PAGLIACCI Opera Ensemble in association with Iford Arts Words and music by Ruggero Leoncavallo Sung in Italian First performed at the Teatro dal Verme, Milan on May 21 1892
SYNOPSIS A village in Calabria, Italy. 1860s A troupe of travelling players arrive to present a comic show. One of their number, Tonio, welcomes us with a Prologue, in which he tells us that tonight’s performances will deal with real flesh-and-blood characters. He asks us to remember that every artist is just another human who breathes the same air as his audience. The troupe is led by Canio, ‘the prince of comedians’. His wife and leading lady, Nedda, rejects the coarse advances of Tonio, a fellow actor. Tonio then spies on Nedda’s meeting with her lover, Silvio, with whom she plans to elope. In revenge, Tonio summons Canio. Silvio escapes, and Nedda refuses to reveal his identity, despite Canio’s threats. It’s time to prepare for the evening show. Alone in his dressing room, Canio contemplates his fate: he must make people laugh even though his heart is breaking. After an intermezzo, Act Two begins with the villagers assembling for the performance. Silvio is in the crowd, having arranged to meet Nedda later that night. The show is a classic piece of commedia dell'arte about marital infidelity, and for the disturbed (and inebriated) Canio, fiction becomes confused with reality. He breaks out of character and again demands to know the name of Nedda’s lover. Once again she defies him . . .
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ON WITH THE MOTLEY Last autumn, in the depths of lockdown, I had a call from the soprano Elin Pritchard, with whom I’d worked very happily on Falstaff at The Grange Festival the previous summer. She suggested that we ring up some of our erstwhile colleagues with a view to putting on Pagliacci. We both agreed that we were quietly going up the wall in covid confinement and missing our old lives like crazy. But we also knew that opera, difficult enough at the best of times, is not an art form that lends itself to social distancing. However, Elin had connections with a church in Islington, and Pagliacci, an opera that many singers know by heart, is a tight single act – no need for an interval, with all its attendant danger of contamination. Would it be possible to direct a tale of love, lust, anger and revenge where nobody strays closer than two metres? Probably not, but that wasn’t going to stop us. ‘How quickly could we rehearse it?’ Elin wondered. Normally I’d have said two weeks at a push, but we were in the middle of a deadly pandemic and I found myself blithely agreeing not to two weeks, but two days – plus a couple of evenings (what luxury!) with the chorus. There was no budget whatsoever, and the church could only hold fifty people dotted parsimoniously among the pews, so we were never going to get rich on the proceeds. But who cares, we did it for the sheer pleasure of doing it, and when I heard the singers let rip, after months of lockdown silence, I knew it was worth the gamble. The absence of funds meant an absence of scenery, but we did have a splendid gothic altar, which stood in for Canio’s dressing table. It also meant no props, but they aren’t covid-safe anyway. And no wardrobe department either, so period costumes were out – modern dress it had to be.
Since our first (and only) night in Islington, with a tiny ensemble of instrumentalists, we’ve acquired a dynamic producer, Hamish Mackay, and even given ourselves a name – Opera Ensemble. We’ve taken the production to the Grange Festival and to Longborough, and now we’re thrilled to be performing with a chamber orchestra at Belcombe, under the baton of Oliver Gooch. In fact we’re starting to feel a bit like Canio’s merry troop, minus the emotional baggage (so far, anyway). If I were searching for a reason to perform this piece right now, I’d say that it shines a light on the tension between the private and public lives of performers – something that has become an issue for all freelance artists during the pandemic, when our very ‘viability’ has been brought into question. But now that theatres are tentatively reopening, it’s fair to say that, masks and social distance notwithstanding, we’re here for the same reason as our audience – to share our love of musicmaking, and to keep finding ways to do that even when the odds are stacked against us.
Christopher Luscombe August 2021
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