After Manon Lescaut and La Bohème, Il Tabarro is Puccini’s third Parisian incursion. Puccini got the idea to write the first part of his Trittico after seeing La Houppelande − a play in slang by Didier Gold – at Théâtre Marigny in Paris. Violent and naturalistic – to the point of bordering with trade-comedy – this play instantly captured the imagination of the Italian composer who immediately envisioned putting this slice of daily life to music.
Conductor Bertrand de Billy has perfectly grasped all the stakes at play in this opera that superbly describes the Parisian atmosphere on the banks of the Seine where the barge that serves as the framework for this folk drama about jealousy, long before Simenon and his detective Commissaire Maigret, is moored. Recorded during a concert in Vienna in 2010, this beautiful version features a resounding distribution with great South-African tenor Johan Botha – who prematurely died of cancer in 2016 −, his fellow countrywoman, soprano Elza van den Heever who has triumphed in New York, Frankfurt and Bordeaux, and German baritone Wolfgang Koch who abandons Wotan to take on the role of Michele, the jealous husband turned murderer. © François Hudry/Qobuz