Il Trittico: Puccini’s Masterful Triptych

Giacomo Puccini’s penultimate opera, Il trittico (“The triptych”) premiered at the prestigious New York City’s Metropolitan Opera after the successful opening at that company of his Girl of the Golden West (1910). In between came the Franz Lehár-light somewhat operetta, La Rondine (1917) for Monte Carlo. It wasn’t a success, except for its lilting score that was filled with waltzes and champagne fizz. Revived sporadically, this bonbon is the least performed of all his mature works. But Trittico (1918) is something different in his impressive canon – Bohème, Butterfly, Tosca, and the posthumous Turandot – three one-acts, each about an hour long, yet each so different in tone and style. But there is no mistaking who wrote all three. The master’s voice, orchestration, and sublime love duets are all over it.

The work plays with the theme of death, as the opera was composed during the Great War and its sacrificial slaughter of so many young men. It can also be parsed as a riff on Dante’s epic poem Divine Comedy with its three parts that depict Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.

Il tabarro (“The cloak”) showcases Puccini in verismo mode, that dark foreboding Italianate style of melodrama which fascinated the audiences of the day. Telling of everyday life, hardscrabble and gritty, instead of stories about ancient kings and queens. This was raw for its time and for decades was the prominent money maker at the opera houses. On its way out as opera’s reigning style, Puccini revived it in this work about Michele, a poor, hardworking boatman on the Seine (bass-baritone Ryan McKinny), Giorgetta, his young nubile wife (soprano Corinne Winters, making a spectacular HGO debut), and Luigi (tenor Arturo Chacón-Cruz), a virile stevedore, her lover. The previous death of their daughter has ripped apart their marriage, leaving Michele and Giorgetta adrift in their relationship, to be replaced by a wandering eye, depression, jealousy, and ultimately murder.

Subsidiary characters sing of their ceaseless work on the river, drinking themselves into a stupor to forget, or nostalgic dreams of what might be but never will. Mezzo Jamie Barton, as “rummage lady” Frugola, has a fragrant reminiscence of having a little cottage with her husband Talpa, the wondrous bass Andrea Silvestrelli. The short aria, an aching lullaby, looks forward to Ping, Pang, and Pong, the counselors in Turandot (1924), one of whom dreams of returning to his little house of bamboo in Honan.

McKinny is a brooding force, stalwart and thick. He realizes he has lost his wife, but pines for her still. Remembering happier times past, he softly remembers how it used to be with Giorgetta, then grows despondent and impatient, then violent. His deep baritone conveys every conflict within him. Full of passion, Chacón-Cruz has ardent tenor down pat. His trumpet voice rings out like Richard Tucker of old. He fills the Brown Theater with Puccini’s radiant but treacherous high notes, hitting every one square on. He is a superb Puccini tenor. Winters is a revelation. What an addition to the roster. Her career has been mostly centered in Europe where she has sung Mimi, Jenufa, Nedda, Iphigénie, Káťa Kabanová, among other leading roles. She’s a glamorous presence on stage with a voice that’s clean and sure and full of drama. She’s a keeper.

Suor Angelica is Puccini on a high plane indeed. He said it was his favorite among all his works, and you can hear his delight in writing this transcendent piece about a rich girl who is banished by her prominent family to a nunnery after the birth of her illegitimate son. For seven years she has waited to hear any word from them, tending to her medicinal plants, praying to Mary devotedly, and keeping her secret buried within. When her cold, imperious princess aunt arrives, she demands Angelica sign over her inheritance. And, by the way, your son died years ago. Devastated by this horrid news, she mourns her lost son who never saw her. She must go to him. In a final act of desperation – or maybe abiding faith – she concocts a draft of poison from her plants and, covering the statue of Mary in the room, commits suicide.

Winters is radiant in the role, scaling all of Puccini’s spiritual passion with ease and lithe dexterity. Nothing is too much for her. She soars in anguish at never seeing her little boy and is resolute in her decision to end her life. Every passage is sung with utter conviction and beauty of phrase. Is she the next Callas?

Barton is a magnificent harpy, cold and frozen as Lake Cocytus in the Inferno. In her black peplum outfit, with glittery pin and up-swept hairdo, she has the look of a bored Park Avenue matron. She nonchalantly smokes a cigarette as she delivers her news. She could be the evil stepmother in a gothic horror, dripping attitude and bereft of any familial feeling. She’s chilling…and delicious.

In a neat note of irony, director James Robinson sets the opera in a post-World War II children’s hospital. The nuns are dressed in Marian blue, and a large blue curtain will be drawn across the hallway corridor. The palette is very Renaissance. The hospital’s public hall, full of bandaged children, forces Angelica to constantly remember her son and her sin. Her last vision, while dying, is a little boy who stares at her from outside the corridor as he puts his hand on the glass door. Is it an act of benediction? A hallucination of Angelica’s? Whatever it could be, it befits Puccini’s ethereal and dramatic score.

Gianni Schicchi is Puccini’s slice of paradise; a laugh-out-loud comedy that pays fitting homage to Verdi’s final masterpiece Falstaff. The greedy Donati clan gathers around the death bed of patriarch Buoso. They are gleeful, waiting to reap his inheritance. To make sure his death throes are final, Zita smothers him.

But, wait, where’s the will? They tear the place apart to find it, only to discover that he’s left his entire fortune to the local monastery. What will they do? Now they’re crying real tears. Zita’s nephew Rinuccio, in love with Schicchi’s daughter Lauretta, suggests Gianni, a country newcomer to Florence, will know how to fix the situation. Zita will have none of this, nor allow her nephew to marry beneath him. But Schicchi is called for and when he arrives, after many complications from the relatives, suggests a fool-proof plan.

He will impersonate Buoso and dictate a new will to the notary. He realizes he’ll end up in Hades for this transgression, but what the hell if Zita agrees to the marriage so that everyone gets a piece of the rich pie. In a sly bit of chicanery, Schicchi does indeed bequeath property to the obsequious family, but reserves the richest prize for himself. The young lovers are united, greed is OKed, and Schicchi runs them all out of his opulent new house.

Puccini races through the plot, piling comic bits about like a master silent film comedian. The music is buoyant and contains the showstopping number, Lauretta’s plea to her father to allow her to marry, “O mio babbino caro.” Winters sings this with a daughter’s guile and a lover’s heart. It’s meltingly good. McKinny makes the most of Gianni with his cigar and beat-up fedora. He’s a wise wise-ass for sure, booming his clever plot while knowing full well the dastardly intentions of the family. His Schicchi is a wonderful characterization, good hearted and suffused with devil-may-care.

Barton has a field day as battleaxe Zita, sashaying about like a Fellini cartoon, and Chacón-Cruz rises to the sonic rafters as lover Rinuccio. Even supernumerary Alessando DiBagno gets into the act as a most convincing dead guy as he’s contorted by the family as they search the bed for that will. All do their finest in the tradition of a ‘60s Italian rom-com.

In all, a total night at the opera, lovingly conducted by maestro Patrick Summers who has wanted to conduct this work for ages. It’s one of his favorite operas, and by his masterful leading of the orchestra through Puccini’s mighty paces he shows his utter devotion and admiration. Three glorious operas, gloriously delivered.

Il trittico continues at 2 p.m. Sunday, November 2; 8 p.m. Saturday, November 8; 7 p.m. Wednesday, November 12; and 7 p.m. Friday November 14 at the Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. For more information, call 713- 228-3737 or visit houstongrandopera.org. $25-$370.50.

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