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Director: Tiziano Mancini
Conductor: Daniele Callegari
Stars: Leo Nucci, Roberto Scandiuzzi, Simone Piazzola, Paolo Pecchioli, Tamar Iveri, Francesco Meli.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5440938/
20th Verdi opera.
Premiere 1857, La Fenice, Venice;
1881 (second version), La Scala, Milan
Time: The middle of the 14th century.
Place: In and around Genoa.
Filmed at Teatro Regio di Parma
This is the 4th performance of SB that I'll rate, 3 of them from the Met on Demand voyage, 1 of those owned. I have not liked it in any of these forms. There are 16 on IMDb at the moment; only 1 has a higher rating than the one from the Met that I own, and it's only a sliver higher.
I like the sets (lots of "Dutch" angles, as they call the distorted proportions of German expressionism in film) and costumes (lots of heavy velvet, good colors, even shiny trim on Adorno's outfits), but I somehow I wish they had furniture and props to deal with. The sloped stage looked dangerous.
I ran it more than once, and was attracted to watch a couple of times in the same place, where a singer had something special to their voice/song. It may have been Scandiuzzi (Fiesco) each time; also noticed him as Banquo in the Macbeth I own. But the music is just OK compared to the better Verdi operas. Of course, like Hitchcock, his middling work is still better than most other's best.
I read the synopsis pretty thoroughly beforehand, and watched the intro video carefully. The story is complex without being interesting. It's yet another reunion of adult child (daughter) and father, who bond instantly just because they realize they must be related. Again this instantly changes the loyalty of the the daughter's love interest Adorno, who was formerly the mortal enemy of the father. Verdi seems to like this plot twist a lot, and I dislike it a lot, although in this case I'm not sure Adorno's loyalties were well-founded. I didn't absorb the reason for the antipathy of the "sides", unless it was the personal tragedy of Fiesco's daughter dying, but that might have been his own fault for barring her access to her lover (Boccanegra) and her child (Amelia, grownup by Act 1).
The Great Course mentions this, but basically dismisses it. The strange thing is, according to OperaBase, in the 2004/5 (the earliest I could access) season worldwide, this was the 81st most performed opera, with 43 performances in 7 productions. (To the right: the top 10 in 2004/5. Click to enlarge.)Per the 2012 featurette, without naming the source of world-wide most-performed rankings, this is 12th among Verdi's operas, 70th among all operas. (another source-less list of the top 100; Operabase Statistics). I think the featurette mentioned no big choral numbers, which is something that adds to a Verdi opera in my estimation.
Unitel, cond. Callegari; 7
