Marble City Opera’s production of ‘Suor Angelica’ has two more performances on Friday and Saturday evenings, May 31 and June 1, at 7:30 PM, in the courtyard of St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Knoxville. Tickets
Filmmakers and photographers call it the “magic hour” — that time of day just before sunset when warm light from the setting sun paints the overhead clouds with warmth, creating an ambiance of soft and muted colors that both reveals and flatters. For Marble City Opera, magic hour was also showtime for their intimate and captivating outdoor production of Giacomo Puccini’s one-act opera Suor Angelica which opened last evening in the courtyard of St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Knoxville. With the cathedral’s gray stonework, stained glass, and cloistered walkway as an appropriate backdrop to illuminate Puccini’s opera set in a convent courtyard, the production took advantage of the dramatic naturalism that comes from singers and audience being a few feet from each other. And, as if that wasn’t enough, the magic hour setting was completed by the chirping of evening birds and an ever-so-gentle breeze that whispered in the courtyard’s lush greenery. Only occasionally was the production’s dramatic spell on the audience challenged by the inevitable passing airplane or trolley, a challenge that one could easily ignore.
Directed by James Marvel, this production benefits immensely from just such an alternative staging. Marvel has given his cast of 18 women who are portraying nuns an inventive scheme of regimented and angular movement on the courtyard’s paving stones that reflect the mystery and discipline—or lack of—that the convent’s nuns accept. For the half hour before “curtain”, the nuns go about their daily tasks, either in meditative prayer or in interactions, that reveal their underlying personalities.
Puccini’s plot is not a complex one. The title character, Angelica, born to aristocracy, has been living as a nun in the convent for seven years after being shunned by her family for an affair that resulted in a son born out of wedlock. As Angelica, soprano Kathryn Frady painted her character as a woman torn between the regimentation and a less angular, more joyous existence. As a result, Frady constructed a vocal arc for Angelica that begins with an invitingly lyrical softness that reflects a oneness with nature. However, that softness cannot last. She is visited by the Princess, her grim and unforgiving aunt, who has come to get her signature on a document giving up her inheritance. As the Princess, Julie Belanger Roy created a character that seethes with power, both vocally and dramatically, and with a mixture of anger and icy reproachfulness, masterfully tinged with just a hint of pity for her niece.
Angelica, though, wants news of her son which she hasn’t seen since his birth seven years before. With only the tiniest suggestion of compassion, the Princess reveals that the boy died from an illness two years ago. Overcome with horror and loss, Frady’s Angelica moves from joy to despair. Her aria “Senza mamma” plunged deep into that despair with a breathless and jagged emotion, all the more powerful when delivered in such close quarters with gorgeous clarity.
As a dramatic vehicle, Suor Angelica’s biggest hang-up is its ending. Angelica, whose convent job is tending to the herb garden, concocts a fatal potion for herself. Then, fearing she has committed a mortal sin, beseeches the Virgin Mary for forgiveness. The Virgin answers her prayer and Angelica’s son appears to take her into heaven as she dies. In this production, the natural fading light of day was not quite enough to illuminate the Virgin’s appearance on the courtyard’s raised walkway as Puccini’s most tear-producing music from the angelic choir and instrumental ensemble rips at your heartstrings.
In other notable roles, Jacquie Brecheen brought a beautiful vocal clarity and punch, as well as a lightheartedness, to her character of Suor Genovieffa. Whitney Meyers sang La Zelatrice; Kaitlyn Householder sang the role of the Abbess; and Emily Simmons sang the The Mistress of the novices.
The 18-member instrumental ensemble of strings, winds, keyboard, and percussion, was led with a marvelous attention to Puccini romanticism and dramatic balance by Allan R. Scott, never overpowering in the surprisingly forgiving acoustics of the outdoor courtyard.
