Olga Borodina “Adriana Lecouvreur“

Adriana Lecouvreur is an opera in four acts by Francesco Cilea to an Italian libretto by Arturo Colautti, based on the play by Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé. It was first performed on 6 November 1902 in Milan. The same play by Scribe and Legouvé which served as a basis for Cilea’s librettists was also used by at least three different librettists for operas carrying exactly the same name, Adriana Lecouvreur, and created by three different composers. The first was opera in three acts by Tommaso Benvenuti (premiered in Milan in 1857). The next two were lyric dramas in 4 acts by Edoardo Vera (to the libretto by Achille de Lauzières) which premiered in Lisbon in 1858, and by Ettore Perosio (to the anonymous libretto) premiered in Geneva in 1889. After Cilea created his own Adriana, however, none of those by others were performed anymore and they remain largely unknown today