A later transmission, on December 22, showcased the same composer's La Fanciulla del West, the only bona fide Italian spaghetti Western in the entire standard repertoire. Based on American impresario David Belasco's turn-of-the-century stage play The Girl of the Golden West, we'll soon be reviewing Giancarlo Del Monaco's production of this "horse" opera in a future post.
So which came first, The Girl or the triptych? In actuality, the 1910 gala premiere of Fanciulla brought the world famous composer, on hand for the opening night performance, heavier than usual press coverage (Puccini's first visit to America came in 1907 for the New York premiere of Madama Butterfly and a revival of Manon Lescaut). A stellar cast, headed by Emmy Destin, Enrico Caruso, and Pasquale Amato, along with some spectacular production values, wowed the Met's diamond-horseshoe set.
Despite the presence of several outstanding artists, among them Claudia Muzio, Luigi Montesanto, and Giulio Crimi in Il Tabarro ("The Cloak"), Geraldine Farrar in Suor Angelica, and Giuseppe De Luca, Crimi, and Florence Easton in Gianni Schicchi, the Trittico was far from an immediate hit. Praise for Gianni Schicchi was universal, of course, but critics were puzzled by the other two works, most misunderstanding their content and character. The association with Dante's Divine Comedy, where Schicchi is briefly mentioned, and the notion that individuals journey through phases of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, is essential to their interpretation. In reference to Il Tabarro, Toscanini himself declared: "I don't like it at all," a perceptive observation on his part - in fact, his only complete recording of a Puccini opera would be the composer's youthful La Bohème with Licia Albanese and Jan Peerce in the leads.
The sordidness of that opening piece or the sentimental quality of the second one, Suor Angelica, may have had something to do with Toscanini's harsh judgment. Certainly the famed musician could have fallen hard for Number Three, Gianni Schicchi - a work of comedic genius in the manner of Verdi's Falstaff. Nothing doing! It was left to opera companies, the changing nature of opera as a whole, and the passage of time to render a more favorable outcome for Puccini's trio of compact masterworks.
Nevertheless, I was thrilled to be hearing these three operas again, after their being absent from the Met repertoire for much too long a time.
Attend the Tale of Il TabarroThe curtain rises in silence. It's only then that we hear the prelude to Il Tabarro, a masterful depiction of the River Seine flowing languorously through the byways of Paris, here (thanks to an excellent libretto by Giuseppe Adami) given prominence as a major character. The water's ebb and flow goes in only one direction, stressing the inevitability of fate, and a life of labor and pain. The protagonists get what they can out of this harshness, and Puccini's music reflects that warped, oppressive environment. You can taste the expressionistic flavor in nearly every bar.
After his whole-tone experiment with La Fanciulla, in Il Tabarro the composer went all-out by not only channeling Debussy, but more prominently the music of the Russian school (Mussorgsky and the young Stravinsky). It's remarkable how far Puccini had progressed from the banality of La Rondine (1917), that pseudo-Viennese operetta and Traviata wannabe that prefaced Il Trittico, to this.
One of them, the rag picker La Frugola, has an odd little number early on where she shows off what her rummaging through the Paris trash heaps has turned up. It's basically a stream of consciousness narrative. With metronomic echoes of Bizet's L'Arlésienne Suite, along with similar vignettes scattered throughout the entirety of the triptych, these moments pay considerable reverence to the downtrodden (specifically, those found in Hugo's Les Misérables, or the works of Émile Zola), in a type of musical shorthand only a composer of Puccini's innate dramatic sensibility could assemble.
This musical shorthand went hand-in-hand with the prevailingly bleak atmosphere, one of inescapable despair and drudgery; of common folk grasping at fleeting moments of gratification, be they sexual (i.e., Giorgetta's wild fling with Luigi) or other forms (Tinca's alcoholism, La Frugola's obsessive compulsiveness). Events occur at such a rapid pace that audiences barely have time to catch their collective breath, so well has Puccini understood and developed the art of the short phrase. The handling of key dramatic situations, and the spaces between notes, are flawlessly interpreted all through the opera's single act, and, indeed, throughout its sister works, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi. Despite the added casting burdens placed on opera houses due to the multiple roles involved (several of which can be doubled or even tripled, I might add), the rewards are great for artists rightly in tune with their requirements.
On that note, the Met's matinee cast for Tabarro was ready and able to tackle this assignment. It included the amply endowed soprano of Amber Wagner as Giorgetta, tenor Marcelo Álvarez as Luigi, mezzo-soprano MaryAnn McCormick (in place of the formerly announced Stephanie Blythe) as La Frugola, baritone George Gagnidze as Michele, basso Maurizio Muraro as Talpa, and tenor Tony Stevenson as Tinca. The Parisian-born Bertrand de Billy (an excellent choice) presided over the worthy Met Opera Orchestra. As a matter of fact, Monsieur De Billy was a most indulgent and reliable orchestra leader. His background in French and Italian opera gave him a tremendous advantage in presenting these three works in the best light, especially Tabarro where the setting is not-so-Gay Paree.
To start things off, Marcelo Álvarez struggled with the high, punishing tessitura of his role as the tortured stevedore Luigi. One of the finest recorded examples is that of Mario Del Monaco on Decca/London, in a virile vocal display that set the standard for subsequent performers. Of course, he had the luxury of having Renata Tebaldi by his side, and both were ably guided by Lamberto Gardelli's knowledgeable baton beat. Still, Álvarez managed to mold something out of those high notes into an anguished human being. His arioso, "Hai ben ragione," was flung full force into the audience with more abandon than I've heard from him of late. Praise be! He did a better job here than in the previous season's Turandot broadcast: his Calàf was vocally bland and high-note shy throughout.
Amber Wagner's weighty Giorgetta had the requisite thrust, including a superbly held, optional high C in her brief, agitated first duet with Álvarez. There's no aria for the soprano, as such, in these intense exchanges. All the same, the two lovers offered a distinct contrast from the tensions wrought by their illicit assignation to that of the billing and cooing of Lauretta, Schicchi's twenty-something daughter, and her similarly smitten betrothed, the resourceful Rinuccio.
George Gagnidze's burly baritone - dark and tightly wound - and hulking menace made for a memorable Michele, the brooding barge owner and Luigi's boss. The abundance of chromatics in his character's music lent an air of tension to Michele's dilemma. That Gagnidze simply could not rival the acting chops of a Tito Gobbi, or the burnished bronze of Ettore Bastianini's 1953 radio broadcast, or that of Robert Merrill in the same Decca/London outing with Tebaldi and Del Monaco, need not diminish the Georgian baritone's accomplishments.
Foghorns, offstage chorus, sound effects, a bugle playing taps - all of them superbly employed as mood music - set up the magnificent closing monologue, "Nulla, silenzio" ("Nothing but silence"), the wary Michele's fatalistic rumination on who the culprit fooling around with his wife might be. This is one of Puccini's gloomiest and most forceful depictions. An earlier version of this aria, employing basically the same music, but longer and more lugubrious in nature, was rejected. It was a direct translation from the play, which would have been all wrong for the exigencies of the opera house. Fortunately, the composer insisted on a complete rewrite, which transformed the solo into the much-improved current version.
This was something that had also occurred with the first draft of Cavaradossi's third-act aria in Tosca, originally a so-called "Farewell to Life and Art," with text by Luigi Illica and subsequently replaced by the instantly memorable (and dramatically more pertinent) "E lucevan le stelle."
Luckily for listeners, Gagnidze too was transformed into a singing actor, where word-play became paramount in this multi-layered sequence, and high-powered vocalism a prerequisite. The climax of the opera is one rip-snorting coup de théatre: Michele pounces on the unsuspecting Luigi and throttles him to death. Luigi dies with the words "L'amo" ("I love her") on his lips, admitting his affair with Michele's wife. Hiding his lifeless body underneath his long cloak (ergo, the ill-omened title of the piece), the barge owner reveals its grisly contents to his disbelieving, adulterous spouse, as the curtain falls. The original stage directions called for the baritone to shove Giorgetta's face onto her dead lover's ashen visage. (Shudders!!!)
The music throbs with expectancy at this violent episode; the basses and cellos pluck away in imitation of Luigi's heartbeat, fluttering and fading to the last strains of the music. Giorgetta has her last moments of regret for betraying her husband in her choppy dialogue. She wants only to sit next to Michele, as in olden days - before their child had died - to cuddle in his cloak. Be careful what you wish for, girl! As Giorgetta dejectedly declared earlier in the drama, "How difficult it is to be happy."
A Lot of Nun-SenseFor a change of pace, Suor Angelica is a delicate filigree of a work. Modal Gregorian chanting pre-dominates in the opening sequence. Note to readers: Puccini' real-life sister Iginia was first a nun and then a Mother Superior to a small convent in Italy. She "inspired," shall we say, the title character as well as the ambient church melodies to be found in Suor Angelica (and in Tosca, too, if memory serves). Puccini learned much from tapping into his sister's experiences of daily convent life, in addition to that of a priest he befriended, although the composer himself remained a lapsed Catholic to the end.
The tragedy of Sister Angelica, then, is that of a young noblewoman who bore a child out of wedlock, now cloistered away from society in a convent. She's visited by her stern aunt, the family matriarch. Angelica asks for word of her son, only to be told in the harshest of terms that the child passed away after a brief illness. Devastated at the news, the little sister prepares a poisonous mixture from the herbs she has planted in the garden.
Drinking the fatal concoction, she realizes, to her horror, she has committed a mortal sin by attempting suicide. As she dies, Angelica (an appropriate name, to be sure) has a miraculous vision of her little boy with the Virgin Mary (in many productions, this celestial visitation is only hinted at, as it was in the Met's previous Fabrizio Melano production). It's a heartbreaking moment, guaranteed to leave audiences in tears. Only the most exceptional of artists - I'm thinking of the splendid Renata Scotto, and the equally-gifted Teresa Stratas and Gilda Cruz-Romo - can hold themselves together to pull this scene off. It takes a performer of the absolute first rank to survive such an emotional and vocal ordeal.
Latvian soprano Kristine Opolais, a welcome and frequent figure at the Met, has appeared in many a Puccini part, i.e., Manon Lescaut, Mimì, Cio-Cio-San, and Magda in La Rondine. She sang the titular Angelica with poignancy and nuance. In her broadcast performance, Opolais opened the floodgates to summon the ghosts (and artistry) of verismo singers past: Muzio, Rosa Ponselle, Magda Olivero, Victoria De Los Angeles, Tebaldi, and the aforementioned Ms. Scotto - all of whom excelled in this repertoire.
Since the opera is short, Ms. Opolais felt no compulsion to hold back for fear of running out of voice. Outside of some mild shrillness on top, she conveyed the character's strength in adversity, maintaining her composure throughout her ordeal with the formidable Zia Principessa ("Princess Aunt"), sung by mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe. It's here that Angelica matures from a young novice into an adult woman of substance. Others in the all-female cast included MaryAnn McCormick as the Monitor, Rosalie Sullivan as Sister Osmina, Maureen McKay as Sister Genovieffa, and Lindsay Ammann as the Abbess.
As mentioned above, the opera starts quietly, with hints of melodies to come. For roughly half its playing time we are presented with little character portraits from the large ensemble; each one voicing pointed commentaries or whispered asides around the routine of their convent, or the comings and goings of visitors, especially the wealthy aunt. Individual moments emerge, similar to but quite apart from those in Il Tabarro. We are not at the Seine, but in a religious community: there are no saints here either, only sinners. Leave it to Puccini who, along with Verdi, Boito, and others, had little use for organized religion EXCEPT as inspiration for their music.
The Musical Nature of CharactersOpolais' middle voice had a beauty and vibrancy that signaled a close identification with this part. Short phrases both underscored and moved the action along in snippets - that is, until the music grew deadly serious upon the arrival of Angelica's aunt, the unnamed Zia Principessa. A character that Puccini etched from real life (possibly his wife, Elvira), she is the arbiter of righteous indignation: proud, imperious, unyielding, and bereft of the most basic of human emotions toward her niece - that is, a monumental lack of compassion.
Ms. Blythe took the attitude of a performer trying to bring some level of humanity to a complicated part. In her intermission interview, Blythe expressed the view that to make the Aunt an all-out villain does the character an injustice. One has to imagine her as a flesh-and-blood individual, not a cardboard caricature, in order for audiences to relate to the situation at hand. She's a woman tasked with the responsibility of maintaining the family structure (and, let's face it, the family fortune) in the face of a difficult situation. The Aunt is there to force Angelica to sign over her share of the family inheritance to her little sister, who is about to be married (a fascinating correlation to the goings-on in Gianni Schicchi).
While it's hard for audiences to feel much sympathy for this creature, Blythe brought a heavy world-weariness to the part, along with rock-solid vocal technique and potent chest voice (never overused, mind you, but unleashed in the service to the plot). Puccini's previous writing for mezzo or contralto is sparse (for example, the maid Suzuki in Butterfly has few opportunities to shine), but in Il Trittico there are three prominent roles that the same singer can take on and add luster to.
Puccini engaged in various modernesque techniques in his never-ending quest for how to tell his story by way of his music. An example of this is Sister Genovieffa's brief arioso about her bleating lamb, vividly illustrated by thumps in the double basses and high strings. Again, a trick of the operatic trade that the composer marshaled to foster color and musical interest, from the chirping of the birds (flutes and woodwinds) to the tingling of the bells (both real and simulated).
Themes to be heard later in the opera, and more forcefully at that point, intrude on the nun's chatter; the future telescoped into the present - another way of foreshadowing events via purely musical terms. How carefully has the composer crafted his work: Puccini knew instinctively where to go with his score, as well as molding the words to fit this basic scheme. There's much to marvel in the novelty of his orchestration. His understanding of human nature, both here and in the two outer works, was built from the ground up in a lifetime spent in sorrow and disappointment. All subsequent biographers have dwelled on the inescapable fact that Puccini's own nature was one of perpetual melancholy.
The music turns solemn as we hear the Princess Aunt's sinuous, stern lines (like a serpent ready to strike) along the lower wind instruments and strings (cellos, violas) and the ubiquitous ostinato passages in the basses (see La Bohème, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly for comparison). She's not a villain in the Scarpia mold; nor, for that matter, was Michele. Here, Blythe remained unemotional in her banter with Angelica, sporting a monochromatic delivery - the Princess Aunt on her high horse. Angelica's more humane interactions contrast sharply with the Aunt's self-righteous discourse, who speaks only of "justice" and "expiation" for her niece's sin. Angelica only wants to know about her child, repeating the words "Mio figlio, figlio mio" over and over again - another ostinato figure that is reiterated in the orchestra multiple times.
From this exchange, the haughty Aunt hits her anxious niece between the eyes with a thunderbolt: "It's been two years since he passed. We did all we could." Angelica lets out a hurtful wail that goes to the heart of the issue. She has nothing to live for, and therefore signs away her inheritance. The Aunt departs, accompanied by her winding theme in the lower strings (again, monotonous and ad nauseam).
In Angelica's gorgeous aria, "Senza mamma," she voices her thoughts about her son, how he died without ever having known his mother's love. When can she see him again? According to William Berger's description of this episode, "The vocal line soars in G minor, but the muted orchestra recalls the Zia Principessa's prayer in the previous scene" (Berger, Puccini without Excuses, p. 254). Indeed, her aria begins with the same three notes that accompanied the Aunt out the door, hinting that Angelica can never fully escape her relative's long shadow. The intermezzo that follows is justly renowned as a passage of supreme repose.
Opolais returned to deliver the final scene in tightly controlled, but emotionally gripping fashion, the sorrow in her voice taking on Tebaldi's velvet in a most soothing and respectful mode. Needless to say, the soprano broke all hearts with her portrayal and was feted with a long ovation at the end. Puccini then concludes the opera in the same way that it began: with the nuns' voices (representing the angels of heaven) heard from above, and the musical forces of two pianos, organ, glockenspiel, celesta, triangle, bass drum, cymbals, etc., in the background - a psychological if not a religious manifestation of a miracle, or "the poignancy of the human need for salvation," as Berger put it.
It's a more "restrained" approach to the subject than audiences might have anticipated, and will rekindle fond memories of Cio-Cio-San's ritual suicide in Madama Butterfly, a coincidence this opera happens to share. The whole of the instrumentation dies out quietly with the subdued voices of the nuns, a hushed ending to accompany Angelica's death and the wonder of salvation through grace.
'Rich Relations May Give You Crust of Bread and Such'For Gianni Schicchi, Puccini treats audiences to a story of greedy relatives out to fleece the recently deceased Buoso Donati, a rich family member, out of his estate. They only need to find his last will and testament, that's all. But where the heck did Buoso hide it? When they eventually locate the document (thanks to the young Rinuccio), they discover that he's left his entire fortune to the church (gasp!). Undeterred by this unfortunate setback, they ponder how to rectify the situation.
[Author's Note: In our estimation - and one that has been overlooked by most writers - the plot of Gianni Schicchi is a continuation of where the Zia Principessa left off with her niece Angelica. Puccini's in-joke, then, takes the story of the Aunt, now reshaped into that of Zita, the senior female member of the Donati clan (note that "Zita, i.e., "zitta," or "shut up" in English, is close to the Italian word "Zia," or "Aunt"), and follows it to its natural conclusion: i.e., what happens to the family fortune that Angelica signed away to her little sister, Anna Viola, so that she could marry her unnamed suitor. The raucous consequences, as put forth in the farcical Schicchi, are funny and startling.]
Rinuccio suggests they summon Gianni Schicchi, a so-called "new monied man" whose cleverness and quick wit can help to recover their inheritance. Of course, Rinuccio has an ulterior motive behind this suggestion: he plans to wed Schicchi's beautiful young daughter, Lauretta, with the inheritance serving as a tidy little wedding present. The relatives balk at the mere mention of this upstart. When Schicchi enters, he hits upon a plan to impersonate the dead Buoso and take his place in bed. His idea is to trick the Lawyer and his Notary into rewriting the will in the relatives' favor (ahem, but taking the bulk of the riches for himself, lest he accuse the relatives of conspiring to cheat the state).
After the Lawyer and Notary have left, the relatives grab whatever articles aren't nailed down and exit the house with Schicchi in hot pursuit, leaving the two lovers, Lauretta and Rinuccio, alone to blissfully make their wedding plans. True to form, Schicchi has the last word on the subject: "I trust you audience members have enjoyed this little plot. If what you've seen today pleases you, then join in unison and declare me 'not guilty'."
There are some tricky time signatures and rhythm changes throughout this wonderfully paced score. Puccini's penchant for stating a theme he has every intention of re-using down the road continues in the same vein as in the other two works of Il Trittico.
One obvious illustration is found in the ubiquitous aria, "O mio babbino caro," which translates to "Oh my beloved father" (or "daddy," a more accurate rendition), the thrice-familiar theme of which is first heard in Rinuccio's "Firenze è com'un albero fiorito" ("Florence is like a flowering tree"). Soprano Kristina Mkhitaryan, as Lauretta in the Met broadcast, sang the aria brusquely, as it was originally intended, with no undue schmaltz attached or prolonged delays.
The piece comes and goes in a flash and should be delivered that way, not drawn out ad infinitum as heard in countless on-air ads and TV commercials, and especially its egregious misuse in the Merchant-Ivory production of A Room with a View (1986). Taken out of context, the air collapses of its own weight and winds up being a trial to the ears as well as a test of listeners' patience. In its proper place, and as a spontaneous plea for a father's aid, Lauretta's "O mio babbino caro" is a pleasant enough diversion (a "breather," in modern day parlance) from the actions of those money-grubbing relations.
As Rinuccio, Brazilian tenor Atalla Ayan (Christian in the Met revival of Franco Alfano's Cyrano de Bergerac) was primed for this high-lying lyric role. He even sounded like a younger version of Plácido Domingo, who took on the sly Signor Schicchi in this performance, and will be celebrating the 50 th anniversary of his debut at the Met this season. Stephanie Blythe repeated her imposing Zita, with Maurizio Muraro as Simone, Lindsay Ammann as Ciesca, Jeff Mattsey as Marco, Gabriella Reyes as Nella, Tony Stevenson as Gherardo, Patrick Carfizzi as Betto, and the other artists, all contributing to a unified ensemble. And that's what counts in any Schicchi performance.
As the star of the afternoon, Mr. Domingo proved once again that at 78 he can still deliver the goods, but barely. He sounded like his old self - that is, a tenor posing as a baritone trying to sing in the lower register. I've been critical about this for the last decade or so. I know it's one way for him to prolong his singing career, and I know he thoroughly enjoys performing on the stage. But no matter how hard he tries or how much work he puts into it, Domingo simply does not sound like a baritone. This creates an imbalance in pieces that demand a firm and rich sound, something that, at THIS stage in his vocation, the artist does not command. With a 50-year career behind him, it is long past the time for Sr. Domingo to step off the stage and allow the next generation of talents to assume their rightful position.
He came off well enough on Saturday's broadcast, though, injecting humor and humanity into this lustrous part. But again, I must stress that his voice was but a shadow of what it once was. Oh, well, I've groused about this matter long enough, so I'll let bygones be bygones. Everyone had the time of their lives, so who am I to quibble? In fact, where most baritones run aground, in the arioso "Addio, Firenze, addio cielo divino" ("Goodbye, Florence, goodbye divine sky"), Domingo excelled. Bravo to that!
Copyright © 2019 by Josmar F. Lopes
