Perhaps the single greatest cinematic scene depicting the power of opera is in Philadelphia: Tom Hanks, as a dying AIDS patient, dramatically shares a recording of Maria Callas singing “La mamma morta” (Mother is dead) from Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, an opera set during the turmoil of the French Revolution. Patient and heroine triumph even as they face death:
It was in that grief
That love came to me!
A voice full of harmony and it says:
You have to live! I am life itself!
Your heaven is in my eyes
You’re not alone!
I’ll collect all your tears!
I’ll walk with you and support you!
Smile and hope! I am love!
When the David McVicar production of Andrea Chénier opens the San Francisco Opera’s season on Friday, September 9, the opera will feature several principals making their debut at the War Memorial, including Anna Pirozzi as Maddalena di Coigny. The Italian soprano is enjoying a skyrocketing career, and this will be not just her San Francisco debut, but also her first-ever American performance. Pirozzi told the Classical Voice that she idolizes Callas, and she talked about that particular scene in Philadelphia in relation to her upcoming performance:
Philadelphia is a film I have seen many times, and this scene is so moving. I have just seen it again, and was deeply affected like the first time. Tom Hanks’ explanation of the aria, his bursting into tears adds to the almost unbearable intensity of the scene.
Callas is my idol, my reference point. I listen to her when I prepare all my roles, and I particularly adore her interpretation of “La mamma morta.” I will sing this aria with my own voice, but her interpretation will always linger in my thoughts, and I hope I can move the audience especially with the text. In this aria, the text is the emotional part, and the music does the rest.
A native of Naples, Pirozzi studied at the Istituto Musicale Pareggiato in Aosta and at the Turin Conservatory. Before turning to opera at 25, she sang pop, and her favorites were Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston. In an interview with Gramilano, Pirozzi said she considers her greatest achievement the interpretation of Abigaille in Nabucco. What she treasures the most? “My daughter and my voice.”
Acclaimed since her Salzburg Festival debut as Abigaille — under the direction of Riccardo Muti — Pirozzi has appeared in many dramatic-soprano roles, first in major Italian opera houses, more recently around Europe, and even in Asia and the Middle East. She has sung leading roles in Beijing, Tel Aviv, Leipzig, Stuttgart, and elsewhere. During the 2015–2016 season alone, Pirozzi made house debuts at Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Bavarian State Opera Munich, Rome Opera House, Las Palmas, Menorca, and Piacenza.
Pirozzi has upcoming role debuts as Adriana Lecouvreur at Teatro di San Carlo in her hometown, as La Wally at the Teatro Municipale of Piacenza, Elena in I vespri siciliani at the Palau de les Arts, Lady Macbeth at the Teatro Regio of Turin, and Chénier’s Maddalena at Bilbao’s ABAO (Asociacion Bilbaina de Amigos de la Opera), where she is also scheduled for her debut in the title role of Norma.
Her San Francisco debut as Maddalena follows a concert performance in Germany and the Naples staged-production debut. Pirozzi says she “immediately took a strong liking to the score and to my role, which has now become the one that gives me the most pleasure to perform. It is a role that lies on a central tessitura, and therefore it requires a quite substantial and full-bodied middle register ... It calls for extraordinary interpretative skills and a musical fraseggio [phrasing].”
Pirozzi says of her U.S. debut with the San Francisco Opera, “almost everything and everyone is new for me here.” She does know conductor Nicola Luisotti well because they worked together in Il trovatore in Naples and in Nabucco in Valencia. But she had never worked with stage director David McVicar, set designer Robert Jones, or with Jenny Tiramani, who designed the spectacular costumes. Jones and Tiramani are making house debuts at the S.F. Opera along with Pirozzi.
Other principals making their debuts include tenor Yonghoon Lee (from South Korea via the Metropolitan Opera and Covent Garden) in the title role; Met regular George Gagnidze, a Georgian baritone who appears as Gérard, the servant who becomes Robespierre’s lieutenant during the Reign of Terror; and young mezzo sensation J’Nai Bridges as Bersi.
Pirozzi’s first impressions of San Francisco are all positive: “Everything here is extremely well organized and everyone always ready and willing to help you in any way they can. I can’t think of a better environment for a stress-free rehearsal time.”
Just before the season opens, the phalanx of S.F. Opera’s administrators, artists, choristers, orchestra musicians, stagehands, and techs may not share the soprano’s observation about stress-free rehearsals, but they are all giving their best anyway, working toward the moment when the curtain first goes up on Sept. 9, and then night after night until San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker takes over in the War Memorial in December.