Menotti: The Saint of Bleecker Street.

[] Melinek, Stephen, Zeltzer, Farrugia, Howard; Richards, Bindel, Rozynko; Spoleto Festival Orchestra, Spoleto Festival Choir, Hickox. Text and translations. Chandos CHAN 9971(2)

Gian Carlo Menotti's fourth opera written for the Broadway stage, The Saint of Bleecker Street is set in the devout Catholic community found in New York's Little Italy of the 1950s. It is a Bleecker Street more akin to the soap-opera locales of Santa Barbara, Port Charles or Dallas (in reruns) than to the New York we know today. The plot involves a Catholic girl who fancies herself a religious mystic, a host of fanatic believers, a hothead brother who denies the whole thing, and a loose girlfriend to stir the pot. Even less fortunately, the climate of doubt around the current church scandals really dates the pious devotion of the Italian-American community on which Menotti's plot twists. But judging from the useful essay, by frequent OPERA NEWS contributor Joel Honig, that accompanies this recording of the 2001 Spoleto Festival production of the opera, distance, rather than compassion, may be Menotti's point.

Menotti says the opera "is about faith and doubt, and that--not little Italy--is the important thing." He continues, "I have two natures in myself. One is the believing, and the other is the doubting." He explains the opera is to be taken as an opera of ideas. Menotti creates quite distinct textures and soundscapes, which he arcs through the three-act opera to make his points. For the voices and visions of Annina, the "Saint" who sees and hears the holy ones of old and their messages, Menotti creates a lovely, rising palette of string chords, reminiscent of Puccini's Suor Angelica. For the devout chorus of the pious, there are antiphonal call-and-response structures from the Catholic liturgy to open and close the opera; for the kindly groups of neighbor women, lovely winding trios; for the hard-driving cynicism of Annina's disbelieving brother Michele, precipitously moving strings and winds on zoom mode. For the New York subway, Menotti provides a pounding percussion and piano (one of his most effective sound paintings). The aural messages are clear, and Menotti certainly exhibits oodles of technique in creating them. He knows how to double a vocal line with a wind instrument at the octave to bring it out. Vocal ensembles are crafted to highlight the words. And the several interludes that cover the curtain and scene changes provide some of the most dramatic moments in the score.

The protagonists, Annina and Michele, in their opposing views of religion, are given some impressive vocal ...