The beginning of the Royal Opera’s new season has been pencilled into aficionado’s diaries for months, with one certainty: Puccini’s Il Trittico – a series of three one-act operas – will send them home happy, kicking off the season in excellent fashion.
The traditional view is that the masterpiece of the work lies in its final part. The comedic Gianni Schicchi, with the aria ‘O mio babbino caro’ is by far the best known of Il Trittico. Il Tabarro makes a slightly shaky part one, while Suor Angelica is a second part with an acquired taste. However, with new staging from Richard Jones and the mastermind of conductor Antonio Pappano, these conventional notions must surely be thrown out of the window.
This is the first Royal Opera performance of the complete trio since 1965, testament to the recently prevalent view that the work deserves to be rethought in a new production. In this case, though, the trio is added to the already popular production of Gianni Schicci, which tells a manic story of deception. The eponymous Schicci – played here by Lucio Gallo -swindles a greedy family out of their inheritance to further the cause of true love.
Here moved from Puccini’s original thirteenth century setting to the 1960s, the performance perfectly captures the joy and comedy of the opera. The cast throw themselves gleefully into the farcical scheming, and their enjoyment is infectious. Never has deception been so much fun.
For the production’s biggest surprise however, we must look towards the middle panel of Puccini’s triptych: the much-maligned Suor Angelica. It is here transformed by innovative production and a fantastic, heart-wrenching performance from Ermonela Jaho as Angelica, the young woman forced into a convent due to the perceived shame her pregnancy brought upon her noble family.
The opera’s traditional finale, a vision of the Virgin Mary and Angelica’s lost son, is usually perceived as the weakness of this piece. Here, however, a subtle shifting of the work is revelatory, bringing a believable tragedy to the story’s end.
As the first part of the evening, Il Tabarro – a story of a tragic love triangle, dark in both setting and theme – is the weakest of the set.
Despite the excellent performances of lovers Giorgetta (Anne-Maria Westbroek) and Luigi (Aleksandrs Antonenko), and Lucio Gallo as the cuckolded husband, it is overshadowed by what follows, not because of its own shortcomings but purely because of the excellence of parts two and three.
This is a fantastic set of performances offering a spectacular evening of opera: humour, murder, deception and suicide combine for an unforgettable experience.
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