Several Sins

By the time Il Trittico had its première in 1918, Puccini had been pondering the idea of three one-act operas designed to be performed together for over a decade; however the uneven quality of the individual works all but guaranteed that each one would go on to enjoy a very different life of its own. The Deutsche Oper Berlin, for their first new production of the 2023/24 season, presented the three operas – Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi – together in their intended order; and while the evening boasted some winning performances – most notably the Lauretta and Angelica of Mané Galoyan and the Schicchi of Misha Kiria – the staging of Pinar Karabulut, for all its visual brilliance, could not quite make a convincing case for Il Trittico being anything greater than the sum of its flawed parts.

Puccini had initially conceived of…