English Touring Opera "Il Tabarro" & "Gianni Schicchi" by Puccini

Saturday 21st May 2011

19:30

Perth Theatre

Two single act operas set in 1918 both presented in one evening and separated by an interval.Conducted by ETO Music Director Michael Rosewell, sung in the original Italian with English captions and performed with a 26-30 piece orchestra.

Puccini's two hour-long operas Il tabarro (The Cloak) and Gianni Schicchi could hardly be more different. The former is a moody romance, evoking the lives of people living and working on a barge on the river Seine, and ending – in a terrifically suspenseful manner - with a grotesque murder.

Gianni Schicchi is a sparkling high comedy about a family inheritance, and an exuberant hymn to beauty of the river Arno in Florence. Puccini shows all his fine sense of humour in depicting the greedy relatives who assemble for the death of their aged relative, and whose mighty disappointment with the will leads them to engage a wily Florentine (Gianni Schicchi) to impersonate the old man and rewrite the will. Schicchi, of course, has his own agenda, and the wit to achieve it.

Composed by Puccini near the end of his career in opera, these show his expert craftsmanship in shaping drama and character, and his extraordinary lyrical gift, epitomised in the lovely aria 'O mio babbino caro'. That aria will be sung by the wonderful Paula Sides, with Richard Mosely Evans in the title role, and Julie Unwin and Simon Thorpe in the leading roles in Il tabarro.

There is will captions for this performance.

Running time for Il tabarro: 1 hour and for Gianni Schicchi: 55 mins. Total running time: 2 hours, 15 mins (including 20 min interval)