Gian Carlo Menotti, The Saint of Bleecker Street (1954)

Just recently, the indefatigable Gian Carlo Menotti Archive youtube channel uploaded the NBC Opera Theatre production of this, so I finally had a chance to see it.  Nice!  Can you believe that there was an NBC Opera Theatre?  I feel like back in the day, there was the sense that television ought to be providing viewers with some amount of "highbrow" culture.  It's hard to imagine such a thing today.  These days you'll only see operas on public television, and they certainly don't produce them themselves.  I know people grousing about how the world was better in THEIR day (or well before their day) generally falls prey to the golden age fallacy, but I think there might be something to this one.

Anyway!  There's a woman, Annina--she lives on Bleecker Street, amazingly enough--who's having visions and apparently suffering from stigmata.  As such, the neighborhood people have decided she's a saint and that she has healing powers, in spite of her brother Michele's disapproval of all this nonsense.  She wants to take religious orders; he doesn't want her to.  He also doesn't want her to go to this religious feast, but the mob ties him to a fence and takes her there against his will.  That's the first act.  Some months later, there's a wedding reception for Annina's friend Carmela.  Michele's secret girlfriend Desideria shows up, "secret" for reasons that aren't specified, but it's probably safe to infer that everyone thinks she's a Loose Woman and not respectable.  That's usually how that goes.  He causes a fight when he tries to bring her in, and shouts at the other guests about how they're denying their Italian heritage (?).  Desideria gets jealous and accuses Michele of being in love with his sister, so he stabs her.  As one does.  In the final act, Annina is dying.  She receives word that she's been approved to become a nun.  Michele, now on the run, shows up to try to stop her, but she does the ceremony and dies.  And that is about that.

It's definitely worth emphasizing that the quality of this recording is, predictable, REALLY dodgy, in both sound and picture, and without subtitles, there are parts that are just impossible to understand (also, it includes an announcement between acts two and three that German ambassador Heinz Krekeler will meet the press tonight, so look forward to that).  I have no idea where the GCM Archive dug it up; I'm glad they did, but hey, it's about what you'd expect.  I'm not complaining, but it seems inevitable that my judgment will be affected.  

Maybe?  Maybe not?  I don't know.  But actually, I'd say that while I basically liked the music, the real problem here is a weak libretto--and I think that would be position even if it were one hundred percent comprehensible.  This won the Pulitzer Prize, I would guess because it was dealing with, like, heavy issues of faith and such.  But does it really, in any useful way?  We really get very little idea of Annina's mindset, and there's certainly no conflict between faith and rationality, in spite of the brother's presence.  It's no Dialogues des Carmélites.  Then, the way the second act veers off into being about Italianness--that's whiplash-inducing and doesn't fit in comfortably with anything else, and don't get me started on the murder--sure, that kind of thing is SOP for operas, but it feels like Desideria was JUST introduced so she could die, and there's very little that would seem to motivate her killing.  It just feels like it was included because, well, things like this happen in operas rather than from any plot-based consideration.

I dunno.  Again, I do have to admit that had I seen a better production of this, everything might snap into focus and the libretto wouldn't even bother me.  But for now, I'd say that while I still like Menotti, on the whole this is much weaker than The Consul, and I can easily see why it's less commonly performed.