Triumphant Trittico
At this moment there is no better theater in New York than the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Puccini's “Il Trittico,” directed by Jack O'Brien and conducted by James Levine. To begin with, “Il Trittico” (The Triptych) is a grand panorama, far more ambitious than the puny scale of most contemporary drama. It is three separate stories. O'Brien has had the wisdom to stage them as such, rather than find some “concept” to tie them together. The first, “Il Tabarro” (The Cloak) is gritty realism, the quintessence of the verismo style that dominated Italian opera at the end of the 19th century. It concerns a middle-aged working class couple whose marriage has foundered. The wife has taken a lover. Their intended assignation on her husband's barge ends in tragedy. Puccini set the melancholy story in a style that alternates between the lush romanticism for which he is best known and an harshness that suggests paths he might have pursued had he not become ill a few yers later. Levine, who conducted this season's opener, “Madama Butterfly,” as if he weren't all that interested in Puccini, handles this score in a revelatory way, with the attention to detail that he uses to make difficult contemporary scores accessible and moving. O'Brien and his set designer, Douglas Schmidt, have set “Tabarro” in 1927 in a particularly bleak inlet of the Seine dominated by an industrial bridge, lit somberly by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer. At the opening Friday night Juan Pons, who was supposed to have played the jealous barge-owner, was ill. He was replaced by
Frederick Burchenal, who has a smooth, pleasing bass voice and good dramatic sense. He will doubtless grow into the role but he handled it with great force. Maria Guleghina's vibrant soprano gave the faithless Giorgetta an emotional edge. As her lover, Salvatore Licitra was in excellent form. O'Brien staged the climactic violence with his customary skill and imagination. “Suor Angelica,” the second opera, is a kind of religious allegory, even though the title character, an aristocrat who entered a convent after giving birth to an illegitimate child, grounds its religious concerns in a very worldly being. Unlike “Tabarro,” where Schmidt's set conveyed the steely quality of the workaday world, his design here evokes a world out of time. The final moments – in which the theological notion of the Son intervening with the Father is given earthly meaning – are extraordinary, again with Fisher and Eisenhauer's transcendent use of light accentuating the austere beauty of the music. Stephanie Blythe, who played an earthy woman in “Tabarro,” here plays Angelica's cold, judgmental aunt. Blythe's golden rainbow of a voice brings a humanity to the character not evident in her steely behavior toward her unfortunate niece. In the title role Barbara Frittoli is simply shattering, meeting the role's equally rigorous technical and emotional demands with unending reserves of strength. This is Italian opera at its most overpowering. Lastly, there is “Gianni Schicchi,” a piece of commedia dell arte based on Dante, where a rascally lawyer gets the best of a greedy noble family vying over the estate of an ill-loved patriarch. Set in 1959, the bedroom where all but the last minute of the piece takes place has a Renaissance ornateness. Jess Goldstein's costumes, atmospheric throughout the evening, here achieve a wonderfully dizzy balance between “dolce vita” aspirations and commedia absurdity. Alessandro Corbelli is absolutely masterful as the title character. Blythe again dazzles as a bossy relative. In an all-round ideal cast Olga Mykytenko and Massimo Giordano sing sublimely as the young lovers. Mykytenko is similarly bewitching in the opera's hit tune, “O Mio Babbino Caro.” O'Brien moves these scheming Florentines around the stage with the bubbly skill of Leonid Massine in “Gaite Parisienne.” Anyone who saw his “Porgy and Bess” 30 years ago knew there would never be a better staging of that work. Why has it taken him all this time to make his Met debut? This “Trittico” is on the level of the towering “Henry IV” he did a few years ago at Lincoln Center Theater. Throughout the evening Levine made the score shimmer with color and drama. I came away stunned by its splendors. Every New York opera lover had to shudder reading that Gerard Mortier will soon be artistic director of New York City Opera. Mortier specializes in the directorial shock techniques we rubes consider opera for Eurotrash. This magnificent “Trittico” is a reminder of what can be achieved when the director and conductor set out to mine the riches and truth of the score, not find ways to debase the work in the vain hope of attracting new audiences. Let's hope the Met can adhere to these high standards rather than engage in a pissing match with its new neighbor.
Posted by Howard Kissel on April 21, 2007 4:53 PM | Permalink