Puccini’s “Il Trittico”: A little more letting go would have been nice

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Dhe premiere of his “Trittico” took place in New York in 1918, in the middle of the First World War. Giacomo Puccini could not be present. And yet he, who is still liked to this day by ignoramuses (unfortunately also by the legendary Salzburg mastermind Gerard Mortier) as kitschy for the little people, had here broken up the aesthetics of Italian opera more radically than anyone before or after him.

In “Il Trittico”, which is far too seldom played in its entirety to this day, he contrasted the closed concept of the work with three individual pieces that differ radically in terms of both music and content. What they have in common as a triptych is that they die three times, that the people are at the mercy of their circumstances – and that this one-act play, tragic, sentimental, funny, moves backwards in time: from the social milieu of the time of its origin among Parisian river tugs via a convent at the end of the 17th century in a Florentine bourgeois house at the end of the Middle Ages.

A younger generation of directors has now taken a liking to the subliminally rather than obviously linked threesome, which is also musically emphatic. In 2006 Katharina Wagner not only reversed the order at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, in 2008 Claus Guth in Frankfurt transferred it completely to a ship. In 2012 Damiano Michieletto located it in a container warehouse for the Theater an der Wien, in 2017 Lotte de Beer at the Bavarian State Opera in a tin-edged funnel in which the stories zoom backwards in time. At the beginning of the year, Roland Schwab had it played in monochrome light rooms in Essen, and Barrie Kosky is planning it for the Dutch National Opera.

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And the second opera premiere was “Il Trittico”, also in the varied order of comic-tragic-spiritual, now directed by Christof Loy for the first time at the Salzburg Festival. The spectacular thing about the four-hour evening was actually its impeccably unspectacular, admittedly not very Italian-sounding quality. This three-part set of individual pieces (Loy also understands them as such, they are only connected by very tame optical references in the deliberately sparse, empty, beige stage design space of Etienne Pluss), which always also play theatre, commedia in other words, is here unraveled realistically , filigree in the finest individual performances and moments connecting mosaic of diverse voices.

He is also united by the more commercial decision to have Asmik Grigorian, who came to fame in Salzburg, sing a role in each of the works. In the merry inheritance-hugging comedy “Gianni Schichi”, where a gang of greedy aristocratic relatives are kidnapped by a proletarian and whose daughter has to give up her son, she is a harsh, loud Lauretta as a late girl in cowboy boots. She claws her Rinuccio (thin-voiced: Alexey Neklyudov) as soon as the ink on the false will is dry, to make love on her deathbed.

Misha Kiria (m., Gianni Schicchi) and Ensemble in „The triptych“ by Giacomo Puccini

Misha Kiria (m., Gianni Schicchi) and Ensemble in „The triptych“ by Giacomo Puccini

Source: dpa

The Latvian with the dramatically vibrating soprano is then in the three-part tragedy “Il tabarro” with Giorgetta, the unfulfilled wife of a Seine tugboat who has lost her child. Her torn between loyalty to her emotionally cool husband (decent baritone: Roman Burdenko) and to Luigi (still a too small tenor: Joshua Guerrero), who lets her emotional fire flare up again, she translates into touchingly simple tones of soprano happiness. That is over when she finds Luigi murdered by Giorgio under the eponymous coat.

And Asmik Grigorian is great in acting, but with a harsh timbre, rarely letting the voice float on harmonic arches, like a careworn “Suor Angelica”. She was locked away in a monastery by the noble family because of her illegitimate boy. After seven years, she learns from her heartless aunt that he has been dead for two years. She poisons herself and guiltily sees Marie with the child in a vision, whose aureole of light she walks towards.

Subtle and rich in finesse

Not in Salzburg, of course, where the Catholic Ascension Day ignites musically, but Loy only shows the one who is desperate before dying, who defiantly swaps her nun’s habit for the clothes of her old existence while smoking, who blinds herself, inflicts stigmata, so to speak, and who is now a real boy , whom she can no longer see, runs into her arms.

In terms of precision engineering, this is a masterful evening – because Loy is wonderful at turning the wheels of this multi-figure work, distracting things like the circus-like dancers between pieces of furniture in “Tabarro” could also be a thing of the past. Masterfully, Franz Welser-Möst elicits a subtly reserved Puccini, full of finesse in many details, from the Vienna Philharmonic in the raised ditch. But a little more letting go, southern-sunny sound-dolce far niente, carefree temperament-saturated Italianità would have been nice for a perfect opera happiness. So it was more strictly Protestant.

Especially since the largely unknown cast, which is not very glamorous for Salzburg, meets all requirements, but does not stand out. The evil relatives could have been caricatured even sharper compared to Misha Kiria’s nice, not cunning chichi. And the lovingly displayed nuns could have looked even more distinctive with more noble names than just that of Hanna Schwarz (La Badessa).

Grigorian, Loy, Welser-Möst – well-established, popular names in Salzburg made an evening of opera worthy of a festival take off, but did not bring it to an apotheosis.

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