[Met Performance] CID:97090



La Gioconda
Metropolitan Opera House, Mon, November 7, 1927




La Gioconda (98)
Amilcare Ponchielli | Arrigo Boito
La Gioconda
Florence Easton

Enzo
Beniamino Gigli

Laura
Marion Telva

Barnaba
Giuseppe Danise

Alvise
L?on Rothier

La Cieca
Merle Alcock

Singer/Zu?ne
Vincenzo Reschiglian

Is?po
Alfio Tedesco

Monk
Louis D'Angelo

Steersman
Arnold Gabor


Conductor
Tullio Serafin







Review 1:

Review of Samuel Chotzinoff in the New York World

AT THE METROPOLITAN

A Textbook of Murder

The dance of the hours brought "La Gioconda" to the Metropolitan's stage last night. This complicated narrative continues to exercise a fascination over operagoers. Last night the ushers could hardly find time to listen to the music, so busy were they keeping the crush of standees from overflowing into the aisles. Most opera stories are sanguinary; Even the most cheerful lyric drama can boast a corpse or two at the final curtain. But "La Gioconda" takes the palm for the varieties of murder that are either suggested or carried out in the course of its four acts.

In the first act La Cieca, the heroine's blind mother, is about to be beaten and stoned to death by a Venetian mob. She is rescued. In the second act the heroine tries to stab her rival, Laura. Laura displays a rosary and is saved for the moment - her turn is coming later. In the third act Laura's husband, after inviting his wife to sit down, givers her a vial of poison, intimating they would be gratified by her draining the contents. To make his meaning clearer he lifts a curtain showing a funeral bier which he has thoughtfully prepared.

But Laura is again saved when her humanitarian rival substitutes a narcotic for the poison. In the fourth act Gioconda herself decides to take poison to rid herself of the afflictions which had been accumulating for three acts. Before drinking she has a slight temptation to kill Laura for good, but is again deterred by her conscience. Enzo, the hero, now enters and is about to kill Laura but is called away at the last minute. When Gioconda at last has a moment to herself she adorns herself gayly before a mirror and stabs herself with a dagger. The villain appears to claim her but, seeing how matters stand, he shrieks into her dying ear that he has strangled her blind mother. I had forgotten to state that the hero sets fire to his ship at the end of the second act, thus adding arson to the already complete list of modes of violence.

Mr. Gigli in a charming little cap and skirts acted and sang the hero with his usual relish, though he subtly concealed a slight cold which dimmed the splendor of his "Heaven and Earth" aria only for the sophisticates in the audience. Miss Ponselle being indisposed, the ever reliable Miss Florence Easton assumed the velvet role, the mask, poison and dagger of the part and came through with honors. Mr. Danise, Mr. Rothier, Miss Telva and Miss Alcock did their share of the proceedings creditably and Mr. Serafin waved his stick as if he believed everything.



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