Il Trittico, Opéra de Paris review - reordered Puccini works for a phenomenal singing actor

So here in Paris, as at Salzburg in 2022, it’s no longer “Puccini’s Trittico” but “the Asmik Grigorian Trittico”. Which would be a very bad idea if she were a lazy diva like Anna Netrebko. But Grigorian works selflessly within wonderfully strong casts. In league with Christof Loy’s viscerally demanding productions and Carlo Rizzi’s infinitely sympathetic conducting, she sets the seal on one of the greatest operatic events I’ve ever experienced.

In recent years, having returned to the three masterpieces – in their totality probably Puccini’s supreme offering – in Zoom classes, I’ve found more subtle connections with Dante as a source of inspiration than just the basics, which are the harsh barge life on the scene, Il Tabarro (The Cloak), which builds to an inferno, the suspended life in a convent barely endured by Sister Angelica in a kind of purgatorio, and the comic heaven of forgery Gianni Schicchi undertakes, impersonating a dead man to make a better life for young lovers who at last seem destined for happiness. Place that first and you lose the parallels with ancient Greek drama, where a satyr play followed three tragedies. At least Loy ensures that his audience is with the performers from the start – this is one of those rare operas where the public is guaranteed to laugh out loud throughout – and allows Grigorian to ease her way in to a long evening as Schicchi’s daughter Lauretta. Rizzi gives her a surprising amount of space in “O mio babbino caro”, but the characterisation of a surprisingly serious teenager works – even if unmusical folk applauded prematurely last night in one of the tense silences that were an integral part of each opera.

The rest is brisk and sparkling. A virtuoso cast couldn’t always keep tabs with the conductor's brisker tempi in the vasts of the Opéra’s unwieldy Bastille home, but Loy brings them to the front of the stage for trickier ensembles, having started with a favourite placement in Étienne Pluss's vast room – relatives against a slanting wall on the right (I hope they could be seen from all parts of the house).

Details are impeccable and original – a real rogue-outsider of Cousin Betto (Manel Esteve Madrid), a randy couple (Theresa Kronthaler’s La Ciesca and Iurii Samoilov’s Marco), straitlaced father and son Gherardo and Gherardino (Dean Power, coming into his own as one of the carefree incidental lovers in Il Tabarro, the other (soprano Ilanah Lober-Torres, dressed like Lauretta) and Vojtěch Krása – the only child in the three operas that gets to live, another reason for Schicchi being placed last). Even lawyer Amantio di Nicolao stands out, baritone Alejandro Baliñas Vieites as sonorous as the suave orchestra at this point.

Instrumental touches are felicitous throughout, not least the rippling of the Arno and its tributaries in Rinuccio’s paean to Florence (Alexey Nekludov, handsome but tested by the highest part of the tessitura). Somehow even a few of the comic strokes moved me, supremely so the questioning oboe as the relatives’ reading of Buoso’s will turns from self-satisfaction to dismay.

I’ve not seen Albanian mezzo Enkeljda Shkoza for years: here she triumphs as slinky matriarch Zita, a rather well-dressed rag-picker (La Frugola) devoted to her cat and longing for a rustic life in Il Tabarro, and a moving Suora Zelatrice in Suor Angelica. The Schicchi, a peasant from the country cleverer than all the bourgeois relatives of dead Buoso, dominates from his entrance in the big and charismatic personage of Misha Kiria (pictured above with Nekludov and Grigorian), prone to occasional bouts of threatening violence, a keynote in all three of Loy’s productions, where the director draws convincing physicality from all his singers. A nice idea to find just before the end that he's wrestled back the candlesticks and other booty the relatives tried to make off with. Maybe in Il Tabarro there's too much going on stage right, not all of it fathomable (why the mime artist holding a one-leg-high-against-the-wall pose for minutes?) But we have the barge, streetlights exactly like those in Act Two of Barrie Kosky’s Royal Opera Die Walküre, and odd bits of second-hand furniture placed downstage for some of the action (pictured above: Grigorian's Giorgetta dances to a barrel organ waltz with Andrea Giovannini's Tinca while Josha Guerrero's Luigi looks on).

The tenor lover here, Joshua Guerrero, has it all; Grigorian’s Giorgetta, grasping in occasional passionate outbursts at a last chance for happiness, is otherwise perceptively restrained and nervous; Roman Burdenko rightly dominates as her jealous husband Michele, poignant in his yearning for vanished past times when the two held each other and their ill-fated child under his cloak, terrifying in revenge. This is by no means a weaker opera than the other two; as usual, Puccini paces perfectly from genre scenes to focus on the central melodrama, rooting it all in a plausible realism with more felicitous touches. Rizzi captures the ebb and flow of it all, the Seine running through it, with absolute mastery. In Suor Angelica, the orchestration is super-refined – in this order, a remarkable feat highlighted with heartbreaking delicacy. Loy builds as deft a picture of different personalities within a convent as deftly as Richard Jones in his children’s-hospital setting – the naive former shepherdess Sister Genovieffa is charmingly portrayed by Margarita Polonskaya – but there are no twists here until the central confrontation of Angelica with her seemingly inflexible princess-aunt.

Karita Mattila shows a woman barely in control of her outward severity, clearly dreading the worst news she brings her niece (the death of Angelica’s illegitimate son. The two pictured below). The force of this Angelica’s wildness, also barely controlled, breaks out with terrifying force after one brief embrace, sending legal documents flying – a deliberate echo on Loy's part of the scattered papers in Schicchi – and knocking over a chair. The catastrophic information leads her to breakdown, ripping off her habit and wimple, taking the child’s clothes out of the suitcase the stricken nuns bring her (presumably in earlier preparation for her leaving the convent – the backstory is left vague). “Senza mamma”, the second aria to be applauded, in the right place but not appropriate, is perfect both emotionally and technically; the grace Angelica feels after it leads to a soaring usually taken offstage.  

Angelica puts on a chic black dress, also from the suitcase, has a smoke and finds the right herbs to join her son in heaven. The realisation that she’s lost her mind leads to worse. The “vision” of the child, usually avoided or made ironic, gives a further emotional turn of the screw, a perfect and emotionally gut-wrenching end to an equally perfect evening. I'm glad everyone will be able to experience it eventually on the free EU channel OperaVision.

• Il Trittico at the Bastille until 28 May. A film is being made, and the production will air on OperaVision (free) from July
• More opera reviews on theartsdesk