The Centenary of Giacomo Puccini’s "Il Trittico"

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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.

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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 è 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.

Arabella 2: More Angels in Vienna

Two-and-a-half years ago, in a post of April 14, 2014, we promised a continuation of  the discussion of Richard Strauss' Arabella, a promise we keep belatedly for operaphiles of all stripes and for Straussians in particular (please see Arabella 1: Angels in Vienna in our blog archive in the right-hand column).

No retrospective of Arabella, however selective, can fail to acknowledge Viorica Ursuleac and Lotte Lehmann, favorites of the composer. Bitter rivals, they each coveted the 1933 Dresden world premiere. Strauss wanted Clemens Krauss to conduct; Ursuleac, Frau Krauss, was part of the deal. Lehmann had to settle for introducing this Viennese opera to Vienna. Both singers had voices more hefty than the lyric and spinto sopranos who have taken on the role since the 1950s. Despite their heroic sound, Ursuleac and Lehmann connect deeply to the modern Arabella, a young woman who exercises her courage not on mythological mountaintops but in the habitats of 19th-century society. Ursuleac, with the first Mandryka, Alfred Jerger, and her husband-conductor, recorded the end of Act III at the time of the premiere. Through the awful sonics you can hear her resplendent top and her expressive diminuendo.

   

Also at that time, Lotte Lehmann recorded the Act I monologue, “Mein Elemer”; here she displays her uniquely passionate tone and crystalline diction.



We cannot end this post without putting in a word for the often neglected Josef Metternich. The Met was rich in great baritones in the mid-1950s: Leonard Warren, Robert Merrill, Ettore Bastianini, George London. Metternich was there as well, but for just three seasons—twenty-three performances between 1953 and 1956, predominantly in Verdi roles. Although he received generally excellent notices, he never approached the popularity of his superstar colleagues. Metternich sang Mandryka to Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’s Arabella in the album referenced in our 2014 post. In Mandryka’s semi-solo scene in Act I (Theodor Schlott sings the few lines allotted to Arabella’s father), Metternich is master of the shifting rhetoric of the piece; his splendid, bright instrument deftly navigates this difficult test of rhythm and range with propulsive energy.

 

New York never heard Metternich in Arabella, perhaps because the opera was sung in English, and not in the original German, when he was with the company. He shows off his Italianate legato in this 1953 German-language rendition of the "Prologo" of Pagliacci.

A Not-so Merry Widow

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The new production of Franz Lehár’s frothy The Merry Widow opened (how could it have been otherwise?) on the occasion of the Met’s 2014 New Year’s Eve gala. Lehár’s operetta will be broadcast next Saturday “Live in HD” on approximately 2,000 screens in sixty-seven countries, including more than 800 in the U.S. and an ever increasing number across the globe. Thousands upon thousands of spectators internationally, and the 3,800 or so in the house at Lincoln Center, will see and hear the Austro-Hungarian composer’s 1905 triumph, premiered at the much smaller Theater an der Wien, then with a capacity of 1,230 seats. Directed and choreographed by Broadway’s Susan Stroman, with sets designed by Julian Crouch and costumes by William Ivey Long, this is only the second investiture of Lehár’s popular work in the company’s more than 130-year history. 

 

Opposition to operetta at the huge Met began during the short, flamboyant, roiling regime of Heinrich Conried, general manager from 1903 to 1908, and continues to this day. Conried’s two boldest strokes were, without a doubt, the 1903 first staging of Wagner’s Parsifal outside of Bayreuth and, in 1907, the U.S. premiere of Richard Strauss’s Salome. Less provocative, although still bold, was Conried’s programming of Johann Strauss’s operetta, Die Fledermaus; the next year, he persisted with Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron). The argument against the genre in Conried’s time was two-pronged. Operettas, no matter how charming, even brilliant, had no place at the Met: their dialogue was lost in the vast reaches of the auditorium; their scores were scaled for intimate theatres. One hundred ten years later, in his review of the 2014 gala, the New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini sang the same refrain: that despite amplification, the Met is no place for spoken dialogue (“The house is a cavernous place for a genre that relies on dialogue”). In her Wall Street Journal notice, Heidi Waleson agreed (“Operetta, with its long stretches of spoken dialogue, remains an uneasy fit for this big theater and its artists, who are more comfortable projecting emotion and character through song”).

The performance we attended on January 9 bore out the judgment that the Met is inhospitable to the many yards of dialogue and to the musical canvas of The Merry Widow. The cast, for the most part, struggled in vain to put the show over. The very talented Broadway star Kelli O’Hara, in her Met debut role, was easily a match for veteran opera hands Renée Fleming and Nathan Gunn, both of whom were challenged by the modest vocal demands of the music, and for her duet partner, tenor Alek Shrader, whose voice invariably faded as he climbed into the upper register. It may well be that, thanks to the microphone and the close-up lens, the “Live in HD” audience will have the aural and visual advantage over the in-house public. As for the choreography and decor, they came to life only in a witty can-can, and in the scene change from Hanna’s garden to the interior of Maxim’s. This last deserved and received the biggest hand of the evening.

The new Merry Widow was intended as a flattering "twilight-of-career" vehicle for Fleming who has announced that she is tapering off her operatic engagements. The Met’s first Merry Widow (2000) was mounted as a farewell for beloved mezzo Frederica von Stade. But before von Stade there had been another pretender to the role of the wealthy widow from the mythical country of Pontevedro. Joan Sutherland was the first to press the Met for the part of Hanna. To her displeasure, she was denied. She got her revenge by withdrawing from the Met from 1978 to 1982. Here is “la Stupenda” as she makes her entrance in a 1979 Sydney performance.

Hanna’s haunting “Viljalied” suited the silky legato and gleaming top notes of Viennese Hilde Güden. Her many operetta recordings document that she was to the manner born.

In a 2004 Zurich production, Piotr Beczala and Ute Gfere sing the Act II Camille-Valencienne duet. Beczala shows off the timbre and style that have brought him to Met stardom.

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Erich Kunz offer an irresistible case for the sentiment and erotic power of “The Merry Widow Waltz.” This excerpt is drawn from the nearly complete recording that helped launch Angel records in 1953.

Into the Woods with Humperdinck

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On January 3, 2015, the Metropolitan Opera will bring Hänsel und Gretel to radio listeners estimated at 11 million strong. The Saturday matinees are currently broadcast on more than 300 stations in the United States, and in forty countries, from Peru to Japan, on six continents.

Not surprisingly given its instantaneous popularity, Hänsel und Gretel was the very first opera broadcast nation-wide by the Metropolitan. It aired on Christmas Day 1931, and was carried by more than 100 stations, and by short wave around the world. The announcer of the occasion, and for the next forty years, was Milton Cross. American composer Deems Taylor narrated the action over the score, to the distress of many who preferred their music without simultaneous commentary. Later, in 1947, Hänsel und Gretel, in English, was the first complete opera to be recorded from the Met stage.

Hänsel und Gretel was premiered at the Met in 1905 with its composer, Engelbert Humperdinck, in attendance. He had come to New York to oversee the first U.S. production of what would almost immediately become a beloved item of the repertoire. (Humperdinck would return in 1910 for the successful world premiere of his now rarely performed Königskinder.) First-night reviewers agreed that it “did not seem as if there could be anybody in the house to whom [Hänsel und Gretel] did not appeal as something beautiful, something delightful and enjoyable” (Times). Contemporary critics, germanophile in the main, were predisposed to Hänsel’s Wagnerian sonorities. They were undoubtedly reminded of the “Ride of the Valkyries” by the “Witch’s Ride” and of Siegfried’s Forest Bird scene by the children’s imitation of the song of the birds. They knew, of course, that Humperdinck had been Wagner’s assistant during the preparation of Parsifal and had served as music tutor to Wagner’s son, Siegfried.

Paradoxically, it was the broad attraction of Humperdinck’s opera that opened the door to its devaluation. Decades ago, the piece was relegated to holiday fare—a light, easily digestible Christmas presentation intended primarily for young audiences, and at the Met, now offered at reduced prices in English translation. It shares this niche (although at normal ticket pricing and sometimes in the original German) with Johann Strauss’s operetta, Die Fledermaus, regularly called upon to ring in the new year. Hänsel’s déclassement would have dismayed those who, at its birth in 1893, hailed this Marschenoper (Fairy-tale opera) as a masterpiece. The most advanced composers in Europe took it on. Richard Strauss, in the pit at its premiere, and Gustav Mahler, who conducted it only months later, had had a marked influence on Humperdinck’s sophisticated amalgam of traditional folk songs and avant-garde practice.

Since the 1940s, the opera’s title roles have often been filled from the second-rank Met roster. But from time to time, stars too have rendered Humperdinck’s melodies and impersonated his children: mezzos Risë Stevens, Tatiana Troyanos, Frederica von Stade in the trouser role of Hänsel, and sopranos Teresa Stratas, Judith Blegen, Dawn Upshaw as Gretel. On records, the rich score has been led by such titanic conductors as Herbert von Karajan and Georg Solti.

The opera opens with Hänsel and Gretel at play at home. They sing the children's song, "Suse, liebe Suse (Suzy, dear  Suzy)," delivered with touching simplicity by Anneliese Rothenberger and Irmgard Seefried in a 1964 recording, with André Cluytens conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. Here is the translation of the text provided in a Met libretto published during the regime of general manager Giulio Gatti-Casazza, 1908-1935.

GRETEL: Susy, little Susy, pray what is the news?

The cheese are running barefoot, because

they've no shoes !

The cobbler has leather, and plenty to spare,

why can't he make the poor goose a new pair?

HANSEL: Then they'll have to go barefoot !

Eia-popeia, pray what's to be done ?

Who'll give me milk and sugar, for bread I have none ?

I'll go back to bed and I'll lie there all day; where there's nought to eat, then there's

nothing to pay !

GRETEL: Then we'll have to go hungry !

HANSEL: If mother would only come home again !

Yes, I am so hungry, I don't know what to do !

For weaks I've eaten nought but bread. It's very hard, it is indeed !

GRETEL: Hush, Hansel, don't forget what father said, when mother, too, wished she were dead:

" When past bearing is our grief, Then 'tis Heaven will send relief ! "

HANSEL: Yes, yes, that sounds all very fine, but you know off maxims we cannot dine!

O Gret, it would be such a treat if we had something nice to eat!

Eggs and butter and suet paste, I've almost forgotten how they taste.

(Nearly crying.)

O Gretel, I wish

GRETEL: Hush, don't give way to grumps ; have patience awhile, no doleful dumps!

This woful face, whew ! what a sight ! Looks like a horrid old crosspatch fright !

Crosspatch, away ! Leave me, I pray ! Just let me reach you, quickly I'll teach you how to make trouble,

soon mount to double! Crosspatch, crosspatch, what is the use, growling and grumbling, full of abuse?

Off with you, out with you, shame on you, goose!

HANSEL: Crosspatch, away! Hard lines, I say.

HANSEL: When I am hungry, surely I can say so, cannot allay so, can't chase away so!

GRETEL: If I am hungry, I'll never say so, will not give way so, chase it away so !

GRETEL: That's right. Now, if you leave off complaining, I'll tell you a most delightful secret!

The most ravishing moment of the score comes at the end of Act II. The Sandman puts the children to sleep, but not before they pray that fourteen angels watch over them through the night. In this 1954 recording, Karajan lingers affectionately over the music, giving the Sandman, Anny Felbermayer, the Gretel, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and the Hänsel, Elisabeth Grümmer, the time to do full justice to their ecstatic lines.