Suor Angelica: Puccini's Catholic Opera

H. Wendell Howard SuorAngelica: Puccini's Catholic Opera The name Giacomo Puccini is fixed among the major names of operatic composers, an irrefutable fact. The conclusions drawn about the merits of Puccini's work, however, are not so irrefutable and are as diverse as the intellectual prejudices, presumptions , or aesthetic intentions that prompt them. According to Ethan Mordden, Puccini stood "halfway between the theatrical claptrap of the 1890s and the ultramusical epics of the 1910s and 1920s,"1 just as he stood halfway between the position of a composer to be idolized—because his work vibrates with emotional accents—and that of a composer who is maligned by other musicians because his works respond to a mood, to a transitory taste, because they are the "reaction of [a] psychological sense which has not yet been transformed into art."2 Accepting this view ofthe mid position makes one admit, for example, that Manon Lescaut is a copious and imprecisely cut opera that is not always theatrically successful but that at the same time is fresh and attractive. Furthermore, one cannot ignore the fact that some of Puccini's Logos 1:4 1998 Suor A n g e i. i c ? 95 melodies are formed from existing diverse elements by a process of synthesis or reiteration. For instance, the little madrigal in Act I of Manon is the Agnus Dei of Puccini's Mass refashioned into an amorous pastoral. The final trio repeats elements of The Barber of Seville, and Manon's passionate aria at the center ofthe act, "In quelle trine morbide" borrows freely from Tristan, just as her duet with des Grieux and the Intermezzo between Acts II and III do. At the same time, however, Puccini—who distinguished his Manon from Massenet's by saying that Massenet felt his Manon as a Frenchman, with powder and minuets, while he felt it as an Italian with desperate passion—created an aria for des Grieux at the end ofAct III that incorporates all of that passion and provides one more example of why Puccini has such remarkable staying power. And staying power he indeed has. His staying power is so evident that Rupert Hughes's Music Lovers' Encyclopedia, revised by Deems Taylor, characterizes Puccini as the composer who had such "an instinct for creating mood, pathos, and atmosphere" that his works have become "the most popular on the modern opera stage.3 This observation is made by a professional musician and critic and upheld by another professional musician and critic. On the other hand, Claire Reis, one ofthe small group who formed the charter board of directors of the NewYork City Center of Music and Drama, tells a story that illustrates this popularity as expressed by the "non-critical" public. The late Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, as Mrs. Reis notes, disliked modern music because he deemed it"noisy." He argued that the twentieth century needed melodies like those in Italian operas, and particularly like Puccini's. One day Mrs. Reis took the performers of William Grant Still's Troubled Island to City Hall to perform for the mayor and a convention of newspaper and magazine editors from across the country. After the program, which the editors received well, Mrs. Reis asked Mayor La Guardia how he liked the music. He found it very pleasant, he said, because it had a distinctly noticeable Puccini flavor.4 He could bestow no greater compliment. 96 Logos Puccini's staying power, however, is built on more than popular appeal. Puccini always insisted on a solid libretto, and where the book had kinetic flourishes, as David Belasco's Broadway source for Madama Butterfly had, Puccini often retained the theatricality of them but vivified the scenes with good music instead of stage tricks. Furthermore, he took great pains to create a consistent tone of voice. For example, the first sounding of the love theme in Madama Butterfly, only moments before Butterfly herself appears, progresses from A Flat Major to an augmented F Major and then moves in a like pattern through four whole-tone steps. This sound portrays the monomaniacal nature of Butterfly's love for Pinkerton exactly as it should be portrayed. Further support for the...