The story is a fictionalized treatment of the adventures of the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama (Domingo), with a love triangle involving Selika, queen of Madagascar (Shirley Verrett), and a Portuguese noblewoman, Ines (Ruth Ann Swenson). The whole cast is strong; Domingo is excellent, and Verrett often dominates the screen. --Joe McLellan

Description
The great Placido Domingo stars as the passionate explorer Vasco de Gama in Lotfi Mansouri's colorfully exotic, critically-acclaimed production for the San Francisco Opera, conducted by Maurizio Arena. Enormously popular in the 19th century, "L'Africaine" is set in the days of the great explorations. Shipwrecked on the African coast, de Gama returns to Portugal with two captives and falls in love with one of them, a beautiful East Indian queen (the spectacular Shirley Verrett). However, their relationship is threatened by the re-emergence of de Gama's former love, Lines, when a new expedition launched by the explorer's rival is shipwrecked.

If I had to compare this work to any other work of the romantic era, I would compare it to Verdi's "Falstaff". Of course, both works have, esthetically, pretty much nothing in common (if this work is musically similar to a Verdian work, it is Aida, for it uses similar orientalizing elements), it's only that L'Africaine seems to have a bit of Verdi's last opera's atmosphere. For both composers, throughout their lives, composed melodramatic love stories, more or less in the spirit of their time. While Verdi ends with a comedy where he makes fun of all his teary-eyed tragedies, Meyerbeer gives us a last tragedy, but seems to approach it more philosophically. As if, used to this atmosphere, he tries to find a moral to the ensemble of the operas he ever composed, giving the sentence it's period, the sundae it's cherry. He approaches the cast's misfortunes with a tender eye, instead of over-dramatizing, and gives the world a somewhat lighter work than his previous Grand operas, which doesn't stop him from giving a worthy rendition of the characters' feelings, and being pathetic when need be (especially at Selika's death scene). Aside from Don Pedro, who is all evil, and Ines, who is all good, all characters have good and bad points, and overall, the moral of this work is pretty much that love smiles on everyone, but only your luck decides wether it will make you happy or sad. This is pretty much the moral of all melodramas.

From a musical point of view, I have trouble finding the famous downsides other reviewers have pointed. Regarding the lyricism, it is maybe less direct than Verdi's, but equally expressiveand effective. The arias are more elegant, have a more french aesthetic. But it in no way means that his lyrical invention is inferior. As I said, this work is not as passionate as Les Huguenots. As for the famous "broken-backed" act formation, I just don't see what it may be about. This is not because an opera doesn't have the musical continuity of Wagner's lyrical dramas that it lacks good structure. After all, despite Meyerbeer's success, the music critics of his time wouldn't have acclaimed the work as they did if it wasn't well-built. For me, an act is ok from the moment the story and the action make sense.

Regarding the cast, everyone is very good. Placido Domingo is thoroughly chilling as the intrepid explorer. He shows well that back then, the aria "O paradis" was a party-stopper. Shirley Verrett sings her second-act sleep aria very well, and is very moving at the opera's end. All of the supporting cast is also top-notch. The famous "workhouse" sounds are mostly when the music is "piano", soft. Most of the time, however, I've had no problems with this recording. The Dolby digital sound is very ok.

Finally, if you must make a choice between this work or Les huguenots, I'd say this dvd may be a surer bet than the Australian dvd of "Les huguenots", since the cast here is of greater quality. However, Les huguenots has, I think, a "grander" subject, and it's emotional impact is greater, I feel, than L'Africaine. Still, I would recommend you to buy both instead of making a choice, since each one has such a great musical and dramatic value.


Beautiful, powerful, and noisy.   January 9, 2003
 7 out of 9 found this review helpful

Both from the musical and scenical points of view, this is a great performance of Meyerbeer's opera with the elegant and beautiful Shirley Verrett, the powerful Domingo and Ruth Ann Swenson.
However I should have prefered to have much less noise in the recording. Sometimes I am tempted to turn off the DVD for it sound more like a workshop than an opera house. This is a minus five star performance of the sound engineers, in an otherwise great opera recording.