No-one would hold up Adriana Lecouvreur as an example of great musical theatre, and it has all but disappeared from our modern stage mostly, I suspect, due to its laughable plot which culminates in the heroine dying by poisoned violets! This old-school DVD, however, serves it as well as you could imagine with the singers treating this load of old tosh far more seriously than some would say it deserves…– Simon Thompson, MusicWeb International
An operatic whodunit with gravitas: Francesco Cilea's 'Adriana Lecouvreur'. It is said even Giuseppe Verdi briefly gave consideration to writing an opera based on this whodunit, when Cilea decided to set the material to music in 1899. The opera's world premiere in Milan in 1902 was a triumph, due in no small measure to a stellar cast of singers that included Enrico Caruso as Maurizio.