Puccini: Il Tabarro

This is a new production from Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Il Tabarro is one of the three one-act operas that make up Giacomo Puccini’s Il Trittico. he element of Didier Gold’s Houppelande that most attracted Puccini was the opportunity to represent a river in music; it acts as a backdrop to the plot and determines its pace. The importance of this atmosphere is enormous, because it is linked to the mise en scène more tightly than is usual. The action takes place entirely on a barge on the Seine in Paris, which takes centre stage. The music describing the river uses a cyclic repetition of ostinato patterns, representing the monotonous flowing of the water, as inexorable as destiny and as regular as the flow of time. In the first part of Tabarro, the pulse of the river represents the life of the downtrodden in this world – longshoremen and boatmen. But even when it disappears, the musical identity between drama and location persists.