In the hell called this world,
Is anyone free?
There is nobody.
In Puccini’s only comedy, arriviste Florentine citizen Gianni uses his skillful cunning to solve the strife between family relations over a rich man’s inheritance, and a problematic romance between a young man and woman. The story somewhat surprisingly derives from an incident in Dante’s “Divine Comedy, Inferno,” in which a character Gianni goes to hell for a grand and audacious deception involving the falsification of a will. Why did Puccini bring a denizen of hell to the stage and create a comic opera in one act? His captivating vision of Hell is alive in the melodic gems of this work. With an unfamiliar song by Puccini as its prologue, the work heads to the terrifying and pleasurable “hell” of this world…

Part 1
Prologue: A one-act creation comprising a song by Puccini and a reading from Dante’s “The Divine Comedy, Inferno”
Original idea/composition: Yasuhiro Ito
Additional writing/direction: Ryosuke Yoshino
Music director: Meguru Ohta
Song supervision: Keisuke Takano
Piano: Miyu Ishikawa

Part 2
Gianni Schicchi
Conductor: Meguru Ohta
Director: Ryosuke Yoshino
Piano: Hibiki Sato

Performers
Yosuke Takahashi, Haruka Suzuki, Misa Yamashita, Kensho Maekawa, Keisuke Takano, Reiko Kawashima, Kaya Tsuruda, Teppei Yamaguchi, Joji Terada, Yutaro Mikami, Nanako Sakurai, Takehito Yamada, Daiki Tajiri, Yoshihiko Miyashita, Yasunao Kitamura