UK Edition
Review
Il Trittico, Royal Opera House: 'top-flight Puccini'
Richard Jones’s terrific production makes a welcome return to Covent Garden
The Royal Opera’s season may have been very disappointing to date, but it will be given a considerable fillip by the welcome return of Richard Jones’s terrific production of Puccini’s Il Trittico. Or should I say productions?
One of Jones’s strengths here is to allow each of the three one-act operas its own distinctive character, without any attempt to squeeze them into a limiting, thematic unity. Il Tabarro is treated almost naturalistically, as a Zola-esque melodrama of low life among the barges on the Seine, while Gianni Schicchi is screwball farce painted in garish Carry On Technicolor.
The one instance of interpretative daring is the transformation of the cloistered convent of Suor Angelica into the ward of a Catholic children’s hospital: a dramatically justified gesture that heightens our sense of Angelica’s anguish at the loss of her own son, even if it removes the supernatural element in her redemption.
Jones does not ironise, satirise or deconstruct: he takes Puccini’s sadistic, sentimental, cynical world-view at face value and explores it from within, generating sensitive portrayals of a wealth of incidental characters but never muddying the clarity of the story-telling.
The simple but subtle way in which he suggests that Angelica’s suicide is the inexorable result of her skill in the preparation of medicines is only one example of his directorial genius. An interesting cast combines members of the original 2011 performances with some excellent newcomers.
Those returning include Lucio Gallo, oddly disengaged and uncomfortable as Michele in Il Tabarro but a marvellously plausible huckster of a Gianni Schicchi; and Ermonela Jaho, whose Angelica remains intensely affecting, even if her whispered “Senza mamma” borders on the self-consciously mannered.
Notable newcomers include the well-worn soprano Patricia Racette and clarion-voiced tenor Carl Tanner, thrillingly raw and vibrant as the doomed proles in Tabarro; and the fresh-faced, mint-toned Paolo Fanale and Susanna Hurrell, love’s young dream in Gianni Schicchi. In the pit, Antonio Pappano is replaced by Nicola Luisotti, whose light-touched approach was alert to the exotic and pungent harmonic twists that Puccini adds to the score like lemon zest to a cocktail.
The orchestra played for him exuberantly, if not entirely accurately. The sum of it is an operatic feast to gorge on. Plenty of seats are still available for the remaining performances, and three hours of top-flight Puccini, delivered with such relish, guarantees bang for your buck.
Until 15 March. Tickets 020 7304 4000, roh.org.uk