Scottish Trittico Triumph

McVicar's staging of Puccini's one-actors hits all the right spots

Sunyoung Seo (a radiant Suor Angelica, centre) leads the chorus of nuns Picture by James Glossop

Complete performances of the trio of one-act operas Puccini created under the title, Il trittico (The Triptych), are rare in the UK, outside London anyway. So Scottish Opera’s new production by David McVicar - which has just finished a five performance run in Glasgow’s Theatre Royal and Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre - is a welcome novelty. Scotland has only seen one professional performance of the composer’s longest, most scenically challenging evening in the theatre before, a long time ago: Sadler’s Wells (now English National) Opera brought it to Glasgow’s King’s Theatre in 1957 - the third “panel” the comedy Gianni Schicchi conducted by Scottish Opera’s founder-conductor, Alexander Gibson, five years before his Glasgow-based company came into being - but none of the three operas - Il tabarro (The Cloak) and Suor (Sister) Angelica precede Schicchi - had entered his company’s repertoire.

They do now in fine style and though the run in Scotland was cruelly brief, McVicar’s production will have an afterlife: it is a collaboration with Welsh National Opera, which has already announced four performances in Cardiff next year. Unfortunately, due to vandalising Arts Council cuts, only the Welsh capital will see a production which deserves far wider exposure.

Of course, Il trittico, is exactly the kind of “grand opera” the Arts Council doesn’t like, and yet, judging by the enthusiastic reaction of the Edinburgh audience last weekend, there is clearly an appetite for it, and only large-scale “touring” companies such as SO and WNO can provide it outside the capital.