Guidance
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Il trittico: In partnership with Rolex, Principal Partner, The Royal Opera
Synopsis
Giorgetta, the wife of Michele, a Parisian barge owner, has fallen in love with Luigi, one of her husband’s workers in the dockyard – though Michele is growing increasingly suspicious. Michele forces Luigi to admit his relationship with Giorgetta and then strangles him. He covers the body with the cloak he used to wrap Giorgetta and their child, who died in infancy. Giorgetta, repentant, approaches – and Michele reveals her lover’s corpse.
Creatives
The artists and creatives behind the production
Music
Libretto
Director
Set Designer
Costume Designer
Lighting Designer
Movement Director
Discover
Richard Jones’ production situates the action among the backwaters of the Seine. The river is powerfully represented in Ultz’s stage designs, which re-create the moored barges and tall, soot-blackened buildings lining the river.
An Italian opera with French literary Roots
Giacomo Puccini’s triptych of operas, Il trittico, opens with Il tabarro (The Cloak) – a taut melodrama set in working-class Paris. It is based on the play La Houppelande by the French playwright Didier Gold, which Puccini saw in 1912. The libretto was created by Giuseppe Adami, with whom Puccini also collaborated on La rondine.
A unique musical landscape
Il tabarro opens with an evocation of the rippling waters of the Seine at dusk – a musical motif that runs throughout the opera. The score is richly varied, featuring drinking songs and an organ-grinder’s tune, as well as the heart-rending duet between Giorgetta and Michele, ‘Resta vicino a me!’ (‘Stay close to me!’).
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