Giacomo Puccini, Il trittico (1918)

So Puccini had a cool idea: how about the musical version of a triptych, three short operas with different takes on a common theme to be performed together?  And that...is this. I saw a version from Covent Garden in 2012.

The first opera, and the most conventionally operatic (if there can be such a thing) is Il tabarro, a tragedy of infidelity and murder--two great tastes that taste great together. It takes place on a waterfront, where the head waterfront guy (that's a job title, right?), Michele, and his much younger wife Giorgetta are having a tough time of it following the death of their child. He's making a doomed effort to rekindle their love, but Giorgetta tries to escape via an affair with one of the stevedore's, and the result is...not really great for anyone involved. The thing is psychologically sharp, and Eva-Maria Westbroek is, as ever, good as Giorgetta. As Michele, Lucio Gallo is a new one on me (not sufficiently well-known internationally to have an English-language Wikipedia entry), but he's a commanding presence and a very good physical fit for the role. Irina Mishura is also charming as Frugola, one of the other longshoremen's wife. The whole is short (obviously) but potent (almost as obviously).

The obvious first thing about Suor Angelica is that it's the only opera I've ever seen or heard of with an all-female cast. Are there others? You'd think, but who knows? Of course, I've never seen an all-male cast either, but that's somehow easier to imagine.  At any rate, I think this little oddity is cool.  Well, this is also a tragedy, but of a very different sort. It takes place in a convent--a children's hospital in this production--where the nuns are basically doing nun things. Sister Angelica (Ermonela Jaho) comes from a rich family, but she's there as punishment (you wouldn't think this should be a punitively-assigned calling, but that's religion for you) for having had a child out of wedlock seven years ago, whom she has a desperate, buried desire to see again. But when her aunt (Anna Larsson, in one of the larger contralto roles you'll see in an opera) comes by about a matter of inheritance and reveals that the child had died some time ago...well, things really come to a head. According to the little introduction, this was Puccini's favorite of the three; mine too. Jaho is unbelievable in the title role, making you feel the emotion of the situation very palpably; how have I not seen her before?

So this is incredibly dumb, but I can't resist: at the end, having taken poison, as she's dying she sees a vision of her son that may be something numinous or may just be a delusion; take your pick. In this version, the vision is actually one of the children in the hospital. Now, that's not too different. I suppose it pushes the scales, maybe, in the direction of delusion, but it's really not too different. But man, there was an amazon review that was PISSED OFF, because apparently the message of the original staging is HOORAY GOD EXISTS! and that of this one is BWAHAHA GOD IS DEAD! The rigidity of some people's thinking is truly unbelievable to me.

ANYWAY...after that, we come to the comedy of the set, Gianni Schicchi. It has the feel of a farce, and it's kind of startling how contemporary it feels. Gianni Schicchi is actually a character from Dante's Inferno, in hell for having impersonated a Buoso Donati and making his will favorable to himself. This is a highly amusing extrapolation of that story: Buoso is dying and then dead, and his large, grasping family are all jockeying for favorable inheritances, with the one somewhat more sympathetic son (or something; it's hard to keep these relationships straight) wanting them to get the inheritance so they won't object to his marrying his working-class sweetheart...whose father is Schicchi himself (given his general character, I feel like he should be a low-level mafioso named "Johnny Skeeky") (Gallo again, hamming it up in a completely different kind of role), who helps the family out when it turns out Buoso has left everything to a monastery. It's not bad, and the production is appropriately chaotic, but I have to admit, I like it the least of the three. Aside from Schicchi himself, none of the characters really stand out, and there's one odd problem I've never seen in an opera before: the thing about opera is, it doesn't matter if you're coughing up blood and dying of tuberculosis; you still need to sing like an angel. But Gallo, when impersonating Buoso, effects this sort of strangled voice which is...not that pleasant to listen to, honestly. I have no idea if this was how Puccini conceived of the character, but either way, it seems like a bad choice.

I do want to give a shout-out to shortness.  The average length of an opera is, what, three hours?  And that's fine; I have no problem with it.  But there's definitely something to be said for compressing all that operatic goodness into small chunks, as here.

However...I know Puccini was a genius and I'm not, but I feel like he sort of out-smarted himself here: he was very insistent that these three should all be performed together, but I don't know: I think the first two are resonant enough that it's better to watch them singly, to give them time to sink in. Shouldnta made 'em so memorable, Giacomo! Also, the overall theme--deception, if it wasn't obvious--seems a bit strained. I'm not sure the conceit of the whole thing actually works that well, but when the material's this good, I don't suppose it matters much.