Three one-act operas united by the intensity of Giacomo Puccini, the magician of composition capable of concentrating the wide range of human emotions in a single fresco: Il trittico. The audience at the Liceu had long been longing for an evening that was vocally exceptional as well as full of musical solvency – the Finnish Sussana Malkki was resounding on the podium! – and acting nods.
Il trittico (1918), that is, the sum of Il tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi, two dramas and a comedy that are usually performed separately, brought lovers of the genre almost to the sky. Puccini made them suffer, to beg for a truce in the slide of passion and despair. Beginning with the love triangle of Il tabarro, which predicts the tragedy, and continuing with the alienation of Suor Angelica in her attempt to reunite in heaven with the child that was taken from her at birth. Oh God, Ermonela Yaho! What is the secret of your torments? The public loves you!
The Albanian soprano managed once again to penetrate that state of semi-consciousness in which the audience tends to remain when the forces of the musical theater overcome them. It had been 35 years since the complete Il trittico was heard at the Gran Teatre. Specifically since the 1987-88 season, before the fire. And as the theater's artistic director, Víctor García de Gomar, commented in the final cup with the artists, making this triptych with which Puccini anticipates the most modern forms of Debussy or Richard Strauss is only possible "with these voices and with the sense of family that is established between them”.
The first voice that was heard in these three hours of opera was that of the desired Lise Davidsen, the soprano of the moment, who will undoubtedly go down in the annals of poetry due to the prodigious expressive flow of her instrument. Davidsen plays Giorgetta in Il tabarro, the young woman who dreams of leaving the underworld and running away with her lover. The duet with the baritone Brandon Jovanovich is very beautiful, appealing to the “immortal spell of Paris”. Although she, if she cheats on her husband, is more out of desperation than out of love. Hers is a flight forward to forget the terrible death of her little one. Why doesn't her husband Michele (incontestable baritone Ambrogio Maestri) allow her not to talk about it?
The lyrical coliseum of La Rambla was the first opera venue in Spanish territory that received the extraordinary Norwegian soprano singing staged opera. In Catalonia she had given recitals at the Schubertíada de Vilabertran and the Peralada Festival, but yesterday she fulfilled the expectations of the public jealous of the italianità. Davidsen is more than a stream of Wagnerian voice. Her debut at Puccini, here in Barcelona, portends a miracle with a broader repertoire. And so the public made it known with a loud ovation in the final nine minutes of applause.
The third vocal powerhouse in contention was Maestri split into Michele and Gianni Schicchi, the scoundrel who mocks the greed of the disinherited and whose daughter (soprano Ruth Iniesta) sings the famous O mio babbino caro for him. Maestri puts the laughs in that production that Lotte de Beer did for the Munich Opera and whose scenic cannon is reminiscent of the light at the end of the tunnel that Bosch already saw 500 years ago.
The party was attended by politicians: the Minister of Universities, Joan Subirats; the delegate of the Gobierno Maria Eugènia Gay; the Minister of Culture, Natàlia Garriga, and the Minister of Education, Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray, or Ferran Mascarell, from the Provincial Council. All this with an improved 81% occupancy rate.
