Suor Angelica

Overview

Opera in one act, part of Il trittico, a collection of three one-act operas including Il tabarro, and Gianni Schicchi
Libretto by Giovacchino Forzano
Sung in Italian with English surtitles

First performance
The Metropolitan Opera, New York, USA, 1918

The Opera

World War I was a particularly difficult time for Puccini. His publisher, Giulio Ricordi, had died in 1912, leaving the publishing house in the hands of his son — much less inclined to support Puccini’s music, and more interested in the younger, newer composers such as Riccardo Zandonai, for instance. To make matters worse, Puccini’s only son Tonio was away fighting on Italy’s northern front. And, speaking of borders, Puccini’s travels had become curtailed — so much so that he got into trouble with the Italian consul in Lugano for visiting his latest mistress — Josephine von Stängel — in Switzerland.

It was little wonder, then, that the rate of Puccini’s operatic production had slowed down. But he did manage his operetta La rondine, eventually premiered in Monte-Carlo in 1917, and there was his miraculous triptych of one-act operas, Il trittico, first staged at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in December 1918. If its final panel, that great comedy Gianni Schicchi, might have looked atypical for Puccini, it must have felt especially uplifting in the aftermath of the war. The other two parts of the trilogy are more typically Puccinian in a way — Il tabarro, a dark tale of jealousy and murder on a Paris barge, and Suor Angelica, the heartbreaking tale of a nun banished to a convent and who poisons herself in order — as she sees it — to be reunited with the young son taken away from her first by her family and then by a fatal fever.

Suor Angelica stands apart in Puccini’s output for its all-female cast. He always claimed it was his favourite of the triptych and was annoyed when it became the first to be discarded of the three. Easy though it is to see why Gianni Schicchi has remained more popular than its companion pieces, Suor Angelica breathes a very special atmosphere and showcases two great roles for singing actors — Angelica herself and her cruel-hearted aunt, the Zia Principessa. Puccini would doubtless be pleased to see Wexford putting Suor Angelica back in its own spotlight.