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In
just a few days, a century will have separated this season’s revival of Il
Trittico from the evening of December 14, 1918 when the Metropolitan
Opera thrilled to stage the world premiere of Puccini’s triptych, Il Tabarro,
Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi. The lionized Puccini,
the most celebrated opera composer of the time, was not in the theatre in
1918 as he had been in 1907 for the Met premieres of Manon Lescaut and Madama Butterfly and in 1910 for the world
premiere of La Fanciulla del West. His new three one-act operas were scheduled to be staged a
little more than a month after the Great War Armistice of November
11. Trans-Atlantic travel remained risky; Puccini thought it prudent to
stay home.
The
enthusiasm that preceded the gala event was short-lived when faced with the
public and critical reception of two of the short works. Il Tabarro, Puccini’s
slice of proletarian life, his sole foray into the heart of verismo (see our
post “What Is Verismo?”), was attacked for its squalid realism, for the paucity
of lyric passages, and for the perceived monotony of the river motif that
meanders through the score. Il Tabarro was heard for two
seasons and then not again at the Met until the mid-1940’s. Suor
Angelica was scorned as “over an hour of almost unrelieved female
chatter”--despite Geraldine Farrar’s
moving portrayal of the heartbroken nun, torn from her illegitimate
child and ultimately driven to suicide. She and her Sisters were banished from
the Met stage for fifty-seven years. Gianni Schicchi, a
hilarious demonstration of the composer’s farcical vein, cornered all the
praise and was immediately welcomed into the company’s repertoire. It was paired
with Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and
Montemezzi’s L’Amore dei tre re, and
more startlingly with Strauss’s Elektra and
Salome and Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle.
Puccini’s
conception of Il Trittico as a unity,
shattered at the Met after only two seasons, prevailed at last in 1975, and the
three panels have not been parted since.* The composer himself was after
opposition and sought the heightened charge resulting from the narrative and musical
contrasts that define the trio. Critics have proposed structural and thematic keys
to the “wholeness” of the triptych. Our own reading is a gloss on Puccini’s
notion of contrast. In Il Trittico we
have what amounts to a clash of genres: Il
Tabarro, a melodrama, comes up
against the tragedy of Suor Angelica which,
in turn, is reversed by the comedy of Gianni
Schicchi.
Geraldine Farrar as Suor Angelica
Florence Easton as Lauretta
Claudia Muzio and Giulio Crimi as Giorgetta and Luigi
The
depiction of the misery and hopelessness of indigent barge workers on the Seine
in Il Tabarro is punctuated by brief
outbursts of rage and passion from the lovers, Luigi and Giorgetta. But the
only true aria falls to the master of the barge, sung just before the opera’s
melodramatic climax. Michele’s “Nulla, silenzio (Nothing, silence)” elevates the
character to grandeur, so graphically portrayed by baritone Tito Gobbi. The
aria traces the devastation felt by Michele through three stages—conjecture as
to who is, in fact, the lover of his wife, Giorgetta, the imaginary capture and
murder of his rival, and finally, the descent of the two men into the depths of
the river, to the death that brings peace.
The
most extended (thirteen minutes) confrontation in Il Trittico occurs at the center of Suor Angelica. Banished to the convent for bearing an illegitimate
child, the unhappy nun has not heard from her family for seven years. Her aunt,
the Zia Principessa, comes to secure her signature on a legal document. Angelica,
desperate for news of her little boy, turns on her merciless tormentor. In this
clip, Patricia Racette is Angelica, Ewa Podles the Zia Principessa. Contralto
Podles unleashes the immense power of her`voice in this rendering of the
implacable woman.
>
Upon
learning of the death of her son, Angelica pours out her grief in “Senza mamma,
o bimbo (Without your mother, o child).” Here is the wrenching Ermolena Jaho.
Gianni Schicchi, an ensemble piece, boasts the
most familiar aria of Il Trittico. Lauretta’s
“O mio babbino caro (O, my beloved daddy)” has been, from the first night, beloved
by audiences. We are here privy to the silvery timbre and early unaffected
manner of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in a recording conducted by Herbert von
Karajan.
The
very original tenor aria, ”Firenze รจ come un albero fiorito (Florence is a
flowering tree)” evokes Florence through its monuments, its florescence of arts
and letters, and the vigor of the city’s newcomers, “la gente nova,” disdained
by the old families. Rinuccio persuades his snobbish relatives to ask for the
help of the clever Gianni Schicchi, the father of his beloved Lauretta.
Vittorio Grigolo conveys the energy of the youth, and easily scales the heights
of the tessitura.
· * The
one exception: Il Tabarro occupied
the bill with Pagliacci for an
opening night gala in 1994. Domingo was the Luigi, Pavarotti the Canio, and
Teresa Stratas did double duty as Giorgetta and Nedda.