APPLETON, WIS. –The Lawrence Conservatory of Music and Theatre Department are staging two of Puccini’s one-act operas, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi, at 8:00 p.m. Thursday and Friday, March 1 and 2 and at 3:00 p.m. Sunday, March 4 in Stansbury Theatre, located in the Music-Drama Center. Tickets for the opera are $10 for adults and $5 for senior citizens and students. Tickets are available beginning Monday, February 19 at the box office, located in the Music-Drama Center, or by phone at 920-832-6749. If tickets remain, they will be on sale beginning one hour before each performance at the box office.
Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi are two of the three one-act operas featured in Puccini’s Il Trittico. Written as an operatic answer to Dante’s Divine Comedy, Il Trittico features the tales of three separate lives, each headed either towards heaven, hell, or purgatory.
Suor Angelica is a tale of loss and repentance. After bearing an illegitimate child in late 17th century Italy, Angelica is sent to a convent by her family, where she stays for seven years before learning the news that her child has died. Devastated, she sings the lament, “Senza mamma” (“Without mamma”), mixes poison, and resolves to kill herself. After taking her deadly drink, Sister Angelica realizes that her suicide is a mortal sin, and therefore she will not go to heaven. As she dies, Sister Angelica prays for forgiveness, and in her last moments, has a vision of the Virgin Mary bringing her lost child to her. The Lawrence production of Suor Angelica will be sung in Italian, a first for the Lawrence Conservatory Opera, according to director Timothy X. Troy, associate professor of theatre arts. “The music in Suor is so soaring and soulful, we hope that retaining the original language will help the students have a good experience with Italian, and that the audience will get a first-hand ‘view’ of the opera,” Troy said. This production will include supertitles in English.
Gianni Schicchi’s setting is originally in Florence, Italy in 1299, however, for the Lawrence production, it is set in a 1980s New Jersey suburb of New York City. “We’ve decided to change the setting and era for this production (Gianni Schicchi). We are singing it in English and setting it in a way that we imagine the action taking place in about 1980 in a New Jersey suburb of New York City. What would happen if the Donait family were low-level mobsters, and Schicchi tricked them in order to take over their ‘action’,” muses Troy. “None of this, of course, changes the beauty and drive of Puccini’s score.”
Conducting the orchestra for the opera is David Becker, professor of music and the vocal coach is Bonnie Koestner, associate professor of music. Playing the part of Sister Angelica is Cami Bowers ’07, and playing Gianni Schicchi is Aram Monisoff ’07.
