The final act of “Adriana Lecouvreur” at the Verona Opera, with Lyda Borelli on the backdrop of the set.
“Adriana Lecouvreur is a stage actress at the height of her career, celebrated and adored by her admirers. Her private life plays out between theatres and noble households, between performances and declamations. It seems clear that, in shaping the character of Adriana, one must bear in mind the great divas active at the time the opera was composed. Their magic was born in the theatre, but for some it would reach its peak with the appearance of the new art form, cinema. Into this tenth muse, which had to reckon with the nine that came before it, flowed all the theatrical, literary and musical experience of the age, and, naturally, its actresses along with it. Adriana is an actress descended from the line of Sarah Bernhardt. In the classical theatre, new names were emerging: Eleonora Duse, Gys Leda, Francesca Bertini and Lyda Borelli. I find that Adriana resembles these “humble handmaidens” far more than the women who actually lived in the 1700s. And it is above all to the beguiling figure of Lyda Borelli, who made her stage debut in 1902 in the very role of Adriana Lecouvreur, that the director refers: “Lyda Borelli was the first great priestess of the emerging cult of the diva. Her soft, Pre-Raphaelite beauty, her D’Annunzian femme-fatale poses, her acting made of sweeping gestures, sudden languor and troubled glances, became the model for an entire generation of actresses, and went on to shape fashion until they became a true cultural phenomenon…” (Ivan Stefanutti)
Adriana Lecouvreur