Suor Angelica / L'Enfant et les Sortilèges

Story

Suor Angelica

The action takes place in a convent near Siena. Suor Angelica was banished to a convent after bearing an illegitimate child. She has not seen her family for seven years.

The sisters emerge from the chapel, going about their daily routine. Sister Genovieffa rejoices in it being the first of three evenings in the year when the sunset light strikes the fountain, turning its water golden.

The nuns begin to discuss their own desires, but Suor Angelica claims to have none. However, the sisters gossip, knowing that Angelica’s greatest wish is to hear from her family, but are interrupted when the Infirmary Sister enters, asking Angelica to help with a herbal remedy for wasp stings. A grand coach is sighted outside and the Abbess announces the visitor, Angelica’s aunt, the princess.

Alone, the Princess explains that Angelica’s sister is to be married and that Angelica needs to sign a document renouncing her inheritance. Angelica asks after her child, but is coldly told that the boy died of a fever two years earlier. Devastated, Angelica signs the document. Her aunt leaves.

Angelica grieves that her child died without his mother by his side (‘Senza mamma’) and decides to take her own life by drinking a poison she has concocted from flowers from the convent garden. After drinking it, she realises she has committed a mortal sin, damned from being reunited with her son. She begs the Virgin Mary for forgiveness and, as she dies, a miracle produces a vision of her child, greeting her from heaven.

L’Enfant et les Sortilèges

A Child grumbles over his homework and is punished by his Mother, fed dry bread and tea without sugar. He angrily takes it out on the animals and objects around him in a temper tantrum, knocking the teapot and china cup off the table and pricking the caged squirrel with his pen nib, poking the fire, tearing up his books and vandalising the wallpaper. To his shock, his room comes alive and the objects revolt against him: the armchair and bergère celebrate being rid of him; the Grandfather Clock mourns its broken pendulum; teapot and china cup dance a foxtrot; Fire licks and darts towards him. Shepherds on the wallpaper lament their torn pastoral scene, a Princess rises from the pages of the mutilated storybook, and a little old man – Arithmetic – terrorises him. Two cats appear and the Child follows them into the garden. It is night.

The Child is happy to hear insects and frogs and the hoot of an owl, but a Tree groans, bleeding sap from the knife wound the Child inflicted earlier that day. The animals shun him and, in his despair, he calls for his Mother (‘Maman!’). In a desire for revenge, they throw themselves on the Child. During the tussle, a squirrel is injured. The Child bandages its paw and collapses. Witnessing this act of kindness, the animals are moved and carry him back to the house. A light goes on and the animals withdraw as the Child, holding out his arms, calls ‘Maman!’