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This evening of one-acts is like a lavish three-course dinner, prepared by a master and promising something for everyone's taste. Not since 1952 have San Francisco audiences had the rare opportunity to enjoy this unique work the way its creator intended—in its entirety and with an ideal cast. Soprano Patricia Racette, "a consummate singing actress" (Chicago Tribune) whose many San Francisco Opera triumphs include her incisive portrait of Cio-Cio San in Madama Butterfly (2007), is featured in all three operas. Also performing are baritone Paolo Gavanelli, who performed the title roles of San Francisco Opera's Rigoletto and Nabucco to great acclaim; tenor Brandon Jovanovich, who co-starred with Racette in Butterfly; and the celebrated contralto Ewa Podleś, making her belated Company debut.

Il Tabarro

Michele, the skipper of a barge on the Seine, is sitting on the dock admiring the beauty of a sunset. Soon Giorgetta emerges from the cabin and asks her husband if he is weary of gazing at the bright sunset. She then suggests that the stevedores, who have worked so hard all day, be refreshed with a glass of wine. Michele readily agrees. He looks at his wife searchingly and when he attempts to kiss her, she turns away. Glowering darkly, he goes down into the hold.
          One by one the stevedores come up on deck. They complain bitterly about the heat, but their mood improves when Giorgetta appears with the wine jug. An organ-grinder passes along the wharf, adding the sound of his music to the occasion. Tinca, one of the stevedores, and Giorgetta begin a lighthearted dance. While he makes a vigorous effort, Tinca cannot keep step with the sprightly girl. Before long, Luigi, another longshoreman, shoves Tinca aside, takes Giorgetta in his arms, and from the way the two dance together, it is obvious that they are lovers.
          When Michele emerges from the hold, the merriment ceases, and Giorgetta quickly frees herself from Luigi’s embrace. The longshoremen go back to their work, leaving Michele and Giorgetta alone on the deck. He is morose and sullen, and Giorgetta fears that he may suspect that she has a lover.
          Frugola, a dirty, ragged woman and the wife of Talpa, comes up the gangplank with a large bundle of rubbish that she has scavenged from the alleys of Paris. Michele leaves the two women alone, and Frugola proceeds to show Giorgetta the prizes of her sordid collection—a comb, old feathers, a silk scarf, a battered bracelet. Soon they are joined by Luigi, Talpa, and the other stevedores. Luigi is in a morose mood and complains bitterly about his lot in life. His despondency affects Giorgetta and she expresses a longing to return to the gay city where she had spent her childhood. Luigi grew up in the same district of Paris as Giorgetta, and the two passionately sing of their desire to return to the kind of life they had both known there.
          Talpa is impatient for his dinner, and he and Frugola take their leave. The two lovers are now alone, and Luigi rushes to Giorgetta and takes her in his arms. She pushes him away, fearful that Michele may come out on deck at any moment. She warns Luigi that if her husband found out about their clandestine meetings, he might kill them both. Luigi dejectedly replies that he would prefer death to constant separation.
          The two quickly draw apart as Michele appears. He asks Luigi why he has stayed behind, and the stevedore replies that he lingered only to ask Michele if he might leave the ship at Rouen. Michele warns him that it would be foolish to leave, for he could find no work at Rouen. Then Michele returns to his cabin. Giorgetta begs Luigi to change his mind and not leave the ship. He tells her that he cannot bear to share her with another man. They embrace passionately and agree to meet in an hour. She will light a match as a signal.
          Michele now comes out to join his wife on deck. She is obviously on edge, and he asks what ails her. Then, drawing close to her, he begs to know why she cannot love him. He attempts to draw her into his arms and evoke in her the memory of their once happy love, but Giorgetta puts him off.
          Michele stands rigidly still and gazes moodily into the river. He takes his pipe from his pocket and lights it. As the match flares, Luigi, who has been waiting anxiously for Giorgetta’s signal, mistakenly takes the light to be the predetermined signal and appears on the barge. Recognizing him, Michele catches Luigi by the throat and demands that he confess his love for Giorgetta. Luigi confesses his love, and Michele chokes him to death.
          Giorgetta appears, and Michele hastily throws his cloak over the dead man’s body. Giorgetta had heard the sounds of the struggle, but she is reassured when she sees her husband seated at the tiller. Then, attempting to dispel his evident distrust of her, she begs him to forgive her for refusing his caresses. She coquettishly asks if he wants to hold her close to him. Savagely he replies that he does—he wants her close under his cloak. Michele rises and Luigi’s body falls at Giorgetta’s feet. She draws back in horror, and Michele violently thrusts her upon her lover.

Suor Angelica

In the cloister of a convent, the Sister Monitor berates some sisters for minor church infractions and asks the other nuns to take the recreation period. Sister Genovieffa notices that the setting sun is about to strike the fountain, and the Mistress of the Novices explains to her charges that this is the first of three evenings each year when the water in the fountain is made golden by the setting sun. Sister Angelica has been busy in the garden. All that the nuns know about her is that she has been in the convent for seven years without a word or a visit from her loved ones and that, according to the Abbess, she is from a noble family and was made to take the veil as punishment for some wrongdoing.    
          The Nursing Sister runs in seeking help for a nun who had been stung by wasps; Angelica gives her some herbs to make a balm for the pain. Two Alms Sisters lead in a donkey laden with gifts, and one of them tells the nuns that there is a magnificent carriage outside the convent gate. The Abbess tells Angelica that she has a visitor—her aunt, the Princess. The latter coldly greets her niece. She has brought a document for Angelica to sign, agreeing to the marriage of Angelica’s younger sister and the division of family property. The Princess remains hard and unyielding toward her niece, still unforgiving for the disgrace Angelica brought to the family. The tortured girl begs for news of her son—the baby she had seen only once before it was taken from her—and is told that he died two years earlier.
          Alone, Angelica laments the death of her child in heaven and, in a frenzy of despair, thinking only of how to join her child in heaven, resolves to commit suicide. She gathers herbs and flowers and makes them into a poison, which she drinks. Bidding the convent farewell, Angelica realizes her sin and, in despair, begs the Virgin’s forgiveness for her suicide. In answer to her prayer, she sees a vision of the Madonna leading a little boy toward her. Sister Angelica dies in peace as a choir of angels promises her salvation.

Gianni Schicchi 

The wealthy Florentine Buoso Donati is ill and his relatives are anxiously awaiting his demise. Upon his death, their exaggerated grief changes to anger when they hear the rumor that Donati has left everything to the church. Impatiently, they begin to search the room for Donati’s will. The young Rinuccio finds it but will not allow the others to read it until he has their permission to marry Lauretta, the daughter of Gianni Schicchi. They assure him that he may wed anyone he chooses and anxiously unroll the will. All are bitterly disappointed when they discover the rumor is true; Donati has indeed left his entire fortune to a monastery. Rinuccio finally manages to quiet the agitated group with the suggestion that there is one man in Florencewho can help them—the talented Gianni Schicchi. He is certainly the only man clever enough to suggest some kind of trick for nullifying the will. At first the relatives scorn his suggestion, saying Schicchi is from the country, and they think that the young man is merely trying to further his romance with Schicchi’s daughter. But Rinuccio vigorously defends the Tuscan and declares that a man of Schicchi’s talents is a credit to the wonderful city of Florence.
          Now Schicchi himself arrives, accompanied by his daughter, and the problem is put before him. He refuses to have any part in the plan and expresses his contempt for the rapacious relatives. Rinuccio implores him to help and Lauretta adds her entreaties. Schicchi finally agrees and before long comes up with an idea: since no one knows as yet that Donati is dead, he himself will impersonate the old man and dictate a new will. They are interrupted in their plan by the arrival of the doctor. Hiding from view, Schicchi impersonates Donati’s voice, saying he is better but resting and asking the doctor to return later. Schicchi then dresses in Donati’s night clothes and climbs into his bed, warning the relatives that if anyone should find out about the deception, they will all suffer a severe punishment.
          A notary is summoned and while awaiting his arrival, the relatives arrange the distribution of Donati’s property, each privately promising to pay Schicchi if he will give them the best—the house, the mule, and the saw mills. Now the notary arrives, accompanied by two witnesses. Schicchi proceeds to dictate the will. He makes a few trifling bequests to the relatives—but when it comes to the best of the property, he leaves it all to himself! The relatives are furious but, remembering the penalty that will be inflicted on them if they betray Schicchi, they can do nothing. As soon as the notary leaves, the relatives attack Schicchi, attempting to take as much as possible as Schicchi drives them from the house, which is now his. Rinuccio and Lauretta stay behind. Lauretta is now the daughter of a rich man, and the two lovers can get married. As they sing happily of their love, Schicchi turns to the audience and tells them that for his trickery the great Dante has consigned him to Hell. But if they, the audience, have enjoyed themselves, would they kindly, by their applause, return the verdict of not guilty?

A Cloak of Happiness and Sorrow: Puccini's Glorious Tryptich

Critics have often carped at Giacomo Puccini’s skill as a composer. Il Trittico, his 1918 triptych of operas, is an ingenious riposte to his detractors. Tragedy, melodrama, and ribald (black) humor are presented across three entirely separate works. Over three hours of music, we see and hear violence, lust, sentimentality, personal conviction, greed, and one­upmanship. But for many the operas are perplexing: Why have three? Why present them together in the same evening?

 Originally, Puccini conceived the opera as a diptych, with only a tragedy (Il Tabarro) and a comedy (what would become Gianni Schicchi) forming a negative impression of each other across the interval. But the highly experienced composer found that contrast too obvious and therefore decided upon Suor Angelica, creating a mystical and ambiguous heart to the triptych (though it was the first to suffer the chop when the work was revived). Peopled by saints and sinners, Il Trittico is at the apex of Puccini’s output, with his lyrical gift underlining the stories of these characters.

 For those familiar with Puccini’s great lyrical tragedies, Il Tabarro comes as no surprise. Indeed, so clear was the link between Il Tabarro and the composer’s previous Parisian opera La Bohème that he quotes from his earlier masterpiece (a trick suggested by his librettist Giuseppe Adami). However, unlike the tear­inducing vignettes of Murger’s 1849 play La Vie de Bohème, giving a textbook illustration of an artistic and liberal existence, La Houppelande, the play on which Il Tabarro is based, is much cruder. Puccini was instantly attracted to the marked difference between the characters’ life on the barge on the Seine and Giorgetta’s romantic ambition: “This lifestyle of the boatmen and stevedores dragging out their wretched existence in the traffic of the river, resigned to their lot, is in complete contrast to the longing that throbs in Giorgetta’s breast—a yearning for dry land, regret for the noisy clamor of the suburbs, for the lights of Paris. Love snatched at for the odd quarter of an hour is not enough for her. Her dream is to escape, to tread the pavements, to leave the cabin on the water where her child died.”

 Adami, who had been Puccini’s librettist for La Rondine, responded with a libretto alarmingly quickly. His versified text was perhaps more refined than what Puccini was looking for. Where Il Tabarro would differ entirely from La Bohème (and indeed Puccini’s previous collaboration with Adami) was in the sweep of its score. Moving away from the traditional Italianate “number opera” approach, with arias and choruses separated out (most notable, perhaps, in the operetta­infused La Rondine, which preceded Il Trittico), Puccini wrote a seamless underscore for this new Parisian drama. The rise and fall of the Seine (sounding more like the swell of Debussy’s La Mer) portends a darker, more troubled voyage. The sounds of a car horn, sirens and the shouts of the other works on the river tell us that we are in a brutal contemporary world. Puccini gestures at dance rhythms (though undermined by nagging discords), but it is a gloomy pizzicato motif in the strings that most underlines the tragedy which is to unfold. Taking up the triple time meter of the waltzes that Giorgetta hears far off (that “noisy clamour of the suburbs”), the motif’s bleak thud makes us realize that her dream of escape is futile. It is, of course, this motif that Puccini plays again at the tragic close of the opera. Taking his cue from Verdi, who recalls the Duke’s lusty theme as Rigoletto discovers his dying daughter in the sack, Puccini presents the morbid waltz as Giorgetta sings “Tutti quanti portiamo un tab­baro che asconde qualche volta una gioia, qualche volta un dolore” (“We all carry a cloak that conceals sometimes happiness, sometimes sorrow”). Puccini has musically sealed Giorgetta’s fate right from the beginning and her romantic ambition (typified in the “far off” sounds and by Luigi’s lifeless body) is over. As quickly as this punchy postcard of an opera has begun, Puccini has ended it.

Following this grim, modern disaster, Puccini wanted to write an extreme antidote. Yet despite the jovial fripperies of La Bohème, the toddling Sacristan in Tosca, or the politically incorrect mockery of the Japanese characters in Madama Butterfly, Puccini was no obvious comic. However, it was an ambition of his to pay homage to his bel canto predecessors who gave the operatic repertoire the gift of Italian comedy. Likewise, Verdi, although as disposed to tragedy as Puccini, nevertheless left behind Falstaff, that great humorous apotheosis to nineteenth­century Italian opera. Despite the exemplars, it was difficult to find the text that would inspire Puccini’s nascent comic talent. Having researched possibilities far and wide, including George Bernard Shaw, it was the librettist Giovacchino Forzano (who also provided the text for Suor Angelica) who suggested a few lines from Dante’s Inferno. Forzano’s resulting opera is a brilliant mix of medieval moral and contemporary comedy. Puccini, however, wasn’t sure and, as ever with his eye on the audience, doubted that the general public would get Gianni Schicchi.

 Whatever his doubts, the composer launched into writing his pithy setting of Forzano’s text (writing the work simultaneously with Suor Angelica), though little is known about the gestation of either piece as Forzano lived extremely close to Puccini and there­fore no letters survive (or were ever written). Motivically sparse, Puccini was clearly keen to move quickly from one moment to the next in Gianni Schicchi, never languishing on lyrical outpourings as with Il Tabarro. Small cells of musical ideas make up the majority of the drama of this third part and it is only very rarely that the composer lavishes his melodic gift on his characters. One such moment is the literally show­stopping aria “O mio babbino caro.” Although associated by many with the heat of Tuscany and the gen­tly wayward antics of the English abroad in James Ivory’s delicious film of A Room with a View, it is actually written in a deeply ironic mood. Lauretta may plead to her wily and witty father in a sincere fashion, but she is trying to get her way and cunningly uses her girlish charm (and her unbridled musical sincerity) to win him round. Rinuccio is associated with the other conspiratorial characters by relation, but his candor and honesty are underlined by Puccini’s warm and charming music. When he sings “Firenze è como un albero fiorito” (“Florence is like a tree in flower”), it is impossible not to be won over by his zeal. Gianni Schicchi himself sees in Rinuccio a reliable heir and over the course of the opera, the pithy motifs of the embittered false mourners give way to the unbounded musical outbursts of the lovers’ final pages.

 Puccini’s great skill was in pacing the drama; Schicchi (and Puccini, his willing musical accomplice) disposes of each of the dead Buoso’s treasures—the house, the ass, and the mill at Signa—in a perfectly timed and witty manner. Although Puccini has no truck with delineating each of the greedy relatives, he is rightly careful about setting up and delivering the comedy. Schicchi is clear in his intentions to leave the money to his daughter and her fiancé and Puccini allows them the final musical honors. As Lauretta and Rinuccio embrace and sing “Firenze da lontano ci parve il Paradiso!” (“Florence, far off, seemed like Paradise!”), Schicchi wittily concurs that his duping was the best way of disposing of Buoso’s wealth. Puccini gives final punctuation to the proceedings with a bold and brusque full stop, thus ending his concise comedy. Just as Tabarro ended in horror, so Schicchi ends in sunshine.

 Amazing, then, to consider that this deft and genuinely droll opera (a rarity, if ever there was one) was not only composed simultaneously with Suor Angelica, but also written to a text by the same librettist. It is often said that as well as being fabulous jokers and perpetual children, the Italians are unashamedly sentimental. The moral humor of Gianni Schicchi is a sure rebuttal to the latter, while Suor Angelica shows Puccini in full emotional flow. Having been brought up in the cathedral music of his hometown of Lucca, Puccini was returning to his roots in writing Suor Angelica. The lachrymose tale of the young nun who learns of her illegitimate child’s death is right out of a Victorian genre painting. Yet, Puccini paints with an enormously broad and generous brush, allowing what, in other hands, could seem merely cloying to and not its milieu that was truly important in the piece. “The story is really one of passion, and it’s only the environment that is religious.” Seen in those terms it is another manifestation of passion, whether it is Sister Angelica’s convictions, Michele’s violent jealousy in Il Tabarro, or Lauretta and Rinuccio’s youthful romance in Gianni Schicchi. For Puccini, Suor Angelica remained his favorite of the works and for that reason alone it should remain at the heart of any perfor­mance of this operatic trio.

 Following two years of performances after its premiere at the Met in 1918, Suor Angelica was dropped from the evening and soon the trilogy itself was broken up, with various parts serving as curtain raisers to works as diverse as Strauss’s Salome, Schoenberg’s Erwartung, or Ravel’s L’Heure Espagnole. So what do we learn by seeing these three entirely separate works side by side? Some have pictured the evening as journey from darkness to light, yet now such a reading seems glib. Apocryphally one critic entered the opera house entirely unprepared for what he was about to see, promptly misread the drama, and came up with many ludicrous suggestions as to how the action across all three “acts” might be linked, with Buoso, for example, the owner of the convent in which Sister Angelica was a resident. Looking at the operas now, and despite critical claims to the contrary, it is staggering to appreciate what simultaneous concision and sweep he was able come gloriously to life. At the same time as creating the character of Sister Angelica, all sincerity and light, the composer crafted the Princess, perhaps the cruellest demon in all drama.

 Like Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, which would follow some thirty years later, Suor Angelica is a series of episodes showing the passing of time in convent life. Relatively static in comparison to the dramatic outer flanks of Il Trittico, this central cloistered work is a haven of calm in the course of the evening. It is only the arrival of the Princess, Angelica’s aunt, that the contemplative still of the nunnery (or the hospital, in the case of the current production) is disturbed. Puccini describes her arrival with an abrupt and altogether harsh motif and what ensues is perhaps one of the clearest delineations between good and evil anywhere in opera. Confronted by this horror—much like Cio­Cio­San in Madama Butterfly before her—Sister Angelica’s goodness cannot endure. But Puccini, taking on the morality of the genre­painting world, creates a glorious epiphanic miracle as Angelica hears a choir of angels that promise her salvation. Many have carped that Puccini was unable to create the whirl of transcendental bliss that Wagner had been able to summon in more mythological circumstances. Yet, seen as the musical exultation of a born and bred Catholic Mediterranean, it would be hard not to be moved by the enormous commotion that Puccini heralds from his forces. At a time when a young generation of Italians were being sent to early deaths in the war, many must have felt in deep need of such a miracle. Fashion and distrust for the religious and overly sincere, however, have forced Suor Angelica out of its central position in the triptych. Like those medieval three­panelled works to which the umbrella title of Puccini’s tripartite masterpiece refers, Suor Angelica is the image of true serenity positioned between two more humane characters. But Puccini was keen to stress that it was its message to conjure in these brief but telling mini­dramas.

 From the through­composition of Il Tabarro, successfully blurring forms—as so deftly achieved in La Fanciulla del West— thereby refuting the “number opera” tag, through the episodic scènes lyriques of Suor Angelica, to the pithy genre play of Gianni Schicchi, this is Puccini, the musical dramatist, playing with all his toys in the course of one evening. The score is littered with the “new sounds” of European music—rich chromaticism, verging on atonality at times, pentatonic harmonies, “found” instruments— yet it is also at the apotheosis of the Italian tradition to which all three works constantly refer. When Toscanini, the great Italian maestro, conducted Turandot, Puccini’s last opera written two years after the completion of Il Trittico, he refused to conduct the reconstructed finale by Franco Alfano. Arriving at to the final bars that Puccini had fully orchestrated, Toscanini supposedly said, “the opera ends here, because at this point the Maestro died. Death was stronger than art.” It has been suggested that with those bars came the end of a “golden century” of Italian opera. Yet for all the greatness and glory of Turandot, the work is essentially a genre­bending hybrid with chinoserie, Stravinsky­esque rhythms, and batteries of chorus, percussion, and brass. Il Trittico on the other hand, about small stories, encompassing naturalism, tear­jerking religiosity, and side­splitting humor, is the true bookend to this great wave of creativity. Within these three diverse works, the Tuscan master created a wonderfully balanced picture of humanity in music.

• Tue Sep 15 2009   8pm
• Fri Sep 18 2009   8pm
• Thu Sep 24 2009   7:30pm High-definition video projection screens will be featured on the balcony level for this performance.

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• Sun Sep 27 2009   2pm High-definition video projection screens will be featured on the balcony level for this performance.

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• Wed Sep 30 2009   7:30pm High-definition video projection screens will be featured on the balcony level for this performance.

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• Sat Oct 3 2009   8pm

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• Giorgetta: Patricia Racette
• Luigi: Brandon Jovanovich
• Michele: Paolo Gavanelli
• La Frugola: Catherine Cook
• Il Talpa: Andrea Silvestrelli
• Il Tinca: Matthew O'Neill
• Two Lovers: Tamara Wapinsky, David Lomelí
• A Song Vendor: Thomas Glenn

• Sister Angelica: Patricia Racette
• The Princess: Ewa Podleś*
• Sister Genovieffa: Rebekah Camm*
• The Monitor: Catherine Cook
• Mistress of the Novices: Daveda Karanas
• The Abbess: Meredith Arwady*
• Sister Dolcina: Leah Crocetto*
• The Nursing Sister: Heidi Melton
• Sister Osmina: Virginia Pluth
• First Lay Sister: Daniela Mack
• Second Lay Sister: Mary Finch
• First Alms Sister: Tamara Wapinsky
• Second Alms Sister: Dvora Djoraev
• Sisters: Mary Finch, Claire Kelm, Rachelle Perry, Sally Mouzon

• Gianni Schicchi: Paolo Gavanelli
• Lauretta: Patricia Racette
• Rinuccio: David Lomeli
• Nella: Rebekah Camm*
• La Ciesca: Catherine Cook
• Zita: Meredith Arwady*
• Gherardo: Thomas Glenn
• Marco: Austin Kness
• Betto: Jake Gardner
• Simone: Andrea Silvestrelli
• Amantio di Nicolao: Levi Hernandez*
• Spinellocio: Bojan Kneževic
• Gherardino: Kyle Reidy*
• Pinellino: Kenneth Kellogg
• Guccio: Valery Portnov

• Conductor: Patrick Summers
• Director: James Robinson
• Set Designer: Allen Moyer
• Costume Designer: Bruno Schwengl*
• Chorus Director: Ian Robertson