When reviewing Marek Janowski’s Dresden Philharmonic Cavalleria rusticana (8/20), Hugo Shirley noted that the conductor ‘hardly gets down and dirty with this prototypical verismo score’. That Pentatone recording came from a concert performance in Dresden’s Kulturpalast in March 2019. The other half of the double bill that evening was Il tabarro – with the same principals – which now appears on this new release.

Janowski doesn’t get ‘down and dirty’ in Puccini’s sweaty one-acter either. There’s plenty of detail in the prelude’s Parisian soundscape but the temperature rarely rises above tepid in the 48 minutes that follow. The seething climax of the Giorgetta-Luigi duet, where passions should reach boiling point, goes for little here and Michele’s furious ‘Sgualdrina!’ when Giorgetta escapes his attempts at a kiss sounds far too tame. When it comes to the climax, where Michele strangles Luigi to death, one pictures the two singers at their music stands, politely going through the motions. Full marks, though, to Pentatone for good booklet notes, a full libretto and English and German translations.

The American principals harness plenty of decibels. Brian Jagde has developed into quite a stentorian tenor, here as the rough-handed stevedore Luigi, and has the most Italianate tone of the three. Melody Moore sings a rich-voiced Giorgetta, successfully avoiding any hint of squalliness at the top. Lester Lynch is a crusty, effortful Michele, the barge owner who discovers his younger wife’s affair, hurling his bruising baritone into the climax of his monologue ‘Nulla, silenzio’. Among the minor roles, Roxana Constantinescu is good as the chatterbox La Frugola, but this is a performance that needs smearing with a little more greasepaint.