“Il Trittico,” the last full-length stage work that Puccini completed before his death in 1924, is an immense undertaking. Containing three one-act operas, it’s this Italian Romantic’s mini-version of Wagner’s “Ring.” It calls for a full, dynamic orchestra, three casts of colorful characters and an onstage replica of a barge floating on the Seine in Paris. And like the “Ring,” it tests the resources and focus of every company that mounts it.
“For me, it’s the best, it’s the highest Puccini,” Gianandrea Noseda, the music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, said in an interview on Wednesday before he led a concert version of “Il Trittico” at the Kennedy Center in Washington. “In a very compact way, in less than one hour, in 50 minutes each opera, it can really tell the story perfectly.”
The National Symphony’s “Trittico,” which travels to Carnegie Hall on Sunday, is Noseda’s final program of the season at the Kennedy Center, which is expected to close this summer for a two-year renovation. Wednesday’s performance wasn’t meant to be a farewell, and it didn’t sound like one either. The musicians could have used another rehearsal, and not just because Noseda was seen prompting the singers multiple times, most egregiously when the soprano performing “O mio babbino caro” jumped from the middle of the aria to the end. (Someone seated behind me groused that it was only the most famous aria in all of opera.)
Part of Puccini’s mature genius, Noseda said in the interview, is the way each opera in “Il Trittico” (or “The Triptych”) shifts moods efficiently while maintaining a musical atmosphere distinct from the other two. In “Il Tabarro,” the boatman Michele’s hot-blooded suspicions about his wife Giorgetta’s infidelity boil over into a gruesome murder. (Disgusted, Arturo Toscanini walked out of the Italian premiere.) “Suor Angelica,” with its pastoral colors and convent setting, ends in death too, but it has the uplift of spiritual redemption. Noseda considers the peerless comedy “Gianni Schicchi,” always the critical and popular favorite of the three, the last true opera buffa, with a timeless theme about a family of gold diggers who get their comeuppance.
On Wednesday, “Tabarro” and “Angelica” cried out for sharper delineation. A piccolo tentatively chirped its way through the pastoral opening of “Angelica.” The Seine, which Puccini envisioned as its own character in “Tabarro,” didn’t exactly swirl with danger and grimy secrets. The orchestra came to life only for “Schicchi,” bursting into Technicolor splendor.
In an unusual move, Noseda reordered the operas, putting “Angelica” first to make it more manageable for Erika Grimaldi to follow the tradition of singing the soprano lead of all three operas. She eased into the title heroine’s lighter lyricism in “Angelica” before pivoting to Giorgetta’s heavy burdens in “Tabarro” and, finally, Lauretta’s winsome naïveté in “Schicchi.” Theatrically, it was effective: The placidity of “Angelica” created a false calm at the start of “Tabarro” as the waters of the Seine lapped at its banks, belying the Grand Guignol horrors to come. “Schicchi” came last as usual, ensuring the audience left satisfied.
Grimaldi, whose fussy, vibrato-laden tone turned hard on top, sounded most captivating in scaled-down recitatives, in which her voice, slender and expressive, conveyed genuine feeling. Doing triple duty as La Zia Principessa, La Frugola and Zita, the mezzo-soprano Agnieszka Rehlis explored contralto territory with a sound projecting darkness and clarity. As a young lover in “Tabarro” and Suor Genovieffa in “Angelica,” Meryl Dominguez displayed a lovely, spirited, medium-bodied lyric soprano. The mezzo-soprano Michelle Mariposa, a 2025 winner of the Laffont Competition at the Metropolitan Opera, had the evening’s most jaw-dropping instrument, with a plummy tone, easy resonance and effortless carrying power as the Monitress in “Angelica.”
The star tenor Jonathan Tetelman had been cast as Luigi and Rinuccio but canceled (without citing a reason). Stepping in as Luigi, Gregory Kunde, a standout bel canto tenor in the 1980s and ’90s, proved he could punch out mightily impressive sounds as a spinto tenor. Hakeem Henderson, as Rinuccio, had a small, pert voice.
If the night belonged to any singer, it was the baritone Roman Burdenko. His Michele clenched up in some moments, but his Schicchi was a rip-roaring delight. He brandished a trim and muscular timbre that still sounded ample, dense and lyrical, without the bluster that sometimes fills out baritone voices.
During “Schicchi,” a mouse, apparently wanting in on the fun, scampered through the orchestra seats, startling some audience members. After the show, an usher told me that, according to Kennedy Center lore, the mouse’s ancestors stowed away with a shipment of marble from Italy in the 1960s. A fondness for Puccini, she said, runs in its blood.
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