Guildhall Symphony Orchestra & Chorus

I. Kyrie

II. Glora

III. Credo

IV. Sanctus – Benedictus

V. Agnus Dei

45 minutes

Harry Jacques tenor

Jan-Magnar Gard baritone

Redmond Sanders baritone

We know and love Puccini today almost exclusively for his dramatic, melody-laced operas – milestones of the genre – and their embrace of the verismo style that aimed for a new level of gritty realism, as in La bohème and Tosca. But early signs were that young Giacomo would follow in his family’s long line of church musicians: his father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him had held the maestro di cappella position at the San Martino cathedral in the city of Lucca, and all of them composed for the church. But it was after walking more than 12 miles to Pisa to hear Verdi’s Aida as a 17-year-old that Puccini became transfixed by opera. “I felt as if a musical window had opened up to me,” he wrote. At the time he wrote his Messa di Gloria in 1880, however, his own illustrious contribution to the genre still lay firmly in the future.

Following its first performance in 1880 the Messa lay unperformed. It was published only in 1952, nearly 30 years after Puccini’s death, and its first commercial recording came nearly 25 years after that. On its publication the Mass acquired the misleading title ‘Messa di Gloria’ – implying a setting of only the Kyrie and Gloria of the Mass (as was the case with Rossini’s Messa di Gloria of 1820), whereas Puccini’s is a full setting that also includes the Credo, Sanctus and Benedictus, and Agnus Dei.

Puccini’s Messa is more modest in orchestral forces and in scale than Verdi’s Requiem, first performed six years earlier, but it is similarly characterised by an operatic style, and it also shares its predecessor’s dramatic choral outbursts, lyrical solo vocal lines and a symphonic treatment of the orchestra that releases it from its relatively unambitious role in a sacred context. The Messa di Gloria could warrant the same criticism that conductor Hans von Bülow levelled at Verdi’s Requiem: that it was “an opera in ecclesiastical garb”.

The brief Kyrie is mostly infused with sweetness but intensifies in mood for ‘Christe eleison’. The Gloria (the Messa’s longest movement) is itself split into several independent movements, which present a variety of moods and treatments: from the jolly choral opening ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ and the quietly solemn ‘Et in terra pax’ to a climactic ‘Laudamus te’. The tenor arrives with ‘Gratias agimus tibi’ and at the end (‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’) comes a grand choral fugue – a section so extravagant one commentator described it as “a grand fugue with moustaches” (i.e. “with bells on”).

Puccini’s Credo – like the Gloria, in several sections – was written separately in 1878 to honour San Paolino, the patron saint of Lucca. Its affirmation of faith lends a seriousness of purpose. The tenor returns to convey the mystery of Jesus’s birth by the Virgin Mary (‘Et incarnatus est’). Lower voices reference the crucifixion, while the full choir dramatically handles the resurrection and the optimism of “the life of the world to come”.

After the choral Sanctus, the baritone takes over in the Benedictus. Tenor and baritone appear together in the Agnus Dei, the music of which Puccini later borrowed in Act 2 of his opera Manon Lescaut. Proof if any were needed that here was a work not only of the church but also of the theatrical stage.

Programme notes © Edward Bhesania