Il trittico is a Puccini from 1918 but due to its dimensions it behaves as if it were a Wagner. Scheduling it is always an ambitious bet that not even the big theaters usually carry out. The Liceu, with the encouragement of its artistic director, Víctor García de Gomar, dares to premiere it in its entirety this Sunday –until December 15–, something that the musical director of the piece, the Finnish Sussana Mälkki, describes as an “event”. . Not surprisingly, it has a large orchestra and 38 singers in the different casts, of which only 5 are versatile.
This fresco of three operas in one that the composer conceives of as independent plots of a single work is generally programmed in parts: either Suor Angelica (the drama in the convent of a mother-nun whose son is taken from her), or Gianni Schicchi (the hilarious satire on the impersonation of the deceased to change his will)... or that dark thriller about a love triangle that is Il tabarro. The Barcelona Coliseum presents the fresco of the lowest human passions for the first time since the fire of 1994 and for the third time in its entire history.
And it does so respecting the original order, since Puccini was inspired by certain aspects of Dante's Divine Comedy: with its verista style, Il tabarro represented hell; Suor Angelica, the purgatory of the nun's emotional world, with her passion, her death and her glorification, and finally Gianni Schicchi is paradise in express comedy form. They have different styles and happen at different times.
Lotte de Beer, the stage director of this production who arrives from the Bayesrische Staatsoper, saw no reason to upset him. "In addition, it is about leaving the theater with a big smile," says the repositor, Anna Ponces. In order to let each title shine in her own language, Lotte does not think of forcing the ties argumentatively, but instead she devises one that hovers over the three titles with the idea of death and the concealment of death”.
Bernhard Hammer's unified set design is a tunnel, the light tunnel that connects life and death, and at the same time a kind of time tunnel that allows you to go through each opera up to the present day and challenge the public, breaking the fourth wall. "The idea is that they perceive that what they are seeing does not happen outside of them," says Ponces.
The official Puccinian sufferer, that is, the soprano Ermonela Jaho, gives life to the nun; the spectacular Wagnerian voice of the Norwegian Lise Davidsen makes its debut in Puccini as Giorgetta (Michele's unfaithful partner in Il Tabarro), and the magician of comedy, whether white (L'elisir) or dark (Falstaff), the baritone Ambrogio Maestri, it's Michele and Gianni Schicchi.
“For me, who has been in the German operatic world, this is totally new. Giorgetta asks me for very different things, she doesn't give me time to see if my voice and body are ready. And vocally he demands balance, here you have to contain your horses, you need to know when you say the phrase and what it is about. You have to see when to give yourself totally or just deliver the phrase ”, confesses Davidsen, who a week ago left the Liceu audience in ecstasy with his recital.
"Angelica is special to me, because when I sang it for the first time, in Covent Garden, I lost my parents, and at that moment it was an experience. When Sister Angelica receives the news that her son has died, I felt like a Little Ermonela receiving the news of the death of her parents", says the emotional soprano.
For his part, Yaho warns how special Angelica is to her. “When I debuted it at Covent Garden I lost my parents, and it was an experience. Sister Angelica received the news that her son has died... and I felt like a little Ermonela when I found out about the death of her parents”, says the emotional soprano.
“My first cry began at that moment, Angelica is a therapy for me, a catharsis, a spiritual journey. It is an operatic experience for everyone, because the audience lives three different lives in three hours, and the duty of the artists and the theater is to emphasize that and connect with the audience. Music is the bridge between our souls and those of the public”, adds the Albanian singer.
Maestri has joined the congratulations that the Liceu receives for daring with the feat. And he recalled that Puccini used a baritone as the lead for the first time with Gianni Schicchi. "The difference between Michele and Gianni is making people laugh. Michele is a Scarpia from Tosca, and Gianni is a Faltaff to the nth degree. You have to use another voice, it's the most you can get in an opera buffa."
"It's a fresco from a psychological point of view, it contains many perspectives on death and loss, and how people react to it. But it's also a fresco musically," says Mälkki. "This is a late work by Puccini. Here he chooses different musical styles: first a human melodrama, with intense emotions of jealousy and suffering; Suor Angelica's is more mystical and there Puccini builds his own cathedral; and finally he approaches comedy and he concludes that nothing is sacred. He really has the gift of melody and is a true storyteller. And working with the Liceu orchestra is being like a dance, because he knows the colors of Puccini, he adores him".
This is a more evolved Puccini, who is aware of what has been written and the musical thought of the time. He had listened to Stravinski, to Schönberg, and he abandoned some of the previous ingredients, but always with the classic invoice of emotion, De Gomar points out. "Yes, there are elements of musical thought from the beginning of the 20th century - corroborates Mälkki - but Stravinsky and Schönberg also came from the rich romantic tradition of orchestral writing, and there Puccini shows his fascinating chameleonic ability".
The proportions of the piece and the balance between stage and orchestra are details to mention. "I'm impressed by how practical Puccini is, he writes everything down on the score, nothing needs to be added or subtracted to make it better, in our opinion. It's several masterpieces in one. Tragedy or mystical ecstasy sounds just as good than comedy", concludes the musical director.
