Puccini Suor Angelica

[knight66]

This is a piece I avoided for a long time. It feeds into my unease about Puccini and his manipulative ways. The premise is: the fallen daughter of a rich family joins a convent leaving her child with her family. After seven years an aunt visits to get her to sign away her family rights and the yearning mother is callously and casually told that her son died two years previously. She commits suicide and in an apotheosis sees her son as though brought back to life. A tear jerker for the soft in the head. Yuck. Well double yuck.

The opera sits in the middle of a triple bill of il Tabaro, which contains a murder and roughly three tunes, then Gianni Schicchi, in my experience a prize winningly unfunny comedy with one great tune.

So why am I bothering? I was dragged kicking and screaming to see it last year. It had atmosphere and I thought the production was good. I wondered whether I had simply missed the musical content. A new disc was issued. Andris Nelsons and he was partnering his wife. Well, I reckoned that if anyone was going to get me to appreciate this piece, Nelsons would and I had read a lot of good things about his wife, Kristine Opolais.

The playing and singing are excellent and the restraint in the first three quarters of it prepares for the dramatic denumont which Nelsons highlights. But it remains elusive for me, all atmosphere and no substance. With Puccini so famed for his melodies, what was going on here. Two brief snatches lodge in the brain, he was pre channeling Lloyd Webber.

So, there you go, I still think it is piss poor as a piece, doubt I will listen again. Back to the Butterfly's, Toscas and Turandots, Italian red meat and chianti instead of wafer-thin sliced polenta with a glass of slightly off milk.

Mike

[kishnevi]

Well, it's meant to be a tear jerker!  Story is that Puccini read the libretto to a group of nuns that included his sister,  who all cried at the end and encouraged him to set it to music.

I think in fact Puccini was trying to get off the beaten path with Trittico, which is why it's so different from the "red meat" operas.   

One trivial point in which it's different from all his other operas:  the nasty aunt is the only role Puccini specifically wrote for contralto.

Not that it's a favorite of mine.  I have one recording of it, and I don't remember anything about the cast or conductor.  Not even the label it's on! There is a recording featuring Joan Sutherland.  I haven't dared to check that one out.   But I did see a student production more than thirty years ago,  by the music department of Agnes Scott College in Atlanta (an all girls school).  Very atmospheric and intimate production,  very well sung.

Il Tabarro I've never seen, and heard only once in a Met broadcast many years ago.  I remember nothing of it. 

Gianni Schicchi  is, on the other hand, a favorite of mine.  I understand why you call it an unfunny comedy, but the very fact that it's such a black comedy attracted me to it at first--aided by the fact that my first encounter with it was a TV broadcast which featured, of all people, Zero Mostel in the title role.    But it is an opera that requires good comedy ensemble work from almost everyone on stage,  which can be hard to put off.  (And the forgery it portrays, down to the bequest of the mule,  did happen in real life--or at least is historical enough to have been mentioned by Dante, which is where Puccini found it.  The only element of the story totally original to the opera is the love story.) The only recording of it I actually have is on Naxos.

I suppose it's the diversity of content, the dissimilarity to his other operas, and the extreme situations in all three components of Trittico that make it so unpopular. 

[knight66]

Jeffrey, You make good points and it sounds like we had a similar experience with it live. I can understand it may be an attempt to do something different. Tabarro is also heavy on atmosphere, short on arias and Angelica likewise does not seem to have any aria in it that is generally extracted from the piece. The orchestrations are wonderful and the scores shimmer in their own specific ways. Schicchi may yield to a really well directed and acted production, but the performances I saw were heavy weather and I thought that the humour was of its time.

At least I have tried to get to grips with Angelica, I failed with Tabarro too.

Mike

[springrite]

I have tried multiple times and, with all three put together, the only part I can stand (and sometimes feels it is so so so overly saucy) is O Mio Babbino Caro.

[knight66]

Basically.....ditto, but it makes it a long evening to get to the jewel in that particular crown....I am going to give up on them.

Mike

[Florestan]

Mike, you might want to correct the title of the thread... I mean, Sour Angelica sounds more like Berg than Puccini. 

[Wendell_E]

It's always been my favorite of the Trittico operas, but then I'm just a big ol' sentimental fool.  When I listen/watch at home, I play Schicci first, saving the best for last!

[Fafner]

I fell in love with Suor Angelica when I was a teenager when I first heard it from a Hungarton LP recording. Yes, it is very different from other Puccini's operas, with its very slow buildup to the heart wrenching finale.

I absolutely love Renata Scotto's version of it, despite the vibrato (but I am a sucker for Scotto in just about anything.  )

http://www.youtube.com/v/nVM63R20Fhg

I recently saw a broadcast of a Glyndebourne production of Gianni Schicchi, and it was very funny. Yes, it may be hard to pull off, but when it succeeds, it is very satisfying. O mio babbino caro is a mock aria and it is my pet peeve when it's being performed verbatim, as a genuine plea (as it often happens when performed out of context - especially in galas, various talent shows etc.) - it is not "Vissi d'arte" and it should not be sung as such.

Here is another clip of Scotto singing O mio babbino caro.

http://www.youtube.com/v/tofdd1MGdaY


Tabarro is probably my least favourite of the three, with no particular reason.

[springrite]

I fell in love with Suor Angelica when I was a teenager when I first heard it from a Huntarton LP recording. Yes, it is very different from other Puccini's operas, with its very slow buildup to the heart wrenching finale.

Sylvia Sass?

[Fafner]

Sylvia Sass?

No, I think it was Ilona Tokody with Lamberto Gardelli.

[knight66]

Mike, you might want to correct the title of the thread... I mean, Sour Angelica sounds more like Berg than Puccini. 

That's really funny. Even when pointed out, I still had to look and look to realise what I had done.

Mike

[Superhorn]

   On another opera forum of which I'm a member, someone accidentally spelled the name of the opera as "Sour Angelica " !  LOL !
   That was sweet !

[Fafner]

   On another opera forum of which I'm a member, someone accidentally spelled the name of the opera as "Sour Angelica " !  LOL !
   That was sweet !

You mean like Mike here?   

[Tsaraslondon]

I actually like Il Tabarro. It is a bit short on big Puccini melody, but is wonderfully atmospheric, and when Michele is sung by Gobbi, there is at least one aria that works even when taken out of context.

I also love Scotto in the role of Angelica. In the clips I have seen of her in the role on youtube, she makes no apologies for it, pulls all the stops out and sings it for all its worth. A bit over the top perhaps, but rather than that than some of the politely dainty versions of some more modern interpreters (Barbara Frittoli for one). And, Mike, there is at least one aria in Suor Angelica that is often take out of context. I can think of any number of recorded performances of Senza mamma, amongst them Callas, Leontyne Price, Caballe, Freni, Gheorghiu and Fleming. As for complete recodings, Scotto with Maazel and De Los Angeles with Serafin are both excellent. I agree it can all be a bit saccharine sweet, (the first scene in particular) but De Los Angeles is touchingly sympathetic and a blazingly committed Scotto makes of it almost a mini psycho-drama.

As for Gianni Schicchi, the humour is somewhat nasty and black (marked contrast with Verdi's genial bonhomie in Falstaff), but it works very well in performance, and can be genuinely funny even in a recording, like for instance the first of Gobbi's two recordings, with a cast of seasoned comprimarios, none of them big names, but all experienced at pointing words.

[knight66]

You are right Senza mamma, I know it, yet somehow it washed over me in its context. Odd. It is not even an especially short aria.

Mike