With “Suor Angelica,” Out of the Box Opera guides its audience through three different spaces within the Basilica of Saint Mary. It’s a credit to artistic director David Lefkowich for using the mood of each area to help tell the redemption story. In the 1918 one-act opera, composer Giacomo Puccini and librettist Giovacchino Forzano construct a story highlighting Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s investigation of prayer within his narrative poem “Purgatorio,” the second part of the larger work “La Commedia” (later renamed “The Divine Comedy”).
In the poem, Dante’s version of himself — the Pilgrim — encounters all sorts of sinners at various levels of purgatory who sing hymns and pray as they hope to move out of that liminal space into heaven. The opera centers around a formerly wealthy woman who now lives in a convent. In the face of tragedy and grief, Suor Angelica must face up to her past mistakes.
Through prayer she finds spiritual reclamation. Out of the Box Opera has found an apt partner in The Basilica of Saint Mary, a venue that helps accentuate the opera’s spiritual themes, while also adding to the story’s gravitas. OOTB often brings opera to nontraditional spaces.
The company has performed in places like Uppercut Boxing Gym in Northeast Minneapolis and the Pillsbury A-Mill. In 2022, it produced its version of Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata” in different spaces through the Canopy hotel in downtown Minneapolis. This production starts in t.
