Puccini: Il Trittico

Tebaldi (Artist), Simionato (Artist), Gardelli (Artist), Puccini (Composer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Composer: Puccini
• Audio CD (September 12, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 3
• Label: Decca
• ASIN: B0000041PC
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #204,044 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Il Tabarro: Oh Michel? Michel? - Renata Tebaldi

2. Il Tabarro: Well, what do you think? - Renata Tebaldi

3. Il Tabarro: Oh, the great lovers, good evening! - Lucia Danieli

4. Il Tabarro: Ho! Look at my old woman! - Silvio Maionica

5. Il Tabarro: You're quite right; it's better not to think - Mario Del Monaco

6. Il Tabarro: I've been dreaming of a cottage - Lucia Danieli

See all 13 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Suor Angelica: Hail Mary, full of grace - Coro del Maggio Misicale Fiorentoino/Fanfani

2. Suor Angelica: Sisters in humility, you have failed to keep quindene - Miti Trucato Pace

3. Suor Angelica: Oh sisters in holy works - Dora Carral

4. Suor Angelica: I have a desire too! - Giuliana Tavolaccini

5. Suor Angelica: Mary be praised! - Jeda Valtraini/Dora Carral/Giuliana Tavolaccini/Mini Trucato Pace

6. Suor Angelica: Sister Angelica! - Lucia Danieli/Renata Tebaldi

See all 13 tracks on this disc

Disc: 3

1. Gianni Schicchi: Poor Buoso! - Lucia Danieli

2. Gianni Schicchi: Oh Simone? - Renato Ercolani

3. Gianni Schicchi: 'To my cousins Zita and Simone' - Lucia Danieli

4. Gianni Schicchi: So it was true! We shall see the monks - Paolo Washington

5. Gianni Schicchi: And is there no way. . . - Lucia Danieli/Miti Trucato Pace/Dora Carral

6. Gianni Schicchi: Florence is like a tree in flower - Agostino Lazzari

See all 16 tracks on this disc

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Superb Tabarro and Angelica, February 12, 2010

By 

L. Tolstoy (U.S.A.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Puccini: Il Trittico (Audio CD)

One can look at this set as either a Tebaldi fest or as three opera recordings. In terms of a tour de force for Renata Tebaldi, two of the works show her at her finest, Sour Angelica and Il Tabarro. She is fine in Schicchi, but no one is going to mistake her for a young soubrette. In the other two she is extraordinary. I have often felt that recordings did not capture the grandeur of her voice heard live in which her pianissimo high notes were crystalline and she shook the walls when she sang out. These recordings do just that. The other recording that I felt captures her voice is the Decca Cavalleria with Bjoerling if still available.

In terms of the operas themselves, I feel two of the three performances surpass my other CD, Pappano on EMI. I would give the nod to Gianni Schicci on EMI with Georgiu and Alagna. Otherwise, I prefer this set. I have seen Sour Angelica live and listened to recordings and DVD's, but I never enjoyed it until hearing Tebaldi on this recording.

Il Tabarro is quite a good, underappreciated opera, and I really enjoyed this performance in addition to Tebaldi. Merrill is vocally lush and dramatically an appropriately anguished Michelle. Del Monaco's stentorian style is well suited to Luigi and his lack of subtlety is no deficit in this role.

All in all, a terrific set, but you may want an additional Gianini Schicci.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Choosing between two golden age "Il tritticos", September 17, 2009

By 

Santa Fe Listener (Santa Fe, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Puccini: Il Trittico (Audio CD)

Il trittico has a fraction of the recordings -- and sells a fraction of the tickets -- as La Boheme or Tosca, so we are lucky to have two classic sets. both deserve fie stars, I think, even though they have matching strengths and weaknesses. I'm referring to this Decca set from the early Sixties in stereo, taped in Florecne, and a mostly mono set on EMI taped in Rome almost a decade earlier (the one installment of the trilogy in stereo is Gianni Schicchi). If you're deciding between them, here are some comparisons.

"Il tabarro' - Beginning with the least popular of the trilogy, the rivalry isn't close. The Decca set is in atmospheric stereo, well conducted by the reliable Gardelli, and boasting a thoroughly stellar cast in Tebaldi and Del Monaco as the ill-starred lovers and Robert Merrill as the murderous avenging husband, Michele. The EMI set is in boxy mono with lots of audible distortion -- the singers are suffocatingly close to the mike -- and mediocre conducting, when you can hear it. Tito Gobbi gives a charismatic reading of Michele, one of his greatest, in fact, but the forgettable Margaret Mas as Giorgetta and Giacita Prandelli as the hapless Luigi were poor choices to fill out the cast.

Suor Angelica -- In this lachrymose example of Catholic kitsch, Tebaldi is in prime territory and gives an affecting performance, but she's up against Victoria de los Angeles giving a great one. Touching as she s, Tebaldi can't approach de los Angeles for humility and humanity. In other respects the cast and conducting seem to be on a par -- neither matters all that much -- although the esteemed Tulio Serafin may be a draw on EMI to some listeners. Once again Decca's stereo far surpasses EMI's limited, boxy mono. Both Angelicas are worthy contributors to their respective sets.

Gianni Schicchi -- Here the balance of musical values goes to EMI because of a dominating performance by Gobbi as a wily, witty Schicchi, whom no one has surpassed in six decades. De los Angeles makes an incomparable Lauretta, but this is a one-aria roe, and Tebaldi scales down her voice to give us a magnificent "O mio babbino caro" in her own right. Here the imbalance has to do with comic presentation. The Decca set is cartoonish, with a buffo Schicchi from Fernando Corena that is cut from the same cloth as his vaudeville Sacristan in Tosca. EMI is far preferable in its more sophisticated, less broad comedy. Too much mugging ruins this opera, I think, and EMI gives us serviceable stereo, so the superiority of Decca's sound isn't so pronounced.

You cannot easily find the various operas by themselves, so plumping for either the EMI or Decca set is mandatory if you want these singers. At amazon Marketplace the Decca Trittico is selling at a very cheap price while the reissued EMI set has reappeared at mid-price, in case economics is your main consideration. If not, only die-hard Tebaldi fans can make a simple choice. Everyone else is stuck with two rivals that are excellent in their own right but with corresponding weaknesses in EMI's lackluster Il tabarro and Decca's overly bumptious Gianni Schicchi.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A star vehicle for Tebaldi later in her career, September 1, 2011

By 

Ralph Moore "Ralph operaphile" (Bishop's Stortford, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Puccini: Il Trittico (Audio CD)

By this stage of her career Tebaldi was losing the top notes so she avoids high C's here and those high notes she essays are sometimes harsh - yet otherwise her voice is in excellent condition, all the more so when you consider that ideally three different soprano voice types are required: dramatic, spinto and lyric. This is why Pappano chose to use three different sopranos in his modern digital set, so Tebaldi's success in all three is a testament to her technique and artistic versatility - the latter being especially impressive in a singer who was never credited with having Callas' dramatic intensity, even though certain of her roles such as Gioconda give that judgement the lie. She is mightily impressive in "Il tabarro", spurred on by Del Monaco's fabulous histrionics, her evident maturity making her characterisation of Giorgetta as a bored house (actually, barge) wife all the more convincing; Luigi is her passport to freedom and romance, an escape from the stultifying oppressiveness of her life on the river with an older husband. Del Monaco is really too forceful and heroic for the young stevedore so easily subdued and strangled by Michele but his "meglio non pensar" aria and duet with Tebaldi are thrilling. Merrill uses his beautiful baritone aptly to portray Michele's smouldering jealousy and violence; he is touching in his misery as when enacting Rigoletto and is closer in timbre to Milnes (another succesful recorded performance for Leinsdorf) than Gobbi, whose incisive tone and dramatic inflections remain inimitable but who is also saddled with so-so co-singers and mono sound.

Tebaldi lightens her voice most succesfully in "Suor Angelica" and is aptly matched with the formidable Giuletta Simionato as la Zia principesssa. She manages an even more restrained and almost girlish sound to depict Lauretta as a naive innocent in "Gianni Schicchi" but neither the cast in general nor Corena's coarse, hammy Schicchi in particular is much of an asset to the final opera, especially in comparison with Gobbi's superlative tour de force in the 1959 stereo set under Santini or the subtly amusing Schicchi of van Dam under Pappano - who delivers something of a comic surprise given his usual demeanour as a serious, noble-voiced artist.

So the "Schicchi" is a lemon and the "Suor Angelica", fine though it is, must yield to the ethereal delights of the version in Pappano's set (see my review), whereas "Il tabarro" here remains by favourite blood'n-guts-verismo performance. Fans of Tebaldi and the vastly experienced conductor Gardelli need not hesitate and as these performances never seem to be available separately you must find the 3 CD set at an affordable price.

My ideal listening assemblage of recordings for this trilogy is the Gardelli "Il tabarro" here in excellent 60's Decca sound, the Pappano "Suor Angelica" and the Gobbi "Gianni Schicchi" under Santini, both the latter being EMI recordings.