Il Tabarro
Paris, 1910. As the sun sets, the stevedores Luigi, Tinca and Talpa, are finishing their work unloading Michele's barge docked on the Seine. Michele's younger wife, Giorgetta, serves wine to the workers, and they dance to the music of an organ grinder. Michele notices how Giorgetta looks at Luigi and dances with him. He wonders if she is still faithful to him. While a song-seller peddles his ballads, Talpa's wife Frugola enters, looking for her husband. Giorgetta shows the fruits of her scavenging in the streets of Paris. Luigi laments his lot in life. Before he leaves, Luigi promises to meet Giorgetta at night. Giorgetta will light a match as a signal that it is safe to come. Michele reminisces with Giorgetta of the days before their child died, how all three would fit under his cloak. Although he knows she is straying, he wants to win her back. Darkness has fallen. Luigi, thinking that Michele's lit pipe is Giorgetta's signal, returns to the barge and is confronted by Michele. Michele forces Luigi to confess his affair. Alarmed, Giorgetta returns to the dock, but is somewhat reassured when she sees Michele sitting alone, quietly smoking. Still somewhat nervous, however, she endeavors to atone for her frigidity toward him, telling him that she recalls their early love and wishes she could again find shelter in the folds of his big cloak. For reply, Michele opens wide the cloak.

Suor Angelica
A convent near Siena in the late 17th-century. Seven years before the story begins, a young noblewoman gave birth to an illegitimate son. To cover up the scandal, her family forced her to enter a convent and take the veil. Now known as Sister Angelica, she has lived within the peace of the convent walls. She spends her days in prayer and atonement for her sin, waiting for word about her family and her beloved child. The Abbess announces that Sister Angelica has a visitor, her first contact with the outside world since entering the convent. It is her aunt, the Princess. The old woman explains that Angelica's sister is to be married, and Angelica must sign a document renouncing her claim to her dead parents' estate in favor of her younger sister. Angelica pleads for some word about her little boy and finally learns that he had died from fever a few years earlier. The news is more than Sister Angelica can bear. She drinks a deadly poison. Suddenly realizing the full implication of what she has done, she begs the Virgin Mary to forgive her mortal sin. Seemingly in answer to her prayer, the Virgin Mary appears in a vision, bringing Angelica's son to lead her into heaven.

Gianni Schicchi
In Buoso Donati's bedroom, his family pretends to be sorry that he has just died. Betto has overheard someone say that Buoso, head of one of Florence's richest and most distinguished families, left his fortune to a monastery, which sends the family into a frenzied search for the dead man's last will and testament. Rinuccio finds it and asks his aunt Zita for permission to marry Lauretta, Gianni Schicchi's daughter, if Buoso has left him well-off. His aunt agrees, and Rinuccio sends for Schicchi, a nouveau riche man from the country, and his daughter. But everyone's hopes are dashed when they open the will and discover that, indeed, the old man left everything to the monks. Rinuccio suggests that Schicchi is the only person clever enough to save them, but his family will have none of it. To them, he's a low-born country bumpkin, but Rinuccio tries to convince them that just as Florence draws strength from the country, so can they rely on Schicchi to help them.

Schicchi and Lauretta arrive. Zita refuses to give her nephew to a girl without a dowry, and Schicchi tries to persuade his daughter that greedy relatives will do her no good, but she only wants Rinuccio. Rinuccio asks Schicchi to take a look at the will; when he refuses, his daughter's pleas change his mind. Schicchi weighs the situation and hatches a plan: the Donatis must keep Buoso's death a secret long enough for Schicchi, disguised as the old man, to draw up a new will. The family eagerly agrees and each member tells Schicchi what they want, even offering him money for certain properties. The women put him into nightclothes and tuck him into Buoso's bed. When the notary arrives, Schicchi dictates the will: five florins to the monks, some pastures and country houses to the family, but the bulk of the estate, including the Donati house in Florence, to Buoso's good friend Gianni Schicchi. When the notary and the witnesses leave, Schicchi drives the Donatis out of his house. Rinuccio and Lauretta remain on the balcony, looking into each other's eyes, and Schicchi knows the money has been put to good use.