Il trittico (=Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi)
ASO82 (1985).
- Bianchi, Michele. “Il ‘caso Trittico’: Vitalità della morte e declino della vita.”
In Giacomo Puccini(#1441), 214–229.
Earlier writers found nothing to unify the three works into a trilogy (although
Mosco Carner had suggested they were like the three books of the Divina com-
media). Bianchi notes that the three plots are involved with a death that has
already occurred. Another common theme was one that obsessed Puccini: old
age and lost youth. - Leukel, Jürgen. Studien zu Puccinis “Il trittico.” Musikwissenschaftliche
Schriften, 18. Munich: Musikverlag Emil Katzbichler, 1983. 172p. ISBN 3-
87397-117-8. MT100 .P97 L5.
After a consideration of the one-act opera genre, turns to the genesis of Il trit-
tico,with many quotes from Puccini’s letters. Also a musical analysis. No
index. The book is based on the author’s dissertation, Frankfurt U., 1980. - Greenwald, Helen M. “Puccini, Il tabarro,and the Dilemma of Operatic
Transposition.” JAMS 51–3 (Fall 1998): 521–558.
A landmark study that takes on “one of the most entangled and contentious
issues of opera analysis.” Most evidence suggests that composers in the 19th
century normally transposed arias for the benefit of singers as needed, usually
down a half step. Some scholars think this practice showed indifference to
tonal relations and tonal macrostructure, but others believe that the composer
simply changed to an alternative plan, incorporating the alteration. Greenwald
cites all the relevant literature in her copious footnotes, which form a valuable
bibliographic essay. Her analysis of the opera from the tonal point of view is
elaborate and convincing. She concludes that the “study of tonal conduct
within an opera ought not, then, to be hamstrung by prescribed goals defined
only by structures frozen in a Classical aesthetic.” With a “more sophisticated
view” of these matters, one can “explore with greater if still discreet confi-
dence a musical justification for Puccini’s alterations as well as those reforged
ideas of other opera composers.” - Pinzauti, Leonardo. “Giacomo Puccini’s Tritticoand the Twentieth Century.”
In Puccini Companion(#1442), 228–243.
Finds the genesis of the opera to be involved with the deaths of publisher
Giulio Ricordi (1912) and Arrigo Boito (1918), leading to a sense of alienation
in the composer’s outlook. That feeling, blended with the new modernism,
produced the style of the work. - Greenwald, Helen M. “Verdi’s Patriarch and Puccini’s Matriarch: ‘Through
the Looking Glass and What Puccini Found There.’” 19thCM17-3 (Spring
1994): 220–236.
Finds similarities of structure and symbolic relationships between a scene from
Verdi’s Don Carlos(Philip II and the Grand Inquisitor) and Suor Angelica.
284 Opera