Preparation

If you're planning to attend one of the first two productions of the San Francisco Opera's fall season and you're not familiar with Il Trovatore (not so likely) or with the three operas that make up Il Trittico (more likely), you could do worse than to wander over to Unnatural Acts of Opera and scroll to the famous Price, Simionato, Corelli, Bastianini/von Karajan Trovatore and the performances of Il Tabarro (hair-raising, with Magda Olivero sounding not much different at 60 than at 28, when she made her first recordings), Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi.

Patricia Racette is singing all three of the soprano roles, of which Giorgetta and Angelica sound like killers even if you're not singing them consecutively. (At the Met premiere in 1918, the leads were sung by Claudia Muzio, Geraldine Farrar, and Florence Easton.) And these are all role debuts for Racette, who is one gutsy soprano.