Il Trittico in HD

Conductor...............Joseph Colaneri
Production..............Jack O'Brien

For me Il Trittico is virtually a new opera. If my memory serves, I have seen only Gianni Schicchi in the opera house, though I have videos of Il Tabarro with Domingo and Gianni Schicchi with Florez. (I've written about this before here.) This is my first time for Suor Angelica.


Obviously, I have been today to see the simulcast from the Metropolitan Opera of Puccini's Il Trittico, this time in Dayton Ohio, my fourth city. We were told in the intermission that this is the Met's most complicated production. The second most complicated is the current Turandot. There was a lot of hammering in the intermissions. The opera gets gigantic sets in the naturalistic style. We are at the Met, you know.

This opera is also known as the Stephanie Blythe show. In Il Tabarro she was Frugola who brings Giorgetta small items to please her. In Suor Angelica she played La Principessa, magnificently. My feeling was that whether or not Suor Angelica is a functioning, moving, tragic opera depends completely on how this character is played. She had a fabulous aura of the dominating, unforgiving aunt, the person who never forgives. Suor Angelica sends her to hell without an apparent afterthought. She tells Angelica that her son died two years ago, the only news she cares to hear. La Principessa is utterly pitiless. Stephanie Blythe's third part is Zita, Ranuccio's mother in Gianni Schicchi.

There is great wisdom in the current Peter Gelb administration. Making opera work dramatically is the best thing that can possibly happen to it. Second is transmitting it to movie theaters so we can spare the overwhelming expense of attending opera. Now that I have become a person on a fixed income, I appreciate these things a lot more.

Il Tabarro
Giorgetta...............Maria Guleghina
Luigi...................Salvatore Licitra
Michele.................Juan Pons
Frugola.................Stephanie Blythe
Talpa...................Paul Plishka

I liked very much the casting of Il Tabarro. Maria Guleghina as Giorgetta, the straying wife, Juan Pons as Michele, her husband, and Salvatore Licitra as Luigi, her boyfriend, felt like a cast that very much blended with one another. Licitra sang well and did a great dead guy, holding his eyes open for a really long time. I worry about him. I feel he doesn't support well enough and often oversings. Yes, I know that's the same thing. Juan Pons is always marvelous.

Suor Angelica 
Angelica................Barbara Frittoli
Princess................Stephanie Blythe
Genovieffa..............Heidi Grant Murphy
Osmina..................Sara Wiedt
Dolcina.................Jennifer Check
Monitor.................Wendy White
Abbess..................Patricia Risley
Head Mistress...........Barbara Dever
Nurse...................Maria Zifchak
Lay Sister..............Lisette Oropesa

James Levine was interviewed in the intermission and commented on the popularity here of Suor Angelica, an opera with a terrible reputation. I would guess that it would work or it wouldn't. Here it worked. The music is beautiful, and Barbara Frittoli as Angelica was intense and believable. There was a very pretty deus ex machina at the end where a small boy, her son we will suppose, appears to her representing forgiveness by the Virgin. She realizes too late that by killing herself she has committed a mortal sin and will not get to see her son in heaven.

Gianni Schicchi 
Gianni Schicchi.........Alessandro Corbelli
Lauretta................Olga Mykytenko
Rinuccio................Massimo Giordano
Nella...................Jennifer Check
Ciesca..................Patricia Risley
Zita....................Stephanie Blythe

The three operas are easily called Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. Alessandro Corbelli played Schicchi very athletically for a dying man. It was terse and amusing. At the end the two lovers appeared in a garden overlooking Florence, and we were treated to the view from Piazzale Michaelangelo. Wonderful.

 [See Kinderkuchen History 1890-1910]