La visita meravigliosa

It was John Ruskin who remarked that if an angel flew over Victorian England by mistake, he would be shot on sight. This bonmot provided H. G. Wells with the inspiration for his story “The Wonderful Visit” published in 1895 which was in turn adapted by Nino Rota for his opera La visita meravigliosa. Reverend Hilyer, an amateur ornithologist, shoots down a strange bird with brightly coloured feathers which turns out to be an angel. He takes the creature with its injured wing back home to the vicarage to care for it. The angel becomes progressively irritated by Victorian society which treats him with both curiosity and reservation, fascinated by his reticent manner and fine violin playing, but rejecting him as a “socialist” due to his unconventional views. Events get out of hand when he falls in love with Delia, the Reverend’s serving girl, and the tale ends in catastrophe. The angel whose wings have begun to atrophy hits Sir Gotch, a friend of the Reverend, with his riding crop and flees, believing he has killed the man. At the same time, the vicarage goes up in flames; Delia runs into the burning house to save the angel’s violin. The angel follows her into the house, regains his former powers and flies away with her, leaving behind the baffled and bemused community. Nino Rota creates a skilful blend of Late Romantic sentimentality and verismo in this work; we hear reminiscences of Wagner and Puccini and also of popular English and Italian music from around the turn of the twentieth century, the period in which the action takes place. This fusion displays the consummate skills of the film composer Rota in recreating highly authentic emotions and atmospheres of a particular era through his music.