Giorgetta – Carmen Giannattasio
Luigi – Jonathan Tetelman
Il Tinca – Ya Chung-Huang
Il Talpa – Andrew Harris
La Frugola – Annika Schlicht
Song seller – Andrei Danilov
Two lovers – Lilit Davtyan, Andrei Danilov
Sister Angelica – Mané Galoyan
La Zia Principessa – Violeta Urmana
Abbess – Lauren Decker
Sister Zelatrice – Annika Schlicht
Mistress of the Novices – Davia Bouley
Sister Genovieffa – Lilit Davtyan
Sister Osmina – Stephanie Lloyd
Sister Dolcina – Gyumi Park
Nursing Sister – Arianna Manganello
Alms Sisters – Alyson Rosales, Kristina Griep
Novice – Maria Motolygina
Lay Sisters – Julie Wyma, Margarita Greiner
Gianni Schicchi – Misha Kiria
Lauretta – Mané Galoyan
Zita – Annika Schlicht
Rinuccio – Andrei Danilov
Gherardo – Burkhard Ulrich
Nella – Karola Pavone
Betto di Signa – Michael Bachtadze
Simone – Andrew Harris
Marco – Dean Murphy
La Ciesca – Arianna Manganello
Maestro Spinelloccio – Jörg Schörner
Ser Amantio di Noclao – Markus Brück
Pinellino – Christian Simmons
Guccio – Gerard Farreras
Buoso Donati – Derrick Amantidis
Pinar Karabulut (director)
Michela Flück (designs)
Teresa Vergho (costumes)
Carsten Rüger (lighting)
Dorothea Hartmann (dramaturgy)
Children’s Chorus (director: Christian Lindhorst) of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (director: Christian Lindhorst)
Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (director: Jeremy Bines)
Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin
John Fiore (conductor)
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| IL TRITTICO von Giacomo Puccini, Premiere am 30 September 2023, Deutsche Oper Berlin, copyright: Eike Walkenhorst (Suor Angelica) |
Integral performances of Puccini’s Il trittico, first seen and heard at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1918, have seemed to gain in popularity of late. In recent years, I have seen two different productions in London (Covent Garden and Holland Park) as well as last year’s Salzburg Festival staging. The problem is largely one of cost, I suspect: to stage three operas, with decidedly different casting requirements, in a single evening does not come cheap, even if one does what one can to share resources, human and scenic. The balance will continue to shift between treating each opera as an individual work and some sense of a greater whole, and that is no bad thing. A signal virtue of Pinar Karabulut’s new Deutsche Oper staging, of which this was the first night, is that that balance and indeed the idea of the altar triptych remain central to her conception: not in a didactic or even overtly representational way, but nonetheless so as to suggest one knows the same artist and purpose are at work. In the middle stands the explicitly (anti-)Marian Suor Angelica, ‘flanked,’ as Karabulut explains in a programme interview, by ‘the dramatic tragedy Il tabarro and the grotesque comedy Gianni Schicchi’.
Dante informs proceedings too. Gianni
Schicchi has its origins in The Divine Comedy, of course, but
Karabulut and her team offer a progression that takes us from the inferno of Il
tabarro, explicitly headed with the celebrated inscription, ‘Lasciate ogne
speranza voi ch’intrate’. It is far from an unreasonable location for the tragedy
of Michele, Giorgetta, and Luigi to unfold; indeed, one might see it as approaching
self-evident. What is often given in a naturalistic, or at least highly
suggestive, Parisian setting, here becomes a more fantastic, invented world, with
at least a hint of science fiction to it, visited at one point by curious visitors
who might be from another planet. For this is certainly not an overtly Christian
or theological approach, even as we progress through purgatory to paradise;
indeed, it becomes if anything less so. Suor Angelica has, quite
deliberately, nothing of the Christian convent to it, although its scenic connections
with what has preceded and what will follow are cleverly suggested by framing elements
retained, as if we were travelling upwards within a (secularised?) theatrical cupola.
It is a futuristic society, or seems to be, albeit one with a perhaps
unfortunate air of colourised early Dr Who. This, at any rate, is the
world from which those visitors have earlier passed through another, as they
will do also in the final piece, presented as a satyr play with a vengeance. We
see suggested not only an entirely female world, but one in which patriarchy may
actually have been superseded, or at least set to one side. If so, its mixings
seem decidedly blessed—and perhaps that is the point.
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| Gianni Schicchi |
Influence of the commedia dell’arte is seen throughout, in masks, in stylisation of action, and not least in Teresa Vergho’s costumes, connecting in scarlet what she describes as ‘three veritable figures of death: Michele, the Principessa und Gianni Schicchi’. I am not sure I agree when it comes to the third figure, though it is an interesting and far from insupportable thesis. The important thing is not whether one necessarily agrees, though, but that one is led to reflect. Commedia dell’arte functions as a distancing, even alienating (pre-, yet also post-Brecht) strategy, yet proves also in its relative artificiality to provide a way in to emotional directness that avoids the sentimentality to which Puccini stagings can still fall prey. The audience certainly seemed strongly to appreciate the release offered by the final piece’s presentation, living up to Karabulut’s billing of grotesquerie. Doubtless there is a vein of puritanism in my wishing for something a little more restrained, subtle even; such matters are more related to taste than judgement, and this high degree of physicality is more a mainstay of German than English theatre.
John Fiore stepped in at short notice as
conductor, replacing an indisposed Donald Runnicles. There was no doubting,
doubly impressive in the circumstances, Fiore’s knowledge of the score and his
ability to communicate his reading of it to the excellent Orchestra of the
Deutsche Oper. At times, though – and again I think this is mostly a matter of
taste – I found the sound a little too pre-packaged: without wishing to
essentialise, this seemed a rather transatlantic understanding of Puccini,
made, as it were for the Met. (Fair enough, one might say, given that is
precisely where the operas were made for.) Surface sheen and
extraordinary dynamic range were characteristic, yet so was stereotypical ultra-broadening
for vocal climaxes—and, sadly, no attempt to evade or silence the applause
within operas this helped provoke. I missed a little more Wagnerism – doubtless
I would – though I greatly appreciated the unapologetic refusal to tone down
the shock, in context, of Puccini’s bitonal and other explorations. Petrushka
may be a little too apparent in Il tabarro, but there are many, many
worse models. And if the Seine were less apparent visually – the water we saw
was somehow both more elemental and more figurative, Stygian perhaps – we certainly heard it
loud and clear as a character of its own in the score.
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| Il tabarro: Michele (Misha Karia), Luigi (Jonathan Tetelman) |
Misha Kiria, Salzburg’s Gianni Schicchi, played
the (anti?)-hero here too, as well as Michele. His versatility and sensitivity rightly
garnered prolonged audience approbation. Likewise Mané Galoyan’s heartfelt,
properly differentiated Suor Angelica and Lauretta. Violeta Urmana’s Zia
Principessa proved a typical star turn: almost, one might say, an ‘also
starring…’ moment. Carmen Giannattasio and Jonathan Tetelman, doubtless
assisted by the production, brought undeniable sexual chemistry to their portrayal
of Giorgetta and Luigi; it was difficult to take one’s eyes and ears off them, whether
apart or together. Andrei Danilov’s Rinuccio
was similarly as ardent as one could wish for, a winning development of his
(retrospective) cameo as the Song seller in Il Tabarro. Andrew Harris’s
Simone and Annika Schlicht shone as Simone and Zita respectively. But there was
little in the way of weak vocal links—and plenty of character to even the
smallest performance. That quality was certainly shared by the Chorus and
Children’s Chorus, splendidly prepared by Jeremy Bines and Christian Lindhorst.
Whatever my doubts concerning a few aspects of detail, doubts that seemed from
the audience reaction very much a minority response, this was an evening that
spoke of the strength in depth of the Deutsche Oper as well as the enduring appeal
and enigma of Puccini’s Trittico.
