Puccini's idea of writing a trilogy of one-act operas to fill an evening has turned out less a successful innovation than an invitation to pick and choose. Only one of the operas scored an immediate popular success, the deathbed comedy Gianni Schicchi. The melodramatic Il Tabarro (The Cloak) has risen in estimation over the years, leaving the blatantly sentimental Suor Angelica to become the ugly duckling of the enterprise.
For the Anna Livia International Opera Festival's double bill from the trilogy, Anibal Lapis once again provides apt costumes for the contrasted works, but Roberto Oswald's direction of Il Tabarro is stodgy and stagy and his handling of Gianni Schicchi rises only fitfully above the level of stock comic gesture.
Simon Neal is persuasive as the sly Gianni Schicchi, but as Michele, the withdrawn husband driven to murder in Il Tabarro, his best characteristics simply don't get aired. There's pleasure to be had from the singing of the young lovers in Gianni Schicchi, Patricia Finnegan-Newell a clear-voiced if rather short-breathed Lauretta, Colin Lee a thrusting Rinuccio.
The lovers of Il Tabarro fare less well. Elizabeth Woods makes an attractive Giorgetta, but doesn't always seem able to muster the sense of vocal amplitude Puccini calls for. And as her lover, Luigi, Antoni Garfield Henry is fitful and shifty. Edel O'Brien (La Frugola in Il Tabarro and Zita in Gianni Schicchi) is a strong but not always well-centred presence.
The limitations of the stagings place a burden of representation on the orchestra that conductor Jacques Bodmer doesn't deliver on with consistency. Puccini was a master of the theatrical moment and of orchestral calculation. You wouldn't easily guess that from theses two productions.
Continues today, Friday and Sunday; bookings on 01-6771717
