CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA / PAGLIACCI
STAGE DIRECTOR: David McVicar
CONDUCTOR: Fabio Luisi
CAST: Marcelo Alvarez, George Gagnidze, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Ginger Costa-Jackson, Jane Bunnell, Patricia Racette; Andrew Stenson, Lucas Meachem
RUNNING TIME: 210 minutes, including one intermission
RATING: ****
The premiere of Pietro Mascagni’s true-to-life drama Cavalleria Rusticana (Rustic Chivalry) in Rome in May 1890 remains one of the sensational events in opera history. There’s swift action, intense emotion, passion, betrayal and retribution. The top-notch libretto is one of the best created, with the heated blood of the story coursing through the composer’s music.
Pagliacci (The Strolling Players) by Ruggiero Leoncavallo, set in a village square, has much of the same ingredients. Where the former opera’s story has stronger religious undertones, the latter is a story within a story, with a play on a mimic stage resembling one of the Harlequin-comedies, acted for centuries by travelling companies in Italy.
New York’s Met Opera replaces their Franco Zeffirelli production of both operas. He constantly tried to tame his desire to parade beautiful things. He managed to enter the dirty, rough world of these operas, but David McVicar pushes the envelope by setting it 50 years apart and basically using the same stage set-up for both.
Rae Smith’s sets enhance McVicar’s vision. In the Mascagni he focuses on the characters’ internal drama, with a massive revolving stage, with only chairs and tables as stage props. Santuzza, sung impassioned and with rich tones by Westbroek, is on stage throughout the opera, with periods outside the revolving space, making her the outcast she is.
The townsfolk are central in this tragic tale, with Turiddu (Alvarez), Alfio (Gagnidze), Lola (Costa-Jackson) and Mama Lucia (Bunnell) the pawns in this messy story and completing what can be described as an ideal casting. Psychological truth reigns amid the darkness of the intrigues.
With amazing dramatic potency in especially Alvarez’s and Gagnidze’s singing, the conductor Luisi inspires the orchestra and chorus with his sense of theatrical pace. He makes the Easter Hymn scene the crowning glory amid all the inter-personal tensions.
Pagliacci is set around the early 1950s. There’s electricity on stage in both meanings of the word. There’s attraction of a visiting troupe staging a commedia del arte farce which especially the children can’t wait to see. But behind the stage and during the denouement, there’s no space for child’s play. The harder side of so-called adults reigns.
McVicar avoids the melodramatic tendencies of many of his predecessors and chose for pure verismo: realism that is reflecting life as it is. With this cast he is very successful in his aim to avoid the obvious clichés that constantly lure to destroy the very intricate web of relationships between the main characters.
Alvarez again shines as Canio, the tragic leader of the troupe, with his signature aria Verti la Giubba sung with the pathos it needs. Racette as his younger, frustrated wife, Nedda, was vocally secure, but shines more in the comedic than dramatic side of her character. Gagnidze is back here as Tonio. His prologue aria was a subtle premeditated foreshadowing of what was to come.
These “terrible twins” in opera history are fully worth experiencing.
l Screening at all Cinema Nouveau theatres till June 4.