Giacomo 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. Michele is married to the young Giorgetta and shares a life full of hardships with her on a barge on the river Seine. She is in love with Luigi, a young longshoreman hired by her husband during the loading of the barge. When Michele overhears his wife arranging a night-time rendezvous with Luigi, he waits for the man and attacks him, forcing him to admit he is his wife's lover before finally strangling him.

He then hides the body under his cloak (il tabarro), and when Giorgetta, in mortal fear, comes on deck and asks Michele if he does not wish her to come and rest near him under his cloak, her wronged husband throws it open and Giorgetta discovers in horror her dead lover's body rolling at her feet. The 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.