A Poisoned-Violet Drama: Adriana Lecouvreur at the Vienna State Opera

Ermonela Jaho appeared dazed, almost in a trance and not yet of this world, when she first bowed at the end of the Vienna State Opera’s nearly three-and-a-half-hour performance of “Adriana Lecouvreur.”

Only moments earlier, during Adriana’s death scene, Marco Armiliato had drawn a delicate, luminous musical veil over the great diva with the State Opera Orchestra.

The poisoned violets sent by the vicious Princess of Bouillon, Adriana’s rival for the affection of the aristocratic rogue Maurizio, had finally taken effect. The production’s central drama unfolded through that fatal gesture, while Jaho and the orchestra supplied what the review calls moments of exceptional delicacy.