A miraculous Puccini cornucopia at the Met
“Buy one, get one free”! “BOGOF” – a marketing strategy now condemned by the environmentally overwrought – is a compelling sales gimmick, for soapsuds, socks (a bit complicated as you actually get 4), even opera.
So, when the Met went further and announced the staging of Puccini’s “Il Trittico” triple bill – “Buy one, get TWO free” – “BOGTF” (I know, it won’t catch on, never win acronym of the year) I was up for it. Love a bargain.
This late, seldom performed, Puccini cornucopia comprises three one act operas at a single sitting: “Il Tabarro”, sleazy action on a barge on the Seine in Paris in 1910; “Suor Angelica”, prejudice and prurience in a convent near Siena in the late 17th century; and “Gianni Schicchi”, greed and farce set in the home of a rich Florentine merchant in 1299. This production placed it in 1959.
The common theme to tie this gaggle together, we were told in the blurb, is “concealed death”. Just the thing to counter the way-too early Christmas “Ho! Ho! Ho!” celebrations and glitter of post Thanksgiving Manhattan.
Actually, there is no common theme. The “concealed death” thing is a bit of ex post facto rationalising, to justify a pot pourri of three very different cameo plots. We’ll come back to the thematic structure later.
I had the pleasure of listening to a pre-talk given by Joseph Colaneri, one of the Met’s regular conductors, who is also based in the Juilliard School and Music Director at the Glimmerglass opera festival in upstate New York. Guess who bagged an invitation for next year?
He’s a Puccini walking Wikipedia – and then some. I ear-wigged the poor guy at dinner afterwards. He is convinced the triptych is drawn from the three states in Dante’s “Inferno” – Hell, Backstop – oops! I mean Purgatory – and Heaven. Others think the linking theme is concealed death.
Maestro Colaneri pointed out that “Scicchi” is actually a character from Dante’s “Heaven” – mentioned only once, a reformed criminal type. Puccini seems to have stumbled across him, picked out this jewel of a character, built an operatic plot around him – and so it goes on. The character “Scicchi” actually mentions Dante in the final line of the final scene – once! So, one-nil for Maestro Colaneri, I think.
It’s not surprising that since its debut at the Met on December 14th 1918 “Il Trittico” – an eyelid-drooping 3 hours 46 minutes run time – has been chopped up by directors; sometimes into two, presumably “Il Dittico”, and even stand alone performances of each, “Il …..er …… Singulo?” The fact is, that they can stand alone perfectly well, so why not?
Puccini got a dose of the vapours when they were performed separately, but never did much about it. He saw them as a single oeuvre, but bowed to commercial reality.
The composer was absent on opening night in 1918, as he couldn’t secure a berth to Manhattan on a transatlantic liner – all crammed with US servicemen returning from post war Europe, so the story goes. But, more likely because he was frit of mines which still abounded – a huge disappointment to him.
He reveled in Manhattan on his previous visit in 1910 to produce and launch “La Fanciulla del West”, the first true “cross-over” opera (crossing the Atlantic, that is) re-telling the story of ”The Girl of the Golden West”, by American playwright David Belasco, in Italian operatic form. I think it’s a rubbish plot – but with good narrative music. I concede that’s a rather eccentric view and everyone else loves it. That “Fanciulla” fell rapidly from favour is my witness!
As usual, the Met was restless even then, on the move and on the make. Puccini, composer, Toscanini, musical director, Caruso principal tenor, an upstart American company biffing European houses firmly on the nose as they raided their talent boxes and bagged a Puccini “first”.
The great man was holed up in the Knickerbocker Hotel on 42nd Street (still there) in a four-roomed, two-bath-roomed suite and apparently spent rehearsal time in the back row of the opera house, soft felt hat tipped over his eyes. Can that be true? I do hope so – very “Little Italy”.
Maestro Colaneri positively spewed anecdotes about Puccini’s time in New York. There is still a recording of Puccini giving a speech to crowds as he left in 1910 – probably from Pier 14 – which you can easily Google. It’s thought to be the only recording of his voice extant. He was besotted with motorcars and could not be stopped from belting up and down (not one-way then) Fifth Avenue. He built up quite a private collection.
Another Puccini first was just the thing to set the Met’s extensive PR machine boiling over, but it can’t have been an easy sell. “Il Trittico” seems a cobbled together concept – and if an American theme for “Fanciulla” was such a stunning wheeze in 1910, why are we suddenly back in France and Italy in 1918?
That PR machine is still milking it with this centennial celebration. It features Plácido Domingo, deploying his increasingly familiar baritone in the title role of “Gianni Schicchi”. It’s a totally irrelevant, but sobering, factual gobbet that Domingo has been performing onstage for half of the opera’s hundred-year lifespan.
To the plots – slashed précis version: “Il Tabarro” (“The Cloak”) is set on the Seine in Paris. This is Dante’s Hell – oppressive working conditions, violence and matrimonial cruelty. Giorgetta (Amber Wagner), wife of barge owner Michele (George Gagnidze), has fallen out of love with him and got entangled with a bargee – Luigi (Marcello Álvarez).
The plot, involving assignations and the usual shenanigans associated with adulterous relationships, drives towards a fatal mistake, made when, at night, Luigi thinks Michele’s lit match – he is lighting his pipe – is the prearranged signal from Giorgetta that the coast is clear and hanky-panky is safe. It isn’t.
Michele, who has been becoming increasing suspicious of his frigid wife’s growing alienation, an agitated state cleverly notched up as the action progresses, confronts Luigi, strangles him and hides the body under his cloak. When his wife comes on deck to see what’s going on she suggests a possible reconciliation only to be invited under the cloak – where she finds Luigi. Strike a light!
“Suor Angelica” – “Sister Angelica” is Dante’s Purgatory and unfolds in a convent. Angelica (Kristine Opolais) is from a rich family and has been put away because seven years before she gave birth to an illegitimate child and has been trying to atone for her sins ever since. She eventually learns from a frosty aunt who has visited her to divide the family estate following her sister’s death, that her son – for whom she has yearned – actually died years before.
Devastated, she decides to join him in heaven and drinks a potion of poisonous herbs nurtured in her kitchen garden (premeditation?) but on the point of death realises – sharp as a tack this nun – that suicide is a mortal sin and begs the Virgin Mary to forgive her.
There is a miracle – one of the most moving I have ever seen staged. The Virgin Mary appears as an illuminated statue, amidst much smoke; Angelica’s son, dressed in angelic white, emerges through the mist, arms outstretched, a heavenly light beams down on Angelica and she is forgiven!!! It sounds corny, but the audience was stunned into silence.
Soprano, Ms. Opolais was outstanding – on stage throughout and filling every utterance with tender pathos. At curtain call she received the enthusiastic ovation she richly deserved.
“Gianni Schicchi” (The principal character’s name, pronounced “Skikki”) is bedlam with a moral tale. The rich merchant, Buoso Donati (played by a corpse, no curtain call needed) has died. His family fears his extensive estate is to go to a monastery of greedy monks who will eat it away. There is even a neat percussion effect of their palates clacking!
When they find his will they discover …… it’s true! Cue comedic weeping and wailing. What to do? Call on the country bumpkin rough diamond new to Florence, Schicchi, (Placido Domingo), who, being aristos, they look down on, to help them out. Schicchi’s daughter, Loretta (Kristina Mkhitaryan) is in love with Rinuccio Donati (Atalla Ayan) who needs an inheritance to marry her.
The devious Schicchi suggests he should impersonate the dead Buoso and have an attorney prepare another will at his dictation. Of course, he leaves the plums in the estate to himself and keeps reminding the family that if they welch on him they will all have their hands chopped off and be sent into exile for will forgery. They remain furiously silent.
The comic action is perfectly timed, but amidst the laugh a minute there are some ambiguous moral messages, For starters, the plot works.
Placido Domingo is famed for his tenor (now baritone) voice, but he would have had a decent career in stand up. His dictation of the new will from Buoso’s deathbed was a masterpiece, as he wound up the family in a crescendo of self-serving legacies. They seemed mostly concerned about who was going to get the mule – “the best mule in Tuscany”.
The score, well directed by Bertrand de Billy, is wonderful throughout, very “late Puccini”. The flowing, uninterrupted form pioneered in “Fanciulla” is uninterrupted by free standing arias, with one exception.
Musically, “Gianno Schichi” is the standout. Maestro Colaneri sees it as Puccini’s musical epitaph. He walks us through the styles of Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi and not least himself, then arches across into Richard Strauss. He is taking us on a journey through the 19th century and on to the 20th as he reaches the end of his career.
Of course, the main reason that “Gianni Schicchi” is performed most of all – often on its own – is that it has the glorious aria, “O mio Babbino Caro”, at it’s heart.
This was the last complete opera Puccini wrote. What a sign-off.