Giacomo Puccini: Il trittico
Teatro Comunale di Modena, 2007
Il tabarro (The cloak) :Opera in one act
Michele - Alberto Mastromarino
Luigi - Rubens Pelizzari
Il Tinca - Alessandro Cosentino
Il Talpa - Alessandro Spina
Giorgetta - Amarilli Nizza
La Frugola - Annamaria Chiuri
A song pedlar - Roberto Carli
Two lovers - Roberto Carli, Chiara Moschini
Tenor voice - Roberto Carli
Soprano voice - Alessandra Cantin
Suor Angelica: Opera in one act
Suor Angelica - Amarilli Nizza
The princess aunt of Sister Angelica - Annamaria Chiuri
The abbess - Elisa Fortunati
The monitress - Paola Leveroni
The mistress of the novices - Katarina Nikolic
Suor Genovieffa - Paola Santucci
Suor Osmina - Alice Molinari
Suor Dolcina - Camilla Laschi
The nursing sister - Alessandra Caruccio
A novice - Alessandra Cantin
First mendicant - Paola Leggeri
Second mendicant - Margherita Pistoni
First lay-sister - Tiziana Tramonti
Second lay-sister - Beatrice Sarti
First young sister - Dan-I Kuo
Second young sister - Alice Molinari
Third young sister - Chiara Moschini
Gianni Schicchi: Opera in one act
Gianni Schicchi - Alberto Mastromarino
Lauretta - Amarilli Nizza
Zita - Annamaria Chiuri
Rinuccio - Andrea Giovannini
Gherardo - Alessandro Cosentino
Nella - Tiziana Tramonti
Gherardino - Grigorij Filippo Calcagno
Betto di Signa - Maurizio Lo Piccolo
Simone - Alessandro Spina
Marco - Mirko Quarello
La Ciesca - Katarina Nikolic
Maestro - Gianluca Ricci
Ser Amantio di Nicolai notary - Alessandro Busi
Pinellino cobbler - Romano Franci
Guccio dyer - Gianluca Monti
Coro Lirico Amadeus Teatro Communale di Modena
Orchestra della Fondazione Arturo Toscanini
Julian Reynolds, conductor
Stage Director: Cristina Pezzoli
NTSC
Sound Formats: DD 5.1
Picture Format: 16:9
Subtitles: GB, D, F, I, E
Region Code: 0
Running Time: 180min
In cooperation with the Teatro Communale in Modena and Italian Television RAI, TDK presents Il trittico (The Triptych) - Puccini’s collection of three one-act operas. With two leading Italian singers in the main roles - soprano Amarilli Nizza sings Giorgetta, Suor Angelica and Lauretta and baritone Alberto Mastromarino sings Michele and Gianni Schicchi - this new staging by Cristina Pezzoli sees all three operas performed together as the composer intended. Unfortunately, nowadays the operas, which superficially seem unrelated, are often separated with only one or two pieces of the trio performed in an evening or even paired with another one-act opera by a different composer - an arrangement that Puccini despised. This DVD presents all three as one piece of art.
The Triptych of Il tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi received its world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera on December 14, 1918. Puccini’s creation of three one-act operas during World War I was a logical consequence of a life’s opera-making that was dedicated not so much to finding the right libretto to set, but rather to finding the right feeling in a dramatic subject to call forth music. As a whole, Il trittico is well balanced. Il tabarro, the first work, is dark and brooding, full of the violence and grit associated with verismo opera. Suor Angelica, the second, was Puccini's personal favourite - nowadays, nevertheless, it is usually omitted if only two of the acts are performed. It is an uplifting tale of religious redemption. Gianni Schicchi, the third act, is the most popular, a comedic farce full of greed and conniving.
The novelists and playwrights working in the verismo style, from whom Puccini drew most inspiration - Murger, Belasco, Sardou, Ouida, Gold - were professional wordsmiths, the screenwriters of their day. They provided the psychological atmosphere Puccini needed in spades. The short time span of each opera (around an hour in length) freed him from having to sustain a full-length three-act narrative. He could devote a whole work to the preparation of just one major plot stroke - Luigi’s murder in Il Tabarro, the miracle of the Virgin Mary’s appearance in Suor Angelica, and the dictation of the false will in Gianni Schicchi.
Cristina Pezzoli, the director of Modena’s new Trittico, and her designer Giacomo Andrico, have chosen to set the work around the First World War period of its composition. “Death is the central figure in all three episodes”, said Pezzoli. “Puccini is telling us here stories about a world on the point of collapse, on the point of being annihilated for ever. The history of these years bears witness to the tragic consequences of this fundamental decadence.” Michele is a working man at the lower end of society. His crime passionelle is set parallel to the aristocratic Zia Principessa’s harsh condemnation of Angelica’s conduct, behaviour which indirectly results in two deaths, Angelica’s and her little son’s. In the third panel of the work, although the Donati family are not literally murderers, they are (Rinuccio excepted) certainly most happy that Buoso has died and they can lay hands on his money.
Andrico’s sets deliberately trap Michele’s barge (in Il Tabarro) right underneath the archway of one of the Seine bridges, accentuating the immobility and the claustrophobic atmosphere of the river. “What I’m most concerned about”, Puccini instructed Giuseppe Adami, the librettist reworking Gold’s play, “is that La Signora Senna (‘The Lady Seine’) should be the true protagonist of the drama”. A different kind of claustrophobia is invoked by the imposing and plain marble columns of the convent in Suor Angelica which glide in and out to provide many locations in one - a courtyard outside the sisters’ cells, the fountain where the midday sun makes the water golden, the harsh wooden benches for Angelica’s fatal interview with her aunt, the Princess. In Gianni Schicchi the “decadence” that Pezzoli spoke of is most apparent in the exaggerated, almost Dickensian costumes of the hypocritical Donatis as they cluster around Buoso’s raised bedchamber. Rinnucio, their most critical and self-aware family member, is, logically, dressed like a clown, i.e. one who always speaks the truth. Schicchi himself, whose wrong-side-of-the-tracks birth is sniffed at by the Donatis, is the image of the working man, the new (post-war) world that will come, even to ancient Florence.
The video recording under the direction of Loreena Kaufmann is particularly noteworthy - it makes use of all the possibilities that the medium opens up without ever eschewing the experience of a night at the opera. Be it the bohemian atmosphere of Il Tabarro tinted in brownish colours, the severe black and white of the convent in Suor Angelica or the colourful comic effects in Gianni Schicchi - the filming demonstrates a deep understanding of both the wonderful music and the excellent staging. Together with the highest quality in sound technique, this TDK DVD provides a feast for the ear and the eye.
( TDK )
