Enjoyed This More Than I Thought I Would

A complete opera offered as the BBC music magazine cover disk this month, albeit a one act opera that is part of a trilogy. The work in question is Il Tabarro by Puccini. The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the BBC Singers are conducted by Gianandrea Noseda and the soloists are Barbara Frittoli, Miro Dvorsky, Lado Ataneli, Jane Henschel, Barry Banks, Alastair Miles, Allan Clayton, Katherine Broderick and Edgaras Montvidas. It is a live recording taken from a preformance at the 2008 Proms. Puccini's not really my thing but I find the three one act operas of Il Trittico, of which this is one, easier to take than the famous cornerstones of the repertoire that get staged so much more frequently. The plot of Il Tabarro is straightforward; love gone bad, sexual betrayal, vengeful murder. The music doesn't really involve seperate scenes and isn't an aria, recitative, aria type structure. Instead it is built on a single span rather like a tone poem or lyric symphony in many ways. This suits the concert presentation here at the Proms. There are city sounds and car horn effects in some of the orchestration to remind that Puccini is a 20th century composer not immune to influences from the early decades of that century. There are fine performances from the main protaganists and if it is a cliche to assume that being Italian Noseda has an ear for opera, it is nevertheless born out by the conducting here.