GIACOMO PUCCINI
IL TRITTICO
CONTENTS
S.
4
THE STORIES S.
10
GIANNI SCHICCHI COMPOSES PUCCINI PHILIPPE JORDAN S.
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“LOVE IS SOMETHING THAT KNOWS NO FUTURE” INTERVIEW WITH TATJANA GÜRBACA
S.
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EXPERIMENTAL TRILOGY ARNOLD JACOBSHAGEN S.
32
SUFFERING, SUFFERING, SUFFERING! LETTERS S.
36
AND THE COMEDIES? AND LIFE? LETTERS S.
40
IMPRINT
GIACOMO PUCCINI
IL TRITTICO THREE OPERAS in one act each Text GIUSEPPE ADAMI (Il tabarro), GIOVACCHINO FORZANO (Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi) Il tabarro after La Houppelande, play by Didier Gold Gianni Schicchi after La Commedia: Inferno (Canto XXX) by Dante Alighieri and the anonymous Commento alla divina commedia
ORCHESTRA
STAGE MUSIC
Piccolo / 2 flutes 2 oboes / cor anglais 2 clarinets/ bass clarinet 2 bassoons / 4 horns / 3 trumpets 3 trombones / bass trombone timpani/ percussion (drum, triangle, cymbals, bass drum) glockenspiel / celesta harp/ strings Il tabarro 2 trumpets / harp car horn siren / large bell Suor Angelica piccolo / 3 trumpets bells in c’, d’, e’, f’, g’ and a’ bronze bells / tavolette / cymbals / organ Gianni Schicchi tubular bells in F sharp
AUTOGRAPH Archivio Storico Ricordi, Milan FIRST PERFORMANCE 14 DECEMBER 1918 Metropolitan Opera, New York VIENNA PREMIERE 20 OCTOBER 1920 Vienna State Opera DURATION
3 H 30 MIN
INCL. 2 INTERMISSIONS
IL TRITTICO
THE STORIES IL TABARRO Michele’s barge is lying at anchor in a bend in the Seine in Paris. The stevedores unload the last goods, while Michele looks at the sunset. Michele’s wife Gior getta offers the labourers refreshments. The young labourer Luigi calls an organ grinder over. Giorgetta dances with the tippler Tinca, then with Luigi. Michele interrupts the cheerful scene. The relationship between him and his much youn ger wife is tense. He tells Giorgetta he wants to keep the older labourer Talpa and Tinca, as well as Luigi, who would otherwise starve. Talpa’s wife Frugola comes to fetch her husband. She dreams of spending her declining days in a little house in the country. Giorgetta on the other hand enthuses about the Paris district of Belleville, where she and Luigi come from. When all the others have gone, Giorgetta calls Luigi over. The two are lovers. They agree to meet at midnight, Giorgetta will light a match as a sign. Michele accuses Giorgetta of not loving him any more. He re minds her of the time they were happy, which ended when their child died. The symbol of this happiness is Michele’s cloak, which he sheltered his little family under. Giorgetta leaves Mi chele alone with his dark thoughts. He’s convinced that she’s having an affair, and considers who her lover could be. When he lights his pipe, Luigi, who’s been waiting, thinks the match is the sign he agreed with Giorgetta, and enters the barge. Pres sed by Michele, Luigi confesses his love for Giorgetta. Michele kills him. He wraps the corpse in his cloak. Giorgetta comes to apologize to Michele. Michele opens his cloak, revealing Luigi’s dead body.
Previous pages: MICHAEL VOLLE as MICHELE ANJA KAMPE as GIORGETTA JOSHUA GUERRERO as LUIGI ANDREA GIOVANNINI as TINCA DAN PAUL DUMITRESCU as TALPA MONIKA BOHINEC as FRUGOLA SUPERNUMERARIES OF THE VIENNA STATE OPERA (IL TABARRO)
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THE STORIES
SUOR ANGELICA A courtyard inside a nunnery. After evening mass, the Monitress assigns pe nance to a few sisters, while the others gather for recreation. When the conver sation passes to a dead sister, Suor Angelica declares that death is a good life as it is free of desires. The sisters argue over whether they are allowed earthly desires. Most deny having any, including Suor Angelica. However, the sisters know that Angelica is waiting eagerly for news of her family. Rumour has it that Angelica comes from a rich, noble family and has been sent to the convent as a punishment. One sister has been stung by a wasp. Suor Angelica looks after the nunnery garden, and has a soothing balm. A visitor is announced, it is Angelica’s aunt. She had taken over the guardianship of Angelica and her siblings from their parents. Now, she has come to give Angelica documents to sign on the distribution of family assets, because Angelica’s younger sister is going to marry. Her future husband is ready to overlook the shame that Angelica has brought on her family. Angelica appa rently has an illegitimate son. She asks her aunt to tell her about him. The aunt explains that the child died two years ago. Then she forces Angelica to sign the papers and leaves the convent. Angelica laments the fate of her child, who had to die without seeing his mother. The unsuspecting sisters congratulate Ange lica on finally having the visit she longed for. At night, Angelica is taking her own life. Dying, she falls into despair at the mortal sin of suicide. She is met by celestial choirs and unexpected en counters.
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IL TRITTICO
GIANNI SCHICCHI Buoso Donati has died. His relatives outdo each other with lamentations on his death. The lament turns into yelling and cursing when the testament is found: Buoso has left his entire estate to a monastery. The young Rinuccio suggests asking the cunning Gianni Schicchi for advice. Rinuccio’s motives are not altruistic, he wants to marry Gianni’s daughter Lauretta. Simone and Zita declare that the aristocratic Donatis would never be associated with the family of a parvenu like Gianni Schicchi. When Gianni Schicchi enters with Lauretta, Zita refuses her consent to the mar riage, as Lauretta does not have a dowry. Gianni, annoyed, wants to leave, but Rinuccio begs him to at least look at the will. Lauretta also threatens to kill her self if the wedding never happens. Gianni Schicchi confirms that the will cannot be changed. However, he has an idea – he will play the role of the dying Buoso and dictate a new will to the notary in favour of the relatives. A dispute breaks out over the best parts of the inheritance, the house, the mills at Signa and the prize mule. One relative after another takes Gianni aside and promises a reward if he decides in their favour. The notary records the will. Gianni awards each relative a share of the inheritance. However, he leaves the house, the mills and the mule to himself – Gianni Schicchi. Gianni slyly reminds the protesting relatives that they are accomplices and will face se rious consequences if the fraud is revealed. When the notary and the witnesses have left, Gianni throws the raging relatives out of the house. Lauretta and Rinuccio are happy. There are no further obstacles to their wedding. Gianni Schicchi explains to the audience that he has been con demned to hell for this trick. With reference to the great father Dante, he begs for the entertainment to be taken into conside ration in mitigation. Pages 8/9: MICHAELA SCHUSTER as ZITA BOGDAN VOLKOV as RINUCCIO ANDREA GIOVANNINI as GHERARDO ANNA BONDARENKO as NELLA CLEMENS UNTERREINER as BETTO DAN PAUL DUMITRESCU as SIMONE ATTILA MOKUS as MARCO DARIA ZUSHKOVA as LA CIESCA CHILD OF THE OPERA SCHOOL OF THE VIENNA STATE OPERA as GHERARDINO SUPERNUMERARY of the VIENNA STATE OPERA as BUOSO DONATI (GIANNI SCHICCHI)
6
Giorgetta / IL TABARRO
HOW HARD IT IS TO BE HAPPY! 7
PHILIPPE JORDAN
GIANNI SCHICCHI COMPOSES PUCCINI I. Giacomo Puccini always looked for unusual forms and ways to entice and surprise his public. In the case of Il trittico, the three-part structure offered entirely new possibilities, an evening of different pieces telling several inde pendent, self-contained stories. It’s not a novel as such, but a book of novellas. But the diversity of the subjects makes the evening unusually balanced – and this also shows what a dramatic genius Puccini was. He arranged the pieces to create a logical dramatic arc. We start with the dramatic tragic piece, then the lyric tragedy and finally the comic piece. Puccini knew that you have to start with the tragedy and end with the comedy. We’ve known these dramatic princi ples since Greek theatre, and because of this solid classic dramatic theory I think it would be completely wrong to change the order of the pieces. Suor Angelica has to be in the middle. The evening is like a triptych in church, and the Madonna fi gure is in the centre there. I also feel that you should only play the pieces together, and not in other combinations. They can only have their full effect in the way that Puccini conceived and composed them. But even so, they are three different and
independent pieces which aren’t linked by a musical tie. This is much more like a bouquet with their own, partly very dif ferent statements, emotions and music. Naturally, we should not lose sight of the fact that one-act operas were enor mously popular at the time. Just think of Béla Bartók’s Bluebe ard’s Castle, Maurice Ravel’s L’heure espagnole and L’enfant et les sortilèges, Alexander Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg and Die florentinische Tragödie or Arnold Schönberg’s Von heute auf morgen. Not to forget, of course, Richard Strauss’s Salome and Elektra. The concept of a short opera was accordingly very much in line with the times. But instead of a single opera to be performed in combi nation with other pieces, Puccini de veloped his own one-act combination with three pieces at once.
II. A question that always comes up is the place of Il trittico in musical verismo. Certainly, there are many suggestive features, but Puccini goes far beyond this genre in every respect. I find Il tabarro to be most veristic, including the musical language with the car horns, the sound of the hurdy-gurdy and other
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GIANNI SCHICCHI COMPOSES PUCCINI
points. Suor Angelica is significantly more abstract, particularly if we think of the metaphysical finale, which does not involve a realistic death. Puccini uses the everyday sounds mentioned in Il tabarro to create a par ticular atmosphere, a colouring, as he is so incomparably successful in achie ving. He does this in Tosca, when he re creates Rome around 1800, in Madama Butterfly we find touches of Japan and the presentation of American colo nialism, and in La bohème he draws a musical picture of Paris with the help of many Impressionist colours. We also find a Paris in Il tabarro, although a more modern and contemporary one. And while I hear more Maurice Ravel in La bohème, more colourful, brilli ant and ultimately more characteristic sounds, Il tabarro reminds me more of Claude Debussy, the situation feels dar ker, but also more experimental. This gloomier feeling admittedly has a dramatic purpose, reflecting the shabby environment, the canal barge situation, the poverty. It’s quite extra ordinary how Puccini paints the wa ter musically in this opera. The short overture in 12/8 time already conveys a sense of rocking – you’re no longer sure of your footing. If you want to, you can infer a relationship with the first act of Tristan und Isolde, you have a sense of the constant rocking there as well – and at the start of Il tabarro you naturally think first and foremost of Debussy’s La mer. The hurdy-gurdy is a clear reference to Igor Stravinsky’s Petrushka! As one string is a semitone higher than the other, this creates an out-of-tune effect. The overall effect is incredibly atmos pheric, again illustrating the setting of the action. You know immediately what
world you are in – related to the equally out-of-tune piano in Wozzeck. As a composer of genius, Puccini identified himself with all his charac ters. Just as Wagner felt ties with Isolde, or Richard Strauss with the Marschal lin or Salome, there is always somet hing personal involved. So the theme of ageing also resonates in Il tabarro, which certainly concerned Puccini, along with the thought of a lost youth. But there is much more and different in this opera – the lost child, the missed opportunities, the lack of illusions. Even so, Michele seems initially almost to have come to terms with his fate, while Giorgetta is younger and hungers for life. And we hear this! She isn’t done with everything yet, it’s not enough yet! She wants to break away, even though she still loves Michele, de spite her tryst with Luigi. Luigi in turn wants to get away from it all, but Gior getta probably doesn’t matter so much to him as a person, she could be any woman. The way that Puccini identifies and presents these multilevel motiva tions and emotions is simply overwhel ming! And the way that he shows in the duet between Luigi and Giorgetta that these are two hopeless souls who want to gamble on their luck and find them selves in the process is impressive – and it’s not accidental that the whole scene is written in the minor mode.
III. As already noted, one of the special things about Il trittico is that Puccini finds a separate language for each of the pieces. Suor Angelica is in a religious sphere from the first bar, it’s almost as if the composer – like Wagner in Parsifal – had fallen into a kind of religious ma nia, and I’m thinking here of the over-
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PHILIPPE JORDAN
the-top ending. Musically, the work cannot just be “pretty”, the bells for instance must have something ghostly about them, comparable with Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. The convent, this closed off realm, harbours a lot of suffering, each of the nuns has their own story, their own burden. The focus is naturally on Angelica and her tragic fate. However, in the finale, in death she experiences a transfiguration involving a children’s chorus, female chorus and a male chorus joining them like archan gels. There’s an incredible force in the music at this point, as if the gates of Pa radise were opening. The finale is merci less in its impact, comparable with Mi mi’s death in La bohème. Puccini knows exactly where to “turn it up”, and even if it’s perhaps personally too much for you as a conductor, at the moment of the performance you have to believe it. Because if you don’t or aren’t painfully moved – then you should leave this opera alone. I totally reject the occa sional accusation that Suor Angelica is kitsch. The fact that the religious aspect is emphasized here is understandable, given the time – just think of Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem, for example. It was a period in which religious belief often had a touch of incense. Although you shouldn’t try to reinforce the effect of the scene by playing it particularly ex pressively. On the contrary! You have to simply let the opera happen, give the music room and trust it to resonate on its own terms – and you mustn’t get sentimental! Suor Angelica is – last but not least – a predecessor of Dialogues des Carmélites.
IV. Gianni Schicchi on the other hand is un doubtedly also a homage to Falstaff! It’s Puccini’s first and only comedy – and a work of genius to boot. He incorporated his experience with individual roles in opera, for example Benoit and Alcin doro from La bohème, the sacristan in Tosca and Goro in Madama Butterfly and shows incredible artistry in ensemble and a special feel for comic situations! This is Puccini, the man of the thea tre, the practitioner. Personally, I find Gianni Schicchi even more accomplished as a comedy than Falstaff. The way that Puccini demonstrates human mendacity, how he starts off musically with the “sigh motif”, and how everything that happens after that is exaggerated and wildly pretended – all this makes the opera incredibly co mical! There’s almost nothing you can take seriously. Puccini is undoubtedly in the tradition of Italian opera buffa, in the same way that every great artist is working from a great tradition! Gianni Schicchi is a high point in this genre, just as Die schweigsame Frau by Richard Strauss is a high point in comic German opera. One of the best-known short arias in music history is also in Gianni Schicchi, Lauretta’s “O mio babbino caro”. In an extensively spoken environment, this aria seems almost monolithic in the ove rall context, particularly if you take an unnaturally slow tempo. It doesn’t stick out so much at Puccini’s tempo setting, and it benefits the work, as Gianni Schicchi otherwise works with small motifs and has few typical Puccini melodies, as we know them from his earlier works. We know from the process of its creation that the composer wrote this opera with relatively little effort. And
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GIANNI SCHICCHI COMPOSES PUCCINI
isn’t it fantastic, when a composer has the necessary experience, the inspira tion, the enthusiasm, and the tools? It must be incredibly enjoyable if one thing leads effortlessly to another, and instead of struggling over symphonies like Beet hoven, you just let the inspiration flow.
And this takes us to Gustav Mahler’s wonderful saying, “I don’t compose, I am composed.” There is a force within a work which makes its own way. Seen in this way, Puccini was also perhaps com posed by Gianni Schicchi in a small way.
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Following page: MICHAELA SCHUSTER as ZITA SERENA SÁENZ as LAURETTA AMBROGIO MAESTRI as GIANNI SCHICCHI DAN PAUL DUMITRESCU as SIMONE (GIANNI SCHICCHI)
KOPFZEILE
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HANNAH ARENDT / ON REVOLUTION
...THAT NO ONE COULD BE CALLED HAPPY WITHOUT HIS SHARE IN PUBLIC HAPPINESS, THAT NO ONE COULD BE CALLED FREE WITHOUT HIS EXPERIENCE IN PUBLIC FREEDOM, AND THAT NO ONE COULD BE CALLED EITHER HAPPY OR FREE WITHOUT PARTICIPATING, AND HAVING A SHARE, IN PUBLIC BUSINESS.
TATJANA GÜRBACA IN AN INTERVIEW WITH NIKOLAUS STENITZER
“LOVE IS SOMETHING THAT KNOWS NO FUTURE.” NS
Why indeed is it so hard to be happy? tg Good question. Perhaps we should start by asking, is happiness the pur pose of human existence at all? And what is happiness? I think, happiness involves the sense of freedom. To be able to decide something for yourself, to do something that fulfils you. In Pucci ni’s century, the idea of happiness is strongly associated with the idea of love, particularly for women. Simply because this is a century where women didn’t have so may other opportunities to de velop their own personality. This is why Puccini’s stories are so often about an unhappy love. The basic plot is always a love which is unwelcome in society and is frustrated. Just as the French Exis tentialists are opposed by “the others”, society here blocks happiness because there are conventions which the lovers do not satisfy as they are. Love is anarchistic, shattering the social order. Love means two people uniting in a single cell which in reality doesn’t fit in anywhere. NS You’ve taken Giorgetta’s sentence “How hard it is to be happy” from Il tabarro as the thought
connecting the three pieces in Il trittico. It also determines – in fragments – the set that Henrik Ahr designed for the production. You mentioned another idea that was important for the concept, “L’enfer, c’est les autres” (“Hell is other people”), the famous quote from Sartre’s Huis clos. How can love be the solution? Isn’t it also defined in society’s terms? tg I’d say that personal, individual love is a counter-concept to society. Wagner shows this impressively, for example in Parsifal, in the person of the Knights of the Grail, who are seeking an all-embracing love – although it’s one that only includes men. And then the re’s Kundry, who’s looking for somet hing else, a personal love…, or Tristan Act II – the lovers only meet at night. In an alternative world, as it were. It also makes me think of works by Ingeborg Bachmann, Der gute Gott von Manhattan or Undine geht. These are pieces ab out how love has a force which can also be a danger – for the lovers and the out siders. Undine, for example, demands that you find an entirely separate lan
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“LOV E IS SOMET HING T H AT K NOWS NO F U T U R E .”
guage, your own way to live, and a way of existing only in the present moment. Love is actually something that knows no future. Or, as Richard Strauss says in Elektra, “Love kills”. NS In Strauss, as mostly in the opera repertoire, naturally including Puccini, we’re dealing with female characters created by men. How would you describe the female characters in Puccini? tg The women in Puccini are atta cked in every respect, they are vulne rable, fragile and tender. But they also have an incredible faith, an incredible strength of will, an incredible desire for life and energy. I’d say that applies to all of Puccini’s heroines. And I think that Puccini is also a very good chronicler of his time in this respect. He took the pressure that society exerts particularly far in Il trittico, a work that was created after the First World War. This is why he’s very close to the French Structura lists, because he is observing something that he works through in three totally different worlds, and makes it a state ment of principle. NS Would you say that social pressures are the binding issue in the three one-act pieces in Il trittico? tg Absolutely. All three deal with structures that people are locked in and which they cannot escape. I think it’s fantastic that the last of the three pieces, Gianni Schicchi, formulates this struc ture in the narrowest and least esca pable terms, in the form of the family. The humour in the piece is so brilliant because it’s so pointed and revealing. Frequently, we’re laughing out of inse curity or defensively. In Gianni Schicchi, laughter catches in your throat, you can’t quite understand it. In Il tabarro, the structure is the work
we all have to do. Luigi highlights this drastically in his aria when he sings, “this work consumes us to the point where we’re not even able to love or en joy life”. The unhappy fate of Giorgetta and Michele, who lost their child, also makes them outsiders within this func tioning world of work. For Puccini, the tinte were important, the different co lours in the three pieces. But the overall issue is made all the clearer by the fact that the times and circumstances of the three pieces are so different. This shows that the problem is always the same – we always have to deal with the world around us, and in the situations we’re in it’s almost impossible to find happiness, because there’s no freedom there. NS You talked about Structuralism as a philosophy that’s relevant for this production. The assumption is that the social structure – for example, imposed by capitalism – makes freedom impossible. Theories which have been des cribed as post-structuralist have extended this in terms of a linguistically or discursively created reality. With your productions, including this Il trittico, I’ve often had the impression that the unhappiness you talk about seems to be incorporated into the bodies, they seem almost to consist of it. tg Compulsions, sometimes the mechanistic nature of the bodies, are actually issues for me. This is why I tell opera stories, because I feel that they are still valid for us. These stories move us because there’s still something un resolved about them. This particularly applies to Il trittico. The present is very tangible in this, for example through the world of work in Il tabarro, but
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TATJANA GÜRBACA IN AN INTERVIEW
much more than just that, through the structure we live in. Presenting this on the stage is a major challenge, a major issue. NS What’s important to achieve this? tg What always applies in theatre, on the stage. If we want to be present, we shouldn’t confuse this with an at tempt to exactly mirror reality. In Turandot, Puccini’s last opera, the setting is described as “the age of fairy tales”. We can stay with this, the stage is sho wing you your own time, your own rea lity. It’s a form of dreamed reality. Or, as Verdi put it: ”Copying reality is a good idea, but inventing reality is much bet ter.” We’re looking at inventing reality. It must be truthful, but it doesn’t have to be reality or realistic. It’s more a mat ter of creating a space where you make the audience your accomplices and play with associations. And where everyone is put in a position to see themselves in the characters, but outside of their own daily reality. From the inner world of the characters. This is why I aim for a theatre which is based so strongly on the performers, the singers, because this is what is timeless and universal – our feelings, our being, our existence. Props and furniture change. Architec ture changes. What is always there is humanity. NS Suor Angelica takes place in a nunnery. The protagonist must stay there because she had an illegitimate child, which is socially forbidden. Is it more difficult to find the timeless, current dimension in this subject, compared to the others? tg The issue we were just talking about is incredibly topical here, the in corporation of certain structures in the
body. In this case, the structure of guilt and atonement. This issue is very much on my mind. Although I’d describe my self as thoroughly atheistic, I’m cons tantly noticing that certain Catholic principles or thoughts still stick with me, possibly coming from my mother’s family. In particular, the notion of guilt. My impression is that something like this keeps going for generations, and that you can’t get rid of it completely. Something else about Angelica as a cha racter that fascinates me is that she tells the story of the separation of religion and faith. She’s a very unusual character. She’s certainly faithful, but I don’t know if you can call her faith a strong religi ous feeling. It’s a faith in a lasting mo therly love. And she’s incredibly free as a character. This starts with the child that she has, against the rules of so ciety. When she’s sent to the nunnery as a punishment, she finds meaning in the nunnery, she helps, comforts. And finally she reaches her own decision about her death. This is pure Existentia lism. The great conflict between Camus and Sartre is the question of how the li mits of freedom should be defined. For Sartre, even under the greatest external pressures, people still have a residual freedom and responsibility. Angelica is confirmed in her decision by the ending of the opera. She isn’t punished for sui cide; she experiences death and trans figuration. The music tells us this very clearly. NS Gianni Schicchi is challenging for the director with its detail and precise dramaturgic composition. What’s important when you’re staging a piece like this? tg I find that the more precisely you imagine a scene in advance, the more freedom you have ultimately in rehearsal.
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“LOV E IS SOMET HING T H AT K NOWS NO F U T U R E .”
The more solid you are and the more of ten you’ve thought everything through, the more you can relax and watch in re hearsal and start to play, and that’s the point I look for. Gianni Schicchi is a very special piece, it brings in a lot of Italian cultural history, the figure of Gianni co mes from Dante’s Divina Commedia, he’s a spirit in the Eighth Circle of hell, and at the same time a stereotypical Italian Arlecchino character from the com media dell’arte. For us, he also stands for the breakout from old, dilapidated structures, he becomes a political figure. When Rinuccio describes a flourishing Florence, he means the intellectual and artistic impulses from a new generation, the people who gather around Gianni Schicchi. This makes him a courageous opponent of nepotism, avarice and hy pocrisy – as they appear in Buoso Do nati’s family. For me, Gianni Schicchi is music that I often turned on when I got home from school, simply because I like it so much. When the second motif comes in with the syncopation, it’s like rock ’n’ roll. It’s a physical trigger for me. And then there are all the references to Wagner. The way that Zita, Nella and Ciesca ensnare Schicchi is very reminiscent of Alberich with the three Rhine maidens, and Ri nuccio and Lauretta emerge at the end as distant relatives of Tristan and Isolde. NS Il tabarro is possibly the extreme scenic opposite of Gianni Schicchi. Here, there’s an atmospheric tableau at the start, but the scenes in which the story is moved on are long dialogues, between Michele and Giorgetta, between Giorgetta and Luigi. What do you pay attention to in staging it, so that there isn’t a dead patch? tg To the subtext. Every sentence
functions at multiple levels. There’s a very real level, for example when Gior getta says, “Your pipe’s gone out”. This can also mean that you don’t have any thing going for you, you don’t have any good ideas any more, and it can natu rally also have strong erotic connota tions, there’s no fire left in your pipe. Every sentence is a little snare like this, and this simply requires you to talk to the singers in detail about subtexts. The action on the stage is then the ex pression of the subtext that you want to show. As opera directors we always live with the need to find a third level from two existing ones. We have the level of the text, and the level of the music, and sometimes, the two aren’t necessarily saying the same thing. As they say, “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it”, and here it’s how you sing it. And find ing out what’s actually meant, what’s being said, how it’s being said, why it’s being said, and who it’s being said to, this leads to the scene. NS In your Il trittico, there’s a lot of space to play in, the singers are in a goldfish bowl, as it were, in Henrik Ahr’s architectonic set. Was that the idea behind choos ing this kind of free space? tg Yes. In all the parts of Il trittico, but particularly in Il tabarro, there is so much happeni ng between the cha racters. This is why the opera singers are really challenged here to think and act like actors. The resulting gra nularity calls for a space which really projects these very intimate and fine gestures, details, looks, and highlights them. That’s why I’m so grateful that Henrik Ahr built this stage. This is a space that displays things, where no thing is lost.
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TATJANA GÜRBACA IN AN INTERVIEW
Henrik’s sets always have the potential of becoming spiritual spaces or a meta phor. Something else I appreciate is that they are architectures which also have something very real and tangible, and create an incredibly precise focus. And they put the highlight on the singers and put them front and centre. NS You’ve described what’s interest ing to you in Suor Angelica in terms of content and philosophy. Dramatically, the piece is regard ed as the weakest of the three one-act operas, which is why it’s also perhaps the most difficult to stage. How do you see it? tg I’m interested in the story which is so far from every operatic cliché in that there’s no classic love story. It’s always about the woman and her child, but not about the man who begot the child. He doesn’t appear at all, he isn’t there, he’s completely uninteresting. We never learn at any point the circumstan ces in which the child was conceived. And not only is nothing said about the man in this world – there are only wo men there anyway. It’s a very unusual sisterhood. Within this female world, every last feeling is possible, friendship, love, caring, hate, jealousy, competition. That even such a narrow world makes everything possible, I find that tremen dous. And I think there’s also a sense of modernity in describing exactly what happens between people. Even away from some love story or other. Every one of the nuns in this convent has a pre vious story. And there are scenes of love in this piece which I think are universal. This is because there’s something which nobody, and not even the structure we talked about, can take away from you. That there’s a very, very great human longing to give or receive love, to give
or receive contact. And that it survives or remains. That would be the universal thing about it. NS This sounds like the comforting moral of Il trittico. How does this fit in with the inevitable social structure in the sense of JeanPaul Sartre? tg I think the point is that it’s up to us to make this world a better place – or a bearable one. The theme of the lon ging for love that Angelica has crops up repeatedly in the piece in different variations. I always wondered what it was about this aunt, this princess that made her seem so incredibly cold. Actually, she’s the character who had the ability to grant something like for giveness or nearness. While I was pre paring, I thought a lot about using this character to give an additional dimen sion. Whether you can talk about the possibility of forgiving, the possibility of creating something that makes life worth living or bearable, despite all the pain in this life that you can’t avoid. I produced Luigi Dallapiccola’s Prigionero here in Vienna at the Volksoper exactly 20 years ago. The opera explains very clearly that freedom as such is worthless, unless you’re sharing it with another person, a partner. NS The human being, the animal sociale. tg Exactly. It’s one of the basic re quirements for happiness or fulfilment that you can share or communicate so mething. And I find that again in Suor Angelica, in the same way. The prisoner is in a prison where he meets his inqui sitor, who first of all pretends to be an intimate and a friend. I think the situa tion of Angelica and the princess is very similar, actually. The young woman held in the convent and the aunt who
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“LOV E IS SOMET HING T H AT K NOWS NO F U T U R E .”
comes to it like the inquisitor. I’m not trying to say that the aunt is actually Angelica’s friend. Rather, that someone who approaches another person has the potential of being a friend or an enemy. NS Can we sum up by saying that the three pieces in Il trittico describe the potential of every encounter to meet a friend or an enemy? tg The summary is actually that our
human existence consists of having to deal with other people. Which brings us back to the question of happiness and freedom, and the illusion of free dom. We aren’t born into a void; we’re thrown into specific contexts which we can’t avoid and which we have to deal with. But it’s in our power to make this world a better place.
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Following pages: ELEONORA BURATTO as ANGELICA (SUOR ANGELICA)
ARNOLD JACOBSHAGEN
EXPERIMENTAL TRILOGY Il trittico takes a retrospective journey back through time from Puccini’s present to the Mediaeval Period. While the first part, Il tabarro, is set in contemporary Paris in the early 20th century, Suor Angelica takes us back to the late 17th century, and finally Gianni Schicchi takes us to Florence in 1299. Puccini had developed the concept of a triptych of one-act operas over an exten ded period. The result was based on libretti in three very different styles by Giuseppe Adami and Giovacchino Forzano, and was unparalleled in the history of opera. The closest parallel would be Jacques Offen bach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann (1881). In this opera, three independent episodes are pre sented as single acts within a framework story about the protagonist, E. T. A. Hoff mann. Otherwise, there are no significant common features. The apparent effortlessness of Puccini’s artistic implementation of the ambitious project is surprising, given the unusual concept of Il trittico. Each of the three ope ras was composed within a few months. He completed Il tabarro in November 1916. He started on the composition of Suor Angelica directly after the première of his opera La rondine, written in parallel, in April 1917, and finished the instrumentation in Sep tember. He finally started work on Gianni Schicchi, completing the composition at the start of 1918. Puccini’s Trittico set a precedent. Just a few years after the world première, representatives of modern music such as Paul Hindemith, Gian Francesco Malipiero and Ernst Krenek adopted the three-part one-act model, and Carl Orff
retrospectively combined his three staged cantatas Carmina Burana, Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite in a diverse triptych under the title Trionfi.
LATE VERISMO: IL TABARRO Il tabarro is a melodramatic tragedy of a love triangle and jealousy in the lower clas ses, which hurtles to its frightful ending in a single scene. However, in contrast to Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and other verismo shockers, Puccini’s opera is not dealing with (for example) the patriar chal relationships and archaic masculinity rituals of antiquated Sicilian peasants, but portrays mercilessly the reality of modern city people. The setting is once again Paris, but nei ther the Paris of the lovers of Montmartre, as in La Bohème, nor the champagne viva city of La rondine. Instead, we are on the dark fringe of the Seine, where crowds of day labourers work to unload the goods and materials from barges that the pleasure ca pital so urgently needs. Formally, the opera consists of two parts of roughly equal length, where the first acts as exposition and the dramatic jealousy scene takes place in the second part. The overture at the start of the work begins with the first of the three central themes of the opera, written in 12/8, with a continuous movement of quavers symbo lizing the flow of the Seine. The fact that Puccini prefers a modal harmony gives the milieu empathic status and a touch of ar
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EXPERIMENTAL TRILOGY
chaic remoteness. At the same time, the social world of the “little people” is spiked with the sounds of the modern industrial age, as the composer adds first a ship’s horn and then a car horn to the mood. The first lines in Il tabarro are Gior getta’s, as she fails to understand her ageing husband with his cold pipe. “Oh Michele? Aren’t you tired of ga zing at the sunset?” She soon makes the sexual connotation in her resigned look at Michele explicit: “Your pipe doesn’t blow white smoke any more!” The entire dialogue between Giorgetta and Michele seems to be about every day things, but repeatedly there is a sense of fundamental crucial experien ces – for example, when Michele tries to kiss her, she turns away and he goes down to the hold in a huff. This dialogue is formally enhanced by the multiple overlays of descriptive music (songs of the stevedores, brin disi, waltz and canzonetta) which is integrated as montage in the literal “flow” of the Seine introduction. The appearance of an organ grinder adds the opera’s second leitmotif. This is a fragmentary basso ostinato whose awkwardness is emphasized by the staccato articulation and long pauses that run through it. Through its ap pearance in various situations and wi dely varying sonorities this bass figure takes on the nature of a leitmotif as a “fate motif” in a very broad sense, as it also underlays the passionate out breaks of the unhappy lovers towards the end of the work. The organ grin der’s melody, which alludes to Cho pin’s waltz op. 34 no. 1, is clouded by constant parallel diminished octaves. Puccini was probably inspired to this “distorted” presentation by Igor Stra
vinsky’s Petrushka (1911), a work he had heard a few years earlier in Paris. In the song seller’s canzonetta Puccini quo tes in the refrain (“È la storia di Mimi”) his own earlier Paris opera La Bohème, and deliberately joins the ranks of Mo zart and Wagner, who integrated into Don Giovanni (1787) and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868) equally pro minent quotes from their directly pre ceding operas Le nozze di Figaro (1786) and Tristan und Isolde (1865). Michele has just gone down to the hold when Luigi has an opportunity to complain of his difficult fate in a highly emotional aria lasting only two minutes (“Hai ben ragione, meglio non pensare”). Unlike the two princi pal male roles, Giorgetta does not have her own aria, but even so she has the largest vocal part. Like Minnie in La fanciulla del West (1910), Giorgetta is not only on stage throughout almost the entire piece, she interacts most with the other characters and is their central contact. In the second part of the opera, only the three protagonists sing, with Giorgetta portrayed in successive du ets, first with Luigi and then with Mi chele. The contrast between the pas sionate, three-part love duet and the subsequent episodically structured confrontation with her husband could not be greater. The captain vainly re minds his wife of their earlier happy times and their dead child. The men tion of the cloak that Michele once warmed them in is full of tragic irony, foreshadowing the frightful ending. In the subsequent great solo, Michele is racked by deep despair. Luigi’s entrance sets off the chain of drama tic events. Like the “fate motif”, the “cloak motif” also takes on an extreme
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ARNOLD JACOBSHAGEN
increase in its sonority and dynamic in its appearances, achieving its grue some climax and conclusion at the end of the piece.
MYSTIC DRAMA OF SALVATION OR HOLY KITSCH? Suor Angelica invites opinions which di verge possibly even more than any other Puccini opera. But this ambivalence is part of the concept the composer follo wed in his triptych. The aesthetic ext reme positions that distinguish the three one-act operas justify their unusual me ans. The tragedy of a nun who commits suicide in the convent after learning of the death of her child was without pa rallel in the literature. The two close Puccini compan ions Guido Marotti and Ferruccio Pagni have emphasized that Puccini was also undergoing great personal changes at the time, and had turned back to the Christian faith. “A diffuse religious sentiment, an uncon scious happiness gradually took posses sion of him from 1917 until his death. Even his face changed. Instead of the former cunning and cynical expression, he frequently showed a beaming kind ness.” His sister Iginia was living as a nun in the Augustine convent of Vico pelago near Lucca, and Puccini visited her several times to get a better insight into the life of a convent. “He brought sacrifices to the Madonna and sweets for the pious sisters, and in particular he went into the convent chapel to play the organ, as he had played in the churches in Lucca as a boy. The nuns were always close to him, and honoured him as if he was a saint.” Dramatically, Suor Angelica dif fers from its predecessor, unfolding
rapidly in real time, by its cyclical and visual notion of time. Forzano had di vided the libretto into seven sections of the “Stations of the Cross”, and given them headings. 1 The Prayer (La preghiera), 2 The punishment (Le punizioni), 3 Uplift (La ricreazione) 4 The return from collecting the gifts (Il ritorno dalla cerca), 5 The princess aunt (La zia principessa), 6 Mercy (La grazia), 7 The miracle (Il miracolo). A particularly typical feature of the religious aura in Suor Angelica is the use of a harmony based on ecclesiasti cal modi, and particularly the planned use of pedal point structures, which Puccini used as extended notes, repeti tions and repeated formulae much more frequently than in any of his other operas. The static tendency of the orchestral setting so evident in the work in the form of mixtures, ostinati and drones illustrates the unchanging monotony of nunnery life. This mono tony starts even before the curtain ri ses with the sound of the church bells, which are then integrated into tender orchestral sounds and start to lull the audience at the latest with the “Ave Maria” chorus from the interior of the church. The sound of bells also mixes with distant birdsong, presented as virtuoso figuring for the piccolo (“ottavino in terno”). We also first hear the solo voice of the protagonist backstage. But unlike the first entry of Mimi (La Bohème) or Tosca, who are also first heard as a distant voice, increasing the tension of their entrance, we are con fronted at the start of Suor Angelica with the monotony and exclusion of the inhabitants of the nunnery. For all its contrasts, Suor Angelica for mally resembles Il tabarro in being
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EXPERIMENTAL TRILOGY
divided into two parts, where the en trance of the princess moves the per sonal tragedy to its end. As the only major alto role in Puccini’s œuvre, the redoubtable princess is also vocally unique. Above all, her entrance is clo aked musically and instrumentally in a darkness that almost freezes the blood in your veins. Her vocal lines are also unnatural, and to that extent “inhu man”. The “melody” that indicates her spiritual link with Angelica’s dead mo ther lacks cantabile style, consisting of three successive fourths, another sin gular group of intervals in Puccini’s vocal style. The princess’s exit is followed by Angelica’s famous aria (“Senza mamma”). Puccini has again used an ostinato structure as underlay, which consists not only of motif elements but of three parallel keys (D minor, G major, A minor) and their sequencing. As a delaying moment before the great final scene, Puccini makes use of the convention of the symphonic inter mezzo. The fact that the presentation of the “miracle” at the end of the work uses unusual sonorities with trumpets, bells, cymbals, two pianos, organ, boy’s choir and mixed chorus (which includes the only male voices involved in this opera) offstage literally dis tances the mystical and supernatural dimension from the scenic reality, and transfigures the dying woman’s hallu cinations of salvation.
THE ONLY COMIC OPERA Gianni Schicchi is Puccini’s only con tribution to the history of Italian opera buffa, a musical theatre genre which has been repeatedly declared dead since the second half of the 19th cen
tury, and is only represented in the mo dern repertoire by a few works by Mo zart, Rossini and Donizetti – together with the solitary pieces Falstaff and Gianni Schicchi. In fact, Verdi’s Falstaff in 1900 launched an ongoing buffa renaissance, although only Gianni Schicchi has survived from this. Works like Le donne curiose (1913) by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, Madame Sans-Gêne (1915) by Umberto Giordano or La via della finestra (11919) by Riccardo Zandonai would be a welcome enrichment to current opera schedules as well. Dante’s Divina Commedia, which contains a brief episode about the his torical Florentine mediaeval knight Gianni Schicchi de’ Cavalcanti, was one of Puccini’s favourite books, and he planned several times over the course of the years to take material from it for an opera. However, his librettist Forzano did not rely primarily on Dante, but on an anonymous Dante commentary from the 14th century, which Pietro Fanfani transcribed for his edition of the Divina Commedia in 1866. He also modelled his principal characters on the style of the commedia dell’arte, portraying Gianni Schicchi as Arlecchino, his daughter Lauretta as Colombina, Buoso’s son in law Betto Di Signa as Zanni, and his cousin Simone as Pantalone. The comic figures of the doctor and notary also play important roles. The fact that Forzano’s libretto is also a modern ori ginal creation is clear in many macabre details, such as the onstage presence of a corpse which is unceremoniously dragged off to another room for the pur pose of forging the will. Even though Puccini had not con tributed any work to the repertoire of opera buffa before Gianni Schicchi, it
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ARNOLD JACOBSHAGEN
should not be forgotten that there are comic scenes, situations and charac ters in several of his operas. This is most evident in La Bohème, but also the sacristan in Tosca is a typical buffo bass, and La rondine, Puccini’s alleged flirtation with the genre of operetta, was also relatively recent. However, he faced entirely different challenges with Gianni Schicchi, which were pri marily due to the unusual structure of the libretto. In a way, the entire work is a single vast ensemble scene of the fifteen cha racters in the piece, almost all of which are constantly on stage. Even Lauretta’s famous brief aria “O mio babbino caro” is not isolated, but is part of the over all ensemble structure. The presence of the characters does not come across as static, as the music keeps the movement and action of the drama going. Puccini compensates for the uni formity on stage above all by extreme
differences in instrumentation and fle xibility in the treatment of the orches tra. His thematic motifs are based on short melodic cells which are subjected to continuous repetition and variation. The first third of the opera shows a ma ximum uniformity in the motifs with the broadly designed ostinato struc tures. The suggestive insistence on such elementary structures is impres sive in the context of modern music by its major potential for innovation. The motor repetitions not only anticipate the Machine Music of the 1920s, but are used primarily in film music later. The Puccini admirer Ber nard Herrmann developed the “hy pnotic repetition” in Vertigo (1958) and other compositions for Alfred Hitch cock to a genuine film music blueprint. This shows Puccini even in his only comic opera to be a worthy represen tative of modern music.
ELEONORA BURATTO as ANGELICA (SUOR ANGELICA)
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Following pages: SERENA SÁENZ als LAURETTA BOGDAN VOLKOV as Rinuccio SUPERNUMERARY of the VIENNA STATE OPERA (GIANNI SCHICCHI)
LETTERS
SUFFERING, SUFFERING, SUFFERING TO SYBIL SELIGMAN presumambly at the beginning of 1912 Now that I can have something cheerful [probably the later discarded comic opera Anima Allegra, or La rondine, note], I am looking for the contrast – suffering, suf fering, suffering, that is the essence of life. I want to describe moral suffering, without blood or violent drama.
TO GIUSEPPE ADAMI Torre del Lago, Oktober 23, 1915 Dear Adamino, I’ve taken up La Houppelande for the time being. Is it all right with you that we go to work and look over the text book? I think if you were here, every thing could be done in a week. Then you could also finish the Rondine, and we would talk seriously about the Zoccoletti. Especially the third act. I dare to do the Tabarro in a few weeks, and I think it would be a good thing. If only for reasons of contrast, that suits me (it seems to me) better than the Zoccoletti at the moment. Reply to me if you want to, if you can, if you feel like coming here for a few days. Best regards from... ANJA KAMPE as GIORGETTA (IL TABARRO)
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Following page: MICHAELA SCHUSTER as PRINCESS SUPERNUMERARY of the VIENNA STATE OPERA (SUOR ANGELICA)
TONI MORRISON / THE BLUEST EYE
“WANT A PENNY?” HE HELD OUT A SHINY COIN TO US. FRIEDA LOWERED HER HEAD, TOO PLEASED TO ANSWER. I REACHED FOR IT. HE SNAPPED HIS THUMB AND FOREFINGER, AND THE PENNY DISAPPEARED. OUR SHOCK WAS LACED WITH DELIGHT. WE SEARCHED ALL OVER HIM, POKING OUR FINGERS INTO HIS SOCKS, LOOKING UP THE INSIDE BACK OF HIS COAT. IF HAPPINESS IS ANTICIPATION WITH CERTAINTY, WE WERE HAPPY.
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LETTERS
AND THE COMEDY? AND LIFE? TO GIUSEPPE ADAMI
Torre del Lago, undated
Dear Adamino, I hear that you want to wait because of the comedy. That is not a bad idea. Even more so as you will bring it out for Lent polished and thought through once more (if it needed it); and besides, you are the su preme judge. I‘m working a bit on the Tabarro. I have written the finale (to the river). But (oh dear, says Adami) I need verses. Time is short. Best wishes to all from your... See you at Christmas.
TO GIOVACCHINO FORZANO Milan, 1916 I told Tito [Ricordi, note] all Angelican about the poison in the lettuce and the golden rain, and he was astonished. I will write to you again tomorrow. It’s cold here and al ready dark at seven, so you bump into pedestrians, be cause the lights aren’t as golden as in the little church of Angelica. From now on, everything unevangelical is unimportant to me.
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AND THE COMEDY? AND LIFE?
TO GIUSEPPE ADAMI Torre del Lago, 27 July 1916 Dear Adamino, ... Do you have any ideas? I’m looking, but I can’t find anything. And the comedies? And life? What a miserable life one leads! I have spent this month in a terrible state! What a futile thing art is! But for us it is a necessity, for mind and body! Best wishes to all ...
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Following page: ELEONORA BURATTO as ANGELICA (SUOR ANGELICA)
AMBROGIO MAESTRI as GIANNI SCHICCHI (GIANNI SCHICCHI)
IMPRINT GIACOMO PUCCINI
IL TRITTICO SEASON 2022/23
Publisher WIENER STAATSOPER GMBH, Opernring 2, 1010 Wien Director DR. BOGDAN ROŠČIĆ Music director PHILIPPE JORDAN Commercial director DR. PETRA BOHUSLAV General editor NIKOLAUS STENITZER Design & concept EXEX Layout & typesetting MIWA MEUSBURGER Cover picture CHEMA MADOZ, SIN TÍTULO, 2004 © BILDRECHT, VIENNA 2023 Cover concept MARTIN CONRADS, BERLIN All performance photos by MICHAEL PÖHN Printed by PRINT ALLIANCE HAV PRODUKTIONS GMBH, BAD VÖSLAU TEXT REFERENCES All texts in this programme book are original contributions; English translation of the letters by Nikolaus Stenitzer. Reproduction only with approval of Wiener Staatsoper GmbH / Dramaturgy. Abbreviations are not marked. Holders of rights who were unavailable regarding retrospect compensation are requested to make contact.
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