Chapter 12 - Amore, dolore e buonumore: dramatic and musical coherence in Il trittico

Summary

“Love and suffering were born with the world.”

Puccini, letter to Luigi Illica, 8 Oct 1912

Puccini's operatic triptych, Il trittico, is comprised of the three one-act operas: Il tabarro, a story of illicit love; Suor Angelica, a tale of a nun's suffering at the loss of her illegitimate child; and Gianni Schicchi, a dark comedy in which both love and loss are given a morbidly humorous twist. The Trittico was always intended by the composer to be performed in a single evening, and it will be treated as a tripartite entity in this chapter. The first two editions, from 1918 and 1919, group all three works together, which was at Puccini's insistence. In an unpublished letter to Carlo Clausetti, dated 3 July 1918, the composer reveals how he clashed with publisher Tito Ricordi over this issue:

There remained the question of the editions—that is, [Tito Ricordi] spoke of them immediately and pacified me by saying that they will publish the works together and separately. But I think that he was not truthful because the separated ones will never see the light of day. And what will happen with the enumeration? There will certainly not be two types of clichets [printing plates], one with numbers progressing through the three operas, and the other with numbers for each score, starting from number one. So, he deceived me.

Although Puccini's thoughts about a triple bill—progressive for its time—began as early as 1904, it was not until 1916, when Puccini contacted playwright Didier Gold for rights to his work La Houppelande (which he had seen in 1912 at the Théâtre Marigny in Paris, and which became Il tabarro), that the project began in earnest. The other two libretti were supplied by Giovacchino Forzano, who, for Gianni Schicchi, drew upon a few lines of Dante's Inferno and a more elaborate account from an anonymous 14th-century Florentine. The work had its première on 14 December 1918 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

While it is certain that the operas were intended to be performed together, the question of their interrelatedness has been hotly debated.