One of my favorite operas is a rare one — perhaps largely due to its competition from the likes of Puccini, Verdi, Wagner and Mozart — or perhaps because its most tragic scene, the finale in which the ill-fated love meets its demise in no less spectacular way than a Tyrolean avalanche is a stage manager’s nightmare. But nonetheless La Wally is the one opera I have wistfully dreamed of seeing once before I die.
The story might remind you of some of the early film classics: Wally, a young Alpine lass runs away to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her with Vicenzo Gellner. She falls in love with a huntsman Giuseppe Hagenbach from a nearby village who is engaged to another, while Vicenzo’s love remains steadfast and uinrequited. In a calculated flirtation to win Giuseppe away from his betrothed, Wally dances with him and allows him a kiss, not realizing that he is toying with her emotions with the full knowledge of the villagers. Once aware, she seeks retribution by sending Vicenzo to kill Giuseppe as a kind of proof of his love. He does so by pushing Giuseppe off a cliff, but upon hearing of the deed Wallly has second thoughts and rushes to the site, where miraculously she discsovers Giuseppe has survived. He recovers and pledges his love for her right there on the edge of that snowy, unstable ravine and just as he sets off to find a path down from the precipice he is overtaken by an avalanche at which point Wally leaps to her own snowy death.
Enjoy Ebben? ne andrò lontana by Maria Callas:
