Puccini: Il Tabarro

Day 254

Puccini: Il Tabarro

Soloists

BBC Singers

BBC Philharmonic

Gianandrea Noseda

Puccini was definitely beyond the pale in my student days. In his book Opera as Drama Joseph Kerman famously described Tosca as a ‘shabby little shocker’ and that was fairly typical of the prevailing ethos of the time.  Yes you could go to the opera house and enjoy a good weep at La Bohème, but you couldn’t regard it as music worthy of serious attention. As a result it did take me a while to appreciate Puccini, but I how can see that he was an absolute master of musical drama - indeed his sense of dramatic pacing is second to none.

I’d not heard Il Tabarro before. I thought it was a tremendous piece. The opening scene sets the atmosphere beautifully with the gentle rocking of the river  and the noises of the city at sunset beautifully portrayed. Then Puccini has some fun evoking the music of the organ grinder with clarinets playing in consecutive sevenths. Then as the drama unfold the mood darkens and Puccini gradually drives up the tension. He was a master at creating the atmosphere of menace. Perhaps only the very end is a slight disappointment - the final chords do seem a bit perfunctory  - I have seen it suggested elsewhere the Puccini didn’t always quite know how to end his operas and I can see why people might think that.

What struck me is Puccini’s supreme mastery as an orchestrator. The contrast with Strauss’ Daphne was very telling. Strauss is usually held up one of the great orchestrators but I found so much of that score self indulgent with thick textures filled with superfluous detail. Puccini by contrast is a model of clarity with not a note wasted and a real ear for orchestral sonority. He was a complete man of the theatre in everything he did.