“A te, Puccini.” – The title to Angela Gheorghiu’s latest release has all the ring of a bitter-sweet tribute, a melancholy love declaration right in time for the centenary of the composer’s death in 1924. The program is not your usual Puccini; instead, it is a compilation of 17 songs, including one world-premiere (“Melanconia!”), written mostly for informal purposes like moving to a different house (“Casa mia, casa mia”) or as a graduation exercise for school in Milan (“Mentia l’avviso”).
They even serve as the somewhat unpolished testing grounds for melodies which would later be recycled in full-scale operas, notably “La Bohème” (“Sole e amore”), “Gianni Schicchi” (“Canto d’anime”), and “La Rondine” (“Sogno d’or”). In short, the songs do not easily fit existing categorization. It would be quite unfair to judge them by any preconceived standards of the Lied repertoire, let alone dismiss them as quasi-operatic curiosities, if not appetizers.
Angela Gheorghiu chooses her own path, and at 58, stands to balance tonal beauty with the power of interpretation. “The Unknown Puccini” The songs were comprehensively reproduced in “The Unknown Puccini,” Michael Kaye’s landmark publication from 1987. It provided the editorial basis for Plácido Domingo’s homonymous recital on CBS Masterworks and, in 2017, for an equally delightful Naxos release with soprano Krassimira Stoyanova.
Yet neither are quite comparable to the sole.