Time—The tenth century.
Place—A remote castle of Italy, forty years after a Barbarian invasion, led by Archibaldo.
Photo by Mishkin
Bori and Ferrari-Fontana in “The Love of Three Kings”
THIS opera is justly considered one of the finest products of modern Italian genius. Based upon a powerful tragedy, by Sem Benelli, one of the foremost of living playwrights in Italy, it is a combination of terse, swiftly moving drama with a score which vividly depicts events progressing fatefully toward an inevitable human cataclysm. While there is little or no set melody in Montemezzi's score, nevertheless it is melodious—a succession of musical phrases that clothe the words, the thought behind them, their significance, their most subtle suggestion, in the weft and woof of expressive music. It is a mediæval tapestry, the colours of which have not faded, but still glow with their original depth and opulence. Of the many scores that have come out of Italy since the death of Verdi, "L'Amore dei Tre Re" is one of the most eloquent.
Act I. The scene is a spacious hall open to a terrace. A lantern employed as a signal sheds its reddish light dimly through the gloom before dawn.
From the left enters Archibaldo. He is old with flowing white hair and beard, and he is blind. He is led in by his guide Flaminio, who is in the dress of the castle guard. As if he saw, the old blind king points to the door of a chamber across the hall and bids Flaminio look and tell him if it is quite shut. It is slightly open. Archibaldo in a low voice orders him to shut it, but make no noise, then, hastily changing his mind, to leave it as it is.
In the setting of the scene, in the gloom penetrated only by the glow of the red lantern, in the costumes of the men, in the actions of the old king, who cannot see but whose sense of hearing is weirdly acute, and in the subtle suggestion of suspicion that all is not well, indicated in his restlessness, the very opening of this opera immediately casts a spell of the uncanny over the hearer. This is enhanced by the groping character of the theme which accompanies the entrance of Archibaldo with his guide, depicting the searching footsteps of the blind old man.