The first time Ermonela Jaho was asked to perform the title role in Suor Angelica, it was so last-minute she had to read the score on the plane to London. Five years on, as she prepares to reprise the role at the Royal Opera House, she is enjoying the luxury of spending time on the finer details. Puccini’s one-act opera, which opens on February 25 as part of his Il Trittico, tells the story of Angelica, forced into a convent after a scandal.
In 2011, when Jaho was asked to replace the lead, she had never even heard the work in full. Despite the recent death of her mother, she took Covent Garden by storm. Today Jaho, 41, who lives in New York with her husband, said the experience was cathartic. “I told myself, ‘Maybe sometimes the most difficult times is your challenge in your life’,” she said. “I flew from New York to London and tried to read the score on the flight... every day I was learning new things, it was like therapy, a catharsis for me.”
This Suor Angelica would be “more emotional”, she said. “I am thinking and thinking to find new details, new ways to express my emotions — I can’t give them the thing I gave them five years ago.”
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