Renata Tebaldi sings "La grazia รจ discesa dal cielo"
I will always be grateful to have had the opportunity to hear and meet the "Queen of Italian opera," the great Renata Tebaldi, at one of her last performances. It was thirty-five years ago but is as vivid as though the encounter were an hour ago. As far as Puccini, his Suor Angelica performed by Tebaldi was both my introduction to opera and a profoundly spiritual experience. If Puccini was not a deeply religious man, at the very least he must have transcribed what angels gave him.
From The Catholic Herald (UK)
By Fr. Alexander Lucie-Smith
How Catholic a composer is Puccini?
This question has always troubled me, ever since, years ago, I read the standard biography of the composer, by Mosco Carner, who interprets Puccini in a Freudian key, making much of the way the libretti are to do with love, suffering and death, and finds great significance in the tragic death of the composer’s housemaid, which is supposedly what inspired the creation of the character Liu in Turandot. Puccini’s wife Elvira accused the maid, Doria Manfredi, of adultery with her husband, and the poor girl committed suicide; a post-mortem examination proved she was a virgin. Carner sees the Calaf – Turandot – Liu triangle as a dramatic representation of this domestic tragedy.
