2023-10-07 21:30:00
It’s dark on the wide open and almost empty stage. Only four oversized neon letterings, suspended one behind the other from the laces, can be seen: ‘HEAVY’, ‘BEING’, ‘LIGHT’, ‘HAPPINESS’ – empty words that can be put together in different ways, glow alternately or are illuminated differently. They come from a key sentence from Giacomo Puccini’s “Il tabarro” (“The Coat”), the first of the three one-act plays of “Il tratico” (1913-1918): “How difficult it is to be happy!”
As if they wanted to chase happiness like a rainbow, in the background of the actual action on the ramp, people apparently coming from a Parisian fair parade past, colorfully dressed, with balloons in the glittering confetti shower, always in tempo with the music in which the constant flow of the Seine is omnipresent. But little by little the band of happy people disappears; instead, exhausted dock workers in yellow vests appear, who are visibly finding it difficult to move. This makes it abstractly clear how strongly the tragedy that unfolds between the barge owner Michele, his wife Giorgetta and the dock worker Luigi, who is in love with her, is influenced by precarious living conditions.
Mussolini speeches for dinner
Tatjana Gürbaca made her remarkable directorial debut at the Vienna State Opera in Henrik Ahr’s deliberately sparse but all the more coherent stage design, which is only slightly changed in the other two parts of “Trittico”. A year following the Salzburg Festival, which showed “Il tratico” directed by Christof Loy, and over forty years following the last state opera production of Puccini’s late masterpiece, the three one-act plays can finally be seen as a unit once more in Vienna. Unlike in Salzburg, however, in Vienna the original order of the pieces is adhered to, which also involves a kind of retrograde journey through time: from Paris in the early 20th century (“Il tabarro”) to a monastery at the end of the 17th century (“Suor Angelica”) ) to the late medieval Florence of Dante Alighieri (“Gianni Schicchi”).
Although Gürbaca refrains from tracing such a large period of time, despite the presence of the images, the contemporary history of the 20th and 21st centuries always flickers through. The nuns, dressed by Silke Willrett in light gray habits and lace bonnets, might also come from the middle of the 20th century, as might Buoso Donati, choking on a feast, in “Gianni Schicchi”, Mussolini’s “not so long ago” speeches to eat. The omnipresence of authoritarian structures that are still rooted in fascism forms the connection between the three one-act plays composed by Puccini in very different ways. From this perspective, Gürbaca also describes the fates of the three central women and how they were shaped by the world of work, the church and the family.
Senseless suicide of the opera heroine
In “Il tabarro” the patriarchal pattern dominates, personified by the boatman Michele, who struggles to survive, to whom Michael Volle gives an imposing stature. His rival Luigi (the tenor Joshua Guerrero) is almost a side character, especially since Giorgetta is still attached to her shared fate with Michele because of her deceased child. It’s touching how the striking Anja Kampe as Giorgetta cradles the crumpled coat that Michele puts in her arms like a surrogate child.
Although the conflict in “Suor Angelica” only takes place between women, Michaela Schuster’s resolute princess is clearly influenced by the nobility’s sense of authority, although she can also be vaguely tender. Gürbaca pulls off the biggest coup of the evening. Because Angelica, who is banished to a monastery indicated by a wall because of an illegitimate child and which Eleonora Buratto sings with increasing intensity, is not taken away by the Madonna in the finale. Rather, the princess confronts her with the son she believed to be dead, whom her aunt initially kept hidden from her. This makes Angelica’s senseless suicide all the more tragic.
Wolfgang Fuhrmann Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 5 Clemens Haustein Published/Updated: , Marc Zitzmann Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 2
It is more difficult to reveal the hidden authority structures in the final opera buffa, “Gianni Schicchi”, especially since Puccini focuses on hypocrisy in this one-act play. Gürbaca lets the action take place on the now tunnel-like narrowed stage during the Florentine Carnival. Accordingly, the protagonists hunting for their inheritance are dressed as if in a bizarre Grand Guignol: Zita (Michaela Schuster) appears as a Hollywood diva, Rinuccio (the fluently phrasing Bogdan Volkov) rides on a donkey in a guard’s uniform, and Lauretta (the adroit Serena Saënz) gives a cheeky Funkenmariechen. Only Gianni Schicchi, who Ambrogio Maestri confidently designed, is dressed in a simple suit.
Unfortunately, in the tangle of different interests, Gürbaca loses the threads. In the turbulent carnival atmosphere, the fragile happiness of the lovers Lauretta/Ranuccio is almost lost. Because the Florentine citizens, who are characterized by class arrogance, expect a hefty dowry from a bride. Only through cunning does Schicchi save the couple and endow his daughter with splendid gifts: with Buoso Donati’s fraudulent inheritance. Despite this over-orchestrated finale, which Philippe Jordan, who is otherwise very smoothly conducting, interprets rather clumsily at the podium of the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, the boos for the directing team were completely unfair. Especially since the evening emphatically points to the pressure of social injustices and constraints that still prevail and which often destroy people’s happiness.
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