Amor ti vieta (Fedora)

Fedora was first given at the Teatro Lirico in Milan on 17 November 1898, with the twenty-five-year-old Enrico Caruso as Loris — the role that made his name. Arturo Colautti's libretto compresses Sardou's play, written for Sarah Bernhardt, into three acts moving from St Petersburg to Paris to Switzerland. Giordano had had one success with Andrea Chénier two years before and needed another. He wrote for a soprano who could act at least as well as she sang, kept the orchestra continuous beneath conversational vocal lines, and allowed the tenor a single short lyrical outburst in the second act.