Il trittico

IL TABARRO - SUOR ANGELICA - GIANNI SCHICCHI: An Opera Triptych by Giacomo Puccini

17
Tuesday
October
19:30 - 23:00
B-Prices: € 86,00 / € 66,00 / € 44,00 / € 26,00 / € 20,00
Information about the work

IL TABARRO
[The Coat]
Libretto by Giuseppe Adami

SUOR ANGELICA
[Sister Angelica]
Libretto by Giovacchino Forzano

GIANNI SCHICCHI
Libretto by Giovacchino Forzano

First performed in New York on 14 December 1918
Premiere at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on 30 September 2023

3 hrs 30 mins / one interval

In Italian with German and English surtitles

Pre-performance lecture (in German): 45 minutes prior to each performance

recommended from 15 years
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Cast
Il tabarro
Suor Angelica
Gianni Schicchi
Our thanks to our partners

Presented by rbb Kultur and taz. Supported by Förderkreis der Deutschen Oper Berlin e. V.

17
Tuesday
October
19:30 - 23:00
B-Prices: € 86,00 / € 66,00 / € 44,00 / € 26,00 / € 20,00
Cast
Il tabarro
Suor Angelica
Gianni Schicchi
the content

About the work
No work of Puccini’s is more focused on a period of upheaval and the quest for new social models than his 3-act opera IL TRITTICO, which premiered in 1918. Since 1900 Puccini had been toying and experimenting with a new approach to the subject: combining three 1-act operas into a single whole, in which fragmentation rather than a single integral unit is key. Here he amalgamates three distinct “inks”, a trio of different colours and temperatures, which themselves capture the essence of early-20th-century Italian opera. We have IL TABARRO (The Coat), which sketches a sombre and tragic menage-à-trois in the Parisian barge-traffic milieu. The protagonists move in cramped and parochial circles, where dreams and yearnings are repressed and not talked about. Clashes erupt, emotional scars are laid bare and the solution lies only in destruction, viz. a brutal murder motivated by jealousy. The second opera in the series, SUOR ANGELICA, is one of a kind in the history of opera, having a cast made up entirely of women. The theme is again love and death and the options open to the characters. Angelica, a nun, believes suicide to be the last avenue open to her in her attempt to escape an existence controlled and determined by others. Finally GIANNI SCHICCHI, a wickedly humorous grotesque in the commedia dell’arte vein, centres on individuals as gamblers and fraudulent materialists.


About the production
The young, award-winning director Pınar Karabulut is known to Deutsche Oper Berlin audiences for her spectacular staging of Turnage’s modern Oedipus opera, GREEK, on the parking deck of the opera house. Karabulut was also invited to present a piece that she had directed at the Münchener Kammerspiele. With IL TRITTICO she now has a work in the main auditorium of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, staging three separate operas as theatre of the world, made up of different colours and temperatures on a rotating stage.

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04
DEC

Adventskalender im Foyer: Das 4. Fensterchen

African American Spirituals
with Christian Simmons and John Parr
5.00 p.m. / Rang-Foyer right
Duration: approx. 25 minutes / admission free


In Germany, it is still little known today that, parallel to the development of the European song, the spiritual in the USA looks back on a tradition that goes back to the 17th century. Created during the oppression of slavery as songs of labour, freedom, play, lamentation, celebration or lullabies, African-American spirituals form the starting point for gospel, blues and ultimately also for jazz, R&B and African-American music in general. Spirituals are characterised by their rhythmic finesse, which includes counter-rhythms, polyrhythms and syncopation. The tonality is characterised by microtonality, pentatonic scales and the varied use of the singing voice. All these elements suggest that the influences of African music, as brought to America by slaves, have survived over the centuries, mostly passed down orally, to this day.


The bass-baritone Christian Simmons, originally from Washington D.C., was a member of the Cafritz Young Artists of the Washington National Opera in the 2022/23 season and joined the ensemble of the Deutsche Oper Berlin as a scholarship holder of the Opera Foundation New York in the 2023/24 season. Over the course of the season, he will appear in roles such as Lord Rochefort / ANNA BOLENA, 2nd Harnischter / DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE, Pinellino / GIANNI SCHICCHI, Brabantischer Edler / LOHENGRIN, Oberpriester des Baal / NABUCCO and Sciarrone / TOSCA. Simmons is the district winner of the Metropolitan Opera's 2022/23 Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition, winner of the 2017 Harlem Opera Theater Vocal Competition, winner of the 2016 National Association of Teaching Singing (NATS) Regional Competition, and an Honorary Life Member of the Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts (CAAPA). A graduate of Morgan State University and the Maryland Opera Studio, Simmons is a member of the nation's first and largest music fraternity, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity of America.

John Parr was born in Birmingham in 1955 and studied at Manchester University and at the Royal Northern College of Music with Sulamita Aronovsky. He won prizes as a solo pianist at international competitions in Barcelona and Vercelli and was a member of Yehudi Menuhin's "Live Music Now". From 1985 to 1988 he was a guest repetiteur at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and worked for the Scottish Opera in Glasgow from 1989 to 1991. He came to Germany in 1991 and was Head of Studies and Musical Assistant to the General Music Director in Hanover. In 2000, Pamela Rosenberg and Donald Runnicles brought him to San Francisco Opera as Head of Music Staff. From 2002 to 2005, he was musical assistant at the Bayreuth Festival. From 2011 to 2014, he was casting director and assistant to the general music director at the Staatstheater Karlsruhe. Since August 2014, John Parr has been working at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, initially as Head of Studies and since 2018 as Head Coach.