A Swallow's Bittersweet Summer

Antonio Pappano conducts Puccini's La Rondine with the LSO

Doretta’s Dream: Carolina López Morero (Magda), Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra Picture © Mark Allan

Puccini died on 29 November 1924 after a failed operation for throat cancer - he was a lifelong smoker - and London has waited all year for a centenary tribute to the composer worthy of his name and reputation. Over the 100 years since his death, that reputation has been disputed by scholars and critics alike, but the opera-going public has always remained true, at least for the handful of works that still set the tills ringing at opera houses worldwide. In his long tenure as music director at Covent Garden (2002 - 2024), Antonio Pappano championed Puccini as none of his predecessors had done. Long before he was appointed, he made his Royal Opera debut conducting John Copley’s classic La Bohème (1990) and, once installed in Bow Street, he conducted new productions of Madama Butterfly (2003), Tosca (2006) Il trittico (2011), Manon Lescaut (2014) and Bohème (2017), as well as revivals of La fanciulla del West (2005, 2008) and Turandot (2023).

Pappano’s name is, however, indelibly linked with the Cinderella of Puccini’s mature stage works, La rondine (The Swallow), thanks to his 1996 EMI/Warner Classics recording of the opera, starring Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna. This was Pappano’s first encounter with the London Symphony Orchestra. Curiously, however, when Covent Garden mounted a new production of Puccini’s commedia lirica for the same love-couple in 2002, they did so without Pappano, and even after becoming music director there, the Puccini specialist conducted neither of the subsequent revivals (2004, 2013).