Successful Saint

When Gian-Carlo Menotti was a child, at home near Milan, he was crippled in one leg. A devout nurse took him to a shrine of the Madonna, and shortly afterwards he was cured. He still believes that his cure could have been miraculous. But at the same time, Composer Menotti also believes that he does not believe: he admits to skepticism and has left the Roman Catholic Church. This contradiction has turned up in Menotti operas before (e.g., The Medium), in the shape of dramatic conflicts between some form of faith and reason. The theme is rousingly treated in Menotti's new opera, The Saint of Bleecker Street, which last week opened on Broadway to rave reviews. It is Menotti's most ambitious opera to date, and perhaps his best.

As his own librettist, Menotti sets the scene in New York's Little Italy, and superimposes the sometimes gay, sometimes squalid American lives of its citizens on their Old World traditions. This time, the conflict between faith and reason is personified by Annina, the young and sickly "saint" who has visions of the Crucifixion and shows the holy stigmata on Good Fridays, and her rebellious brother Michele, who thinks religion is fanaticism. Annina yearns to become a nun, but Michele thinks her visions are delusions and tries to prevent her from taking the veil.

Tongue-Lashing Aria. Menotti is a master melodist and an excellent hand at concocting workable dramatic episodes. Moment by moment, he has his audience believing in his action, even if it is laden with stereotypes. Each of his five scenes works to a strong, stirring climax. Michele drives the gawking neighbors out of his cold-water flat after Annina's vision. During a religious parade, he is beaten and shackled to a steel fence in symbolic martyrdom. He stabs his mistress after she accuses him of incestuous love for Annina. In a bleak subway station, he curses Annina when she insists on taking the veil. And finally Annina becomes the bride of Christ in a chilling ritual.

For the first time, Menotti turned from small-scale, small-cast operas, such as The Consul, and created a full-scale Italian-style opera, used a large chorus and a 56-piece orchestra (he worked on it for a year, on a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation). In preparation, Menotti made two afternoon field trips to Manhattan's Mulberry Street to get the flavor of his subject. He writes with absolute conviction in an idiom that was new when Puccini was young. His strings sing with silken suavity behind tender scenes, but brasses and percussion can also rasp and grump disturbingly. Tenor David Poleri (Michele) has a tongue-lashing, show-stopping aria (". . . You are ashamed to say: 'I was Italian' "), and Soprano Gloria Lane* as his mistress has another (". . .

What does she ever do for you, except light candles for your soul?"). Virginia Copeland, steadily dramatic as Annina.

sings moving, melodious recitatives. Other standouts: some impressive liturgical choruses, a bawling jukebox sequence, and a sweet trio of Tuscan songs artfully written in an improvisatory manner.

Incorruptible Love. The Saint (already booked for Stockholm, Berlin and Milan's La Scala) has everything, in fact, except perhaps the ability to make its hearers identify themselves with its characters. It is not so much moving as effective. More important, the libretto is inconclusive: Is Author-Composer Menotti really on the side of the saint, or on the side of the murderer-skeptic ?

Menotti likes being inconclusive. What he is trying to show with his opera, he says, is simply "all the kinds of human love"--mother love, conjugal, fraternal, carnal, even incestuous love. Above all.

there is the love of God. Says Skeptic Menotti: "Whatever you believe, all men know that only the love of God is incorruptible." If the opera never quite makes up its mind as to whether faith or reason wins, Menotti thinks that is an Italian trait. "We are all rebels, and yet we wear a cross hidden under our shirts. We hate the clergy and love the church or hate the church and love God." He adds: "I offer no solutions. I am satisfied if I shock, that is, if I create strong emotion."

* Who played opposite Poleri in Carmen in Chicago in 1953. That time he lost his temper (at the conductor) and stalked off the stage just before he was to deal her the death blow.

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