New Christof Loy Production Has Stellar Cast Under Carlo Rizzi’s Baton
One of the operas at the top of my list for next season at the Met is the Deborah Warner staging of Tchaikovsky’s EUGENE ONEGIN that brings back soprano Asmik Grigorian for the first time since her 2024 debut in MADAMA BUTTERFLY.
Not that there’s anything wrong with Puccini, the major composer I’ve heard her sing. The first was that Met debut with her golden-throated, heart-breaking Cio-Cio San, followed by her blonde bombshell of a Freudian Turandot (plus a recital) at the Vienna State Opera.
Very recently, there was this season’s justifiable cheering from the audience--myself included--when she took on the three soprano roles in IL TRITTICO at the Paris Opera’s home at the Bastille, after breaking in the production at the Salzburg Festival. (The trio of one-act operas was the composer’s only work that premiered at the Met, in 1918.)
Was she the only attraction in TRITTICO? There were certainly a number of other singers to revel in, under conductor Carlo Rizzi’s taut baton, and, I suppose, there’s nothing really wrong with Christof Loy’s take on Puccini’s triptych, with its stage design by Etienne Pluss and costumes by Barbara Drosihn--except that it gets swallowed up by the huge stage at the Bastille. (The house may be 1000 seats smaller than the Met but it feels like watching a performance at the Super Bowl.) Otherwise, he seems to be a rarity these days: an opera director who actually likes opera.
The stage’s overwhelming the production seemed particularly true in GIANNI SCHICCHI, the first of the three short operas in this staging (Puccini saw it as last), where the rich-as-Croesus Buoso Donati (a nonsinging role) lays dying in bed, in Florence, surrounded by his greedy relatives waiting to see what’s left them in the will. The bedroom seemed large enough for Louis XIV.
For those unfamiliar with Puccini’s trio of operas, it consists of a comedy, the aforementioned SCHICCHI (with libretto by Giovancchino Forzano) and a pair of tragedies, IL TABARRO (libretto by Giuseppe Adami) and SUOR ANGELICA (also with a Forzano libretto). Together, they manage to show off the breadth and depth of the composer’s resources in three very different moods, in a variety of styles.
The comedy is the one that’s most familiar to operagoers, and not just because it has the evening’s most popular aria, “O mio babbino caro,” which Grigorian sang gorgeously, though her role here is part of the opera’s ensemble cast. The piece itself is an opera rarity (certainly for Puccini): a truly funny work, a farce, which is a breed rarely seen in the opera house.
It hasn’t always been performed in the context of TRITTICO, sometimes being paired or trebled with a variety of short works in varied styles. I once heard it on a bill with Poulenc’s LA VOIX HUMAINE and Dallapiccola’s serialist IL PRIGIONIERO in San Francisco, for example, but the oddest pairing I’ve read about was when it appeared on a double-bill with Strauss’s SALOME!
Even though Puccini envisioned the evening with the comedy at the end, as a showcase for Grigorian (or any other first-rate soprano), it worked well as the starter, with her standout aria mixed with lots of stage business for many of the other characters, including a very funny turn from bass-baritone Misha Kira as the trickster Schicchi. (Among other outstanding performers was mezzo Enkelejda Shkosa’s Zita, who did wonderful work in all three of the segments, including Frugola in IL TABARRO.)
IL TABARRO is a melodrama with love, murder, betrayal and all the trademarks of a film noir. This opera has more for Grigorian to bite into and she does. Here, she has the “Barbara Stanwyck” role, Georgetta, the bored wife who gets caught cheating, and she plays it to a tee. She’s earthy and weary, and longs for a little excitement and love in her life, all elements that have gone out of her marriage. It takes place on and around a barge near the docks where her husband, Michele (nb: Mi-kell-ay), sung well by the burly, appealing baritone of Roman Burdenko, runs a failing shipping operation.
Which one of his men--who load and unload the cargo onto the barge--should be let go to help keep the business afloat (no pun intended)? Luigi (American tenor Joshua Guerrero, a find) volunteers to leave, unhappy playing second fiddle in Georgetta’s life, but Michele talks him out of it, not knowing he’s “the other man” romancing his wife. Later, thinking he’s having a rendezvous with Georgetta, Luigi gets caught by her husband and…I don’t think I have to spell it out, but tragedy ensues, as guess whose body she finds wrapped up in her husband’s cloak (the tabarro of the title)?
The evening ends with the largest role for Grigorian to dig into: the title character of SUOR ANGELICA, which takes place in a convent. Angelica has been cast aside by her family and deposited with the sisters as punishment for her sexual peccadillos, including a son out of wedlock. She has had no word from them for seven years, since she joined the order, and is particularly concerned with the fate of her son.
She has a sudden visit from her aunt, “la Zia Principessa”--who raised her and her sister after her parents were killed--in a scene-stealing turn from veteran soprano Karita Mattila and finds out the worst: Her son is dead, which starts visions for the young woman and an attempted suicide by poisoning. Grigorian is a powerhouse here--no Julie Andrews as Maria from “The Sound of Music”--playing out Angelica’s end for everything its worth.
By this time, the three operas have given Grigorian the opportunity to show off her voice in a variety of styles that is something to behold. While the opera is no monodrama--besides Mattila, she has able costars including the aforementioned mezzo Shkosa and mezzo Hanna Schwarz among the members .of the convent--but Grigorian makes the show. (Does she ever!)
Still, there’s more to her than TRITTICO allows her to show us, with a resume that includes everything from NORMA to SWEENEY TODD, LA BOHEME to WOZZECK, RUSALKA to JENUFA. (I was quite disappointed when she pulled out of Strauss’s “Four Last Songs” this past spring with the Cleveland at Carnegie Hall.)
That’s one reason I’m so looking forward to hearing her deliver Tatiana in ONEGIN, one of the golden roles of Russian opera, here in New York, which she’s previously done with success in Vienna and Berlin. While there have been plenty of first-rate Tatianas at the Met, including a memorable turn by Renee Fleming against the stunning Onegin of Dmitri Hvorostovsky, opera can only go on with the next wonder to leave us in its thrall.
Tchaikovsky’s EUGENE ONEGIN will be performed at the Met from April 20-May 16, 2026, with Grigorian joined by Igor Golovatenko’s Onegin, Stanislas de Barbeyrac’s Lenski, Stephanie Blythe’s Filippyevna and Alexander Tsymbalyuk’s Gremin.
Caption: Asmik Grigorian as Suor Angelica. Karita Mattila as la Zia Principessa
Credit: Guergana Damianova/Opéra national de Paris
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