppe’.