Puccini’s La Rondine (the swallow) is, true to its title, a curious bird: not quite operetta and not quite grand opera, with few of the instantly excerptable set pieces of his more famous creations. The plot is a hybrid too: a cousin to La Traviata but minus its redemptive third act, and with a servant subplot redolent of Die Fledermaus.
Veering between comedy and tragedy, it culminates in one of the composer’s uneasiest endings, when the courtesan Magda is denied not just a happy ending but also the more familiar Puccinian option of a cathartic death. Determined that her own past will bring ruin to her unworldly lover Ruggero, she leaves him bereft – returning miserably to the gilded cage she has spent the entire opera striving to escape.
