Patricia Racette Is the Beating Heart of 'Trittico'

By Eman Isadiar

One can only speculate why Puccini insisted that his three single-act operas always be presented together on the same program. Faithful to the composer’s wish, San Francisco Opera’s first production in 57 years of Il trittico (The Triptych) included all three works – Il tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi. The orchestra was led by Patrick Summer, reputed Puccini scholar and music director of Houston Grand Opera.

In Il tabarro (The Cloak), Puccini evokes the intense mental anguish and guilt that are the fallout of marital infidelity. To the mix, he then adds an explosive measure of jealousy and a dash of grief for a dead child. Just when the spectators find themselves sitting in a hot, messy and volatile goo of raw human emotion, they get a shocking dose of murder.

Baritone Paolo Gavanelli inhabited perfectly the character of the aging husband, Michele. His aria “Perchè non m'ami più?” (“Why do you love me no more?”) was the heartbreaking cry of a desperate man, who, having lost his youth and his only child, now fears losing his only love.

Soprano Patricia Racette sings the part of Giorgetta in San Francisco Opera’s production of Il tabarro by Puccini (photo by Cory Weaver).

Celebrating her 20th anniversary with San Francisco Opera, soprano Patricia Racette appeared as the voluptuous Giorgetta opposite Brandon Jovanovich, who sang the part of Luigi. Their stage chemistry was intense.

A refreshing surprise came in the ragged, old character of Frugola – the wife of a drunken dock worker – sung by mezzo-soprano Catherine Cook in a brief but impressive appearance.

In sum, the opera’s idée fixe is the cloak, in whose folds Michele and Giorgetta once cuddled blissfully with their infant son, which later serves as the shroud around the corpse of Giorgetta’s lover, Luigi.

In the evening’s second opera, Suor Angelica, Patricia Racette’s voice accompanied the audience into the deepest, darkest and least visited recesses of their own psyche, to experience the bleak despair of a woman without hope and fallen from grace.

Angelica is a former member of Italian aristocracy, who brings public scorn to her family by having a child out of wedlock. So they take the child away and confine Angelica to a convent. After seven years of isolation, she is disinherited from the family fortune, and is told that her child is dead.

San Francisco Opera’s production of “Suor Angelica” is set in a 1950s-era children’s hospital (photo by Cory Weaver).

Upon hearing the news, Sister Angelica slips into a downward psychological spiral and hears the voice of her dead son inviting her to join him in heaven. She concocts and ingests a potent poison.

As painful death overtakes her, Sister Angelica remembers that suicide is a mortal sin, which fills her with deep remorse. She is, however, redeemed in a vision of her son accompanied by the Madonna. The humiliated dying nun draws her final breath in peace.

Polish contralto Ewa Podleś appeared as Angelica’s cruel aunt, the Princess, whose part she sang with a richly resonant vocal timbre.

The dimensions of Racette’s own voice were monumental, reaching from profound emotional depths to soaring dynamic peaks. While her delivery was technically flawless, it was the sincere agony of Racette's sound that made Angelica the most fragile and vulnerable creature on earth.

In the third and final opera of the set, Gianni Schicchi, Patricia Racette sang the evening’s most memorable tune and one of Puccini’s catchiest – “Il mio babbino caro” (“Oh Daddy Dearest”).

The audience burst into applause at the first sight of the bright, black and white set of Gianni Schicchi. While the detailed and realistic blue-tiled cantina of a 1950s children’s hospital was certainly impressive as the setting for Suor Angelica, it took a back seat to the eye-popping surreal décor of Gianni Schicchi.

The set of Il tabarro came in third with only two holes in the stage floor serving modestly as the barge cabin and engine room, and a stone wall backdrop vaguely resembling the banks of the Seine.

Gianni Schicchi is a character mentioned in passing in Dante’s Inferno, which takes on an entirely comical spin in Puccini’s creation. The opera is filled with smiles, chuckles and laughs from the opening bars through to the very end, and makes a delightfully sweet dessert to the three-course musical banquet of Il trittico.

Wealthy Buoso Donati is on his deathbed as his relatives mill about, anxious to know what each of them stands to inherit. Upon discovering Buoso's will, however, they are shocked to learn that the rich Florentine has left his entire estate to the local monastery. Moreover, they cannot force him to rewrite his will as he just happened to expire moments ago.

This is when a man named Gianni Schicchi enters and is greeted rather coolly. Schicchi’s daughter, Lauretta, is in love with Rinuccio of the Donati family and wishes to marry him, but the Donatis require a hefty dowry and consider themselves too good for a union with a family whose origins are unknown.

In order to endear himself to the Donatis for the sake of his daughter, Schicchi unveils his plan to impersonate the dead Buoso and write a new will in the presence of a notary. His proposition immediately meets with everyone’s favor as he promises each member of the family a significant portion of the estate.

When the notary arrives, Gianni Schicchi skillfully imitates the voice of Buoso Donati and orders a token amount be given to the monastery upon his death. He then distributes Donati’s various material possessions to the family. Finally, to the gasping shock of everyone present, he names himself – Gianni Schicchi – as the recipient of Donati’s prized ox and house.

With this surprising turn of events, Schicchi can now offer an acceptable dowry for his daughter’s marriage to Rinuccio. Being the lawful owner of the house, he then proceeds to order everyone out, knowing no one would dare oppose him as the new richest man in town.

A particularly humorous aspect of the opera was the wardrobe. Members of the Donati family were dressed unmistakably in typical Italian suits and hats of the early 1900s, almost as if they had just landed on Ellis Island. True to the image of the Italian-American matriarch, the heavy-set Donati women also proved to be adept at using their purses as weapons on their husbands.

Members of the San Francisco Opera Chorus portray the Donati family in a hilarious production of Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi” (photo by Cory Weaver).

In a 180-degree turn from his somber role as the jealous, murderous Michele of Il tabarro, baritone Paolo Gavanelli returned to the stage, this time artfully hilarious as Gianni Schicchi. Mexican tenor David Lomelí, who received glowing reviews last summer as Alfredo Germont in La Traviata, made a befitting partner to Patricia Racette’s Lauretta as the love-stricken Rinuccio.

The show’s invisible stars were stage director James Robinson, who brought this New York City Opera production to San Francisco, and chorus master Ian Robertson, who directed the longshoremen of Il tabarro, the nuns of Suor Angelica and the loud-mouthed Donati family of Gianni Schicchi.

This Trittico will surely be remembered among the most uplifting productions of San Francisco Opera in the recent past, and possibly in many more seasons to come.

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Eman Isadiar teaches piano at the Peninsula Conservatory and writes about music in the San Francisco Bay Area.