Aficionados are familiar with Puccini's Il Trittico or "Triptych," his three one-act operas that premiered at New York's Metropolitan in 1918; everyday opera lovers should know them as well. Here is Puccini at his most imaginative: Il Tabarro, a shocker about the jealousy of an older man towards his deceitful younger wife on a houseboat on the Seine is dark and foreboding, and is, incidentally, probably his greatest, tightest opera. It is given a superb performance here, with Maria Guleghina and the wonderful Neil Shicoff (the true, underrecorded fourth tenor) as the faithless duo and Carlo Gu... more