Suor
Angelica
A short and intense operatic experience
In little under an hour, Puccini’s Suor Angelica demonstrates how music can stir our most profound emotions. The opera concerns the power of a mother’s love, and of losing that which you hold dearest.
Sister Angelica's secret
In Isabella Bywater’s new production, we are taken to a convent in the mid-1960s. The nuns there discuss their desires, but Sister Angelica claims that she has never truly desired anything. This is a lie, because every single day since she arrived at the convent seven years ago, she has longed for her son, who was taken from her. When her aunt comes to visit and informs her that the little boy died several years ago, Angelica’s world collapses.
Three short operas in one piece
The composer Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) crafted some of the world’s most performed and best-loved operas, such as Madame Butterfly, Tosca, and Turandot.
Suor Angelica was written as a part of the trilogy Il Trittico, which also includes Il Tabarro and Gianni Schicchi. This one act opera was to be a contrast to the dark and melodramatic Il Tabarro.
This short opera contains one of the most beautiful arias Puccini ever wrote for a soprano voice, «Senza mamma», in which Angelica describes the sorrow of not being there for her son when he died. Suor Angelica is also special because it was written for female voices. The piece premièred as a part of Il Trittico at the Metropolitan Opera in 1918 – just one month after the end of the First World War – and was Puccini's penultimate operatic work.