When Fedora was first staged, at the Teatro Lirico in Milan on November 17, 1898, Umberto Giordano was fresh off the success of Andrea Chénier. It was thanks to that triumph that Victorien Sardou was finally persuaded, after several attempts, to relinquish the rights to his eponymous drama, Fédora, written in 1882, which Giordano had greatly enjoyed in Sarah Bernhardt’s interpretation, as happened to Puccini when he saw the same actress perform Sardou’s La Tosca.
Giordano’s Fedora, with a libretto by Arturo Colautti, was an immediate success, with performances by Gemma Bellincioni and Enrico Caruso, who achieved his first important success with this opera. Between murders, police investigations, parties and intrigue, oaths of vengeance and poisonings, the plot of Fedora unfolds between fin de siècle atmosphere and modern detective story. From St. Petersburg to the snowy mountains of Switzerland, via Paris, the tragic story of love and death of Fedora, a character that has always attracted primedonnas who have marked the history of the interpretation of the role, from Renata Tebaldi to Magda Oliviero, from Mirella Freni to Renata Scotto, from Giulietta Simionato to Elena Nicolai, unfolds.