“…a production audiences shall remember years hence, and for all the right reasons.” Scottish Opera triumphs with Puccini’s Il Trittico.
📍 Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
📅 Seen 25 Mar 2023
🕖 6:00pm
🕖 Running time: Approx 4 hours 10 minutes (2 intervals)
🎬 Director: Sir David McVicar
🎼 Conductor: Derek Clark
⚒️ Set Designer: Charles Edwards
🪡 Costume Designer: Hannah Clark
💡 Lighting Designer: Ben Pickersgill
🩰 Movement Director: Gareth Mole
🪑 Associate Director: Greg Eldridge
🥊 Fight Director: Raymond Short
🎂 Suitable for all ages
🎭 Wheelchair Accessible Venue, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets, Audio Induction Loop
There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, but Scottish Opera’s 60th Anniversary staging of Puccini’s Il Trittico seems the exception to prove the rule. One can only marvel at the countless hours of toil which must underlie this rare chance to see all three components of the composers’ 1918 work in one sitting.
An anthology of single act tales, Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi, there is but one narrative link: the concealment of a death. Contextually they could hardly be more different otherwise, the first dealing with the rather depressing lives of turn of the century Paris barge workers; the second with the life of a convent-exiled Italian princess; the last with the farcical misadventures of a family conspiring to redirect a dead relative’s estate from a monastery and into their own pockets.
The Orchestra of Scottish Opera under imminently retiring Director of Music Derek Clark remains in the finest fettle on this latest showing. Whether taking us onto the dark leitmotif conjured waters of Tabarro, or to walk amidst the woodwind hymns of Suor Angelica’s cloisters, where tone varies, quality does not. They, like the cast, audibly revel in Schicchi’s final symphonic melange of romance and dissonance. Allies, never rivals to the human instruments on stage, they are accompanists of the highest order.
Of those ‘human instruments’, it would be a task beyond my patience to find the least criticism. Indeed the depth of talent recruited, and care in casting taken by Director McVicar is remarkable. Soprano Sunyoung Seo and Baritone Roland Wood, twin leads in the tragic first, before headlining one each of the two following, prove particularly indefatigable. As the desperate Giorgetta and careworn barge captain Michele, they circle each other, Wood a solemn foil to his wife’s caged bird desperation. Wearing Sister Angelica’s habit, Seo embodies a quieter tragedy with utter conviction, pining for reunion with the illicit child whose birth remanded her into the ‘tender’ cares of the nunnery. Finally, Young swaggers on stage as the worldly-wise Gianni Schicchi, a grinning agent of poetic justice, an accomplished trickster amongst a gaggle of amateur would-be swindlers.
They, like the cast entire are in fine voice, Seo’s puissant soprano a dynamic tool offering both lyrical smoothness and dramatic force. Young’s baritone is both rich, and articulate, able to sink into lugubrious misery and soar into wry devilment with equal facility. That they fail to completely outshine the rest of the expansive cast is a testament to the quality throughout, not least a heart-winning Francesca Chiejina, as both sweet ingenue Sister Genovieffa, and Schicchi’s daughter Lauretta complete with a delightful rendition of “O mio babbino caro”. In counterpoint, Karen Cargil’s heartless turn as Angelica’s domineering aunt is rendered in imperious voice, and deserving of every boo come the curtain call.
The stage design, or rather three distinct stage designs from Charles Edwards are fantastic. Tabarro’s dockside world is insular, and inescapable, beautifully & sultrily lit by Ben Pickersgill whilst above a bridge carries the life of the city distinct from the lot of the stevedore. Suor Angelica’s nunnery is redolent of the unlamented Magdalene laundries where unmarried Irish mothers were confined, an austere world of white-washed ‘reverence’. Schicchi’s stage is all exaggerated perspective, a gently lunatic room fit for comedy capers, though one with a final, beautiful reveal.
It’s no understatement to say that Sir David McVicar has devised a marvel with Il Trittico, one which despite the 4+ hour running time, never feels slugging or overlong. By neither pandering to, nor shying from the melodrama inherent to the verisimo Tabarro, or the sentimental pathos of Angelica, he walks a tight-rope with thrilling results. By dialling the comedy of Schicchi to 11 – but eschewing all but the most tightly choreographed chaos – he brings the entire endeavour to a titani close, and an inevitability of thunderous applause. It’s clear each role is filled by the apt performer, from a sweet & affecting Louise Winter as kind-hearted scavenger and confidante La Frugola in Tabarro, to the brief, but welcome turn from G&S adept Richard Suart as Schicchi’s grotesquely ‘enthusiastic’ doctor Maestro Spinelloccio.
Each of the three operas feels a complete undertaking, neither prequel, nor sequel to the others but whole unto themselves. Tabarro is a dark fable, a riverboat cruise into misfortune; Angelica is a deft play upon the audience’s heartstrings; whilst Schicchi is naked fun. To avoid this review becoming commensurate in length to this epic achievement, sacrifices are needed, and so the many other cast and crew whose work deserves name-checking must make do with this: all are excellent, not one distinguishing themselves in being less so than the rest.
Scottish Opera’s Il Trittico is, or rather was, that most wonderful of things: a production audiences shall remember years hence, and for all the right reasons.
Il Trittico played the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh until the 25th March 2023. It was a Scottish Opera production supported by the Dunard Fund
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