12 minute read
mezzocav synopsis & cast list
from Programme 2021
by ifopera
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
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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 . . . 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
Cavalleria Rusticana, Pagliacci – Cav and Pag – are joined at the hip. Almost always seen together, and for the very good reason that they come from the same stable. The winners of a highly successful marketing drive and talent competition run by Sonzogno, the Italian music publishers.
Verdi and his publishers, Ricordi, had discovered how to make opera a lucrative business – by controlling the hiring rights to popular operas – and by the end of the century other publishers were equally hungry to make a profit. As were a new generation of young composers. And hungry is the point. Opera was still the only way a talented Italian composer could make money, and the young Mascagni and Leoncavallo, like the young Puccini, lived hand to mouth lives, playing in cafes (living on bags of rice in Puccini’s case) and waiting for a commission, a deadline, an opportunity to present their work. It’s almost impossible to throw off a masterpiece in a vacuum and when Sonzogno launched their opera competitions in 1883, the would-be successors to Verdi fell on it. Puccini, Giordano, Mascagni, submitted operas, and though Leoncavallo appears to have been too modest to offer his, his wife posted it without telling him. And a new genre was born – ‘Verismo’.
Verismo – ‘Reality’ – is a loaded term. Every one has a different idea as to what ‘real life’ is like, especially on stage. It was in fact a literary genre, inspired by Zola’s naturalistic novels, and represented in Italy by a couple of Neapolitan dramatists, Giovanni Verga and Luigi Capuana (though neither writer liked the term). Verga’s plays featured the contemporary working class, living either in the back streets of big cities or the hovels of the Italian countryside. Lives that were nasty, brutish and short – and a world away from normal opera. Even Carmen (the nearest thing to verismo before Cav and Pag) has a beguiling Spanish setting, and Italian opera had, up until then, been set amongst the upper, or at least the picturesque classes. People in ruffs, who kill each other with rapiers.
However the competition practically demanded verismo. The competitors, as Alexandra Wilson says, ‘…were invited to submit a one-act work, a format that encouraged a broad brush, ‘slice of life’ approach, creating a snapshot of a particular time and place and eradicating any need for back stories, complicated subplots or subtle character development.’ And Leoncavallo and Mascagni responded with two short pieces which, though they used the typical opera tropes of passion, betrayal and jealousy, were stripped of their operatic extras. No rapiers, no noblemen, just a couple of peasants, or some second rate actors, slogging it out, in the midst of a poverty stricken, conventional, and rather stunted, community.
The idea was to make a sensation – a sordid story line, a new brash sound, in fact a short opera that would win a competition. There was no idea they could make a career of this. None of the competitors reckoned on their competition pieces becoming part of the opera rep. And on the whole they didn’t. One act operas are notoriously difficult to sell – but the outstanding qualities of Cavalleria and Pagliacci were immediately obvious, and it is fortunate they go so well together. (Indeed recent productions at the ROH and ENO have run both shows together, the stories playing out in the same village over one appallingly traumatic Easter.)
So what are we in for tonight? Well a slab of rustic life, in which the relationships are crude, and brief, and culminate in a gruesome crime of passion. Matched by violent music backing off from the ‘beautiful voice’ and at times blending singing with shouting. But so much more… Mascagni turned verismo on its head even as he created it. The Sicilian setting, however down at heel, would have been thought picturesque by the Northerners in Milan (it wasn’t greeted with such approval in Naples), and the original production wasn’t as stark as all that. It’s set on Easter Sunday, the whole village are in their best clothes and singing Easter hymns. More than that, the opera deliberately turns its back on a certain strand of modernism. The numbers don’t flow into each other (as in late Verdi) but are ‘closed’, that is you get recitative, and a stand alone aria. The Easter hymn is a glorious operatic set piece, and both operas are full of great crescendos, full throated lyricism – and tender interludes, obviously inspired by the traditional music of the Italian countryside.
Pagliacci is similarly appealing. This time the lower classes are represented by a company of actors, a commedia dell’arte troupe. Italy has a long tradition of strolling players – actors who travel round the country putting on shows in barns, town squares, anywhere they can gather an audience. The shows they put on are fast paced comedies with a traditional plot and the barest minimum of text as the performers ad lib throughout. Pagliacci, ‘Clowns’ – you can almost imagine the first Italian audience settling down to this. They would be expecting some surprises, the actors are famous for throwing in extra jokes but not the lead actor improvising a double murder… As we watch, the normal theatrical set up turns on its head. The characters are what they should be: the lovers, Harlequin and Columbine, and the third character who obstructs them – the father, guardian or husband – who is doomed to be outwitted. He’d be played by a character actor, Pantalone. And then there’s the clown, Pagliaccio, a slapstick comedian in his loose white costume. He’s there to be laughed at, and with Tonio, the company clown, verismo begins to bite. Because the clown often wore a hump, a deformity still mocked on the late 19th century Italian stage (in spite of Rigoletto). Tonio is referred to as a ‘monster’ by the indignant heroine, throughout the piece.
What gives Pagliacci its uncomfortable edge is that Tonio has a natural hump, and a life of playing up to this misfortune has corroded him. In the prologue Tonio appears in his Clown costume and addresses the audience. He reminds them that actors are human beings, with human feelings, and that the show we’re about to see is real. It is in fact verismo…
Things getting out of hand on stage
Mascagni flanked by librettists
Rev. Sarah Lenton is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster on opera and ballet. She works for the Royal Opera House, ENO, and Garsington Opera and can be heard on BBC Radio 3 podcasts and broadcasts of opera. She is also a West End theatre chaplain.
PETER AUTY
Peter Auty (Canio) is established as one of Britain’s leading tenors. He made his professional debut at Opera North in 1998 and was a company principal of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden from 1999 until 2002 where he had the opportunity of working with many of the world’s leading conductors. Peter has appeared regularly with Glyndebourne Festival Opera, English National Opera, Opera North, Scottish Opera, Opera Holland Park and Grange Park Opera. Abroad he has worked with several companies including Frankfurt Opera, Essen Opera, Malmö Opera and New Zealand Opera.
ALED HALL
South Wales-born Aled Hall (Beppe) has excelled in the character tenor repertoire with many leading international companies. Previous seasons’ highlights both in the UK and abroad have included Valzacchi Der Rosenkavalier (Royal Swedish Opera); Pang Turandot, Spoletta Tosca, the Dancing Master Manon Lescaut (Royal Opera House); Don Curzio Le nozze di Figaro (Aix-en-Provence, Tokyo, Baden Baden); Mr. Upfold Albert Herring (Salzburger Landestheater); Valzacchi Der Rosenkavalier, Maintop Billy Budd and Gherardo Gianni Schicchi (Opera North); Don Basilio/Don Curzio, Beadle Bamford, Monostatos, Scaramuccio, and Remendado (Welsh National Opera); Don Basilio, Bardolpho and Frisellino Le Pescatrici (Garsington Opera); Matteo Borsa Rigoletto and Almeric Iolanta (Scottish Opera); Messenger Aida (Bergen National Opera); and Lo Zio Vezinet Il cappello di paglia di Firenze, and Ippia Saffo, Danilowitz L’Etoile du Nord (Wexford Festival Opera/both recorded on the Marco Polo label). ROBERT HAYWARD
Bass-baritone Robert Hayward (Tonio) has performed at the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, Frankfurt Opera, Stuttgart Opera, Welsh National Opera, Opera North, Scottish Opera and Glyndebourne Festival Opera in a wide repertoire including Wotan The Ring, Amfortas Parsifal, Jokanaan Salome, the title roles in Eugene Onegin, Don Giovanni, Mazeppa, Der Fliegende Holländer, Falstaff and Macbeth; Iago Otello, Scarpia Tosca, Marcello La bohème, Escamillo Carmen, Tomsky The Queen of Spades, Nick Shadow The Rake’s Progress, Mandryka Arabella, Golaud Pelleas et Melisande, Kurwenal Tristan, Prince Ivan Khovansky Khovanshchina, Simone in Zemlinsky’s Florentine Tragedy and Telramund Lohengrin. He recently performed Alberich Das Rheingold and Siegfried in concert with the London Philharmonic Orchestra Vladimir Jurowski.
NICHOLAS LESTER
Nicholas Lester (Silvio) studied at Adelaide Conservatorium of Music and the National Opera Studio, London (sponsored by Glyndebourne Festival Opera). Recent and forthcoming roles include: Orphée by Philip Glass, Marcello La Bohème, Cascada The Merry Widow, (English National Opera); Eugene Onegin, Figaro The Barber of Seville (Welsh National Opera); Chou En Lai Nixon in China, Germano La Scala di Seta, Josef K The Trial by Philip Glass, Malatesta Don Pasquale, Ping Turandot (Scottish Opera); Guglielmo Così fan Tutte, Dandini La Cenerentola, Figaro Il barbiere di Siviglia (Opera Holland Park); Lescaut Manon Lescaut, Ford Falstaff (Grange Festiva); Marcello La bohème (New Zealand Opera, State Opera of South Australia and Danish National Opera). For The Opera Story: DaddyBearPig Goldilocks and The Three Little Pigs, Marco Pandora’s Box. ELIN PRITCHARD
Welsh soprano Elin Pritchard (Nedda) has gained critical acclaim for her numerous operatic roles as a lyric soprano throughout the UK and Europe. Her repertoire includes Violetta, Lucia di Lammermoor, Tatyanna, Micaela, Tosca, Alice Falstaff, Miss Jessel, Anne Trulove, Manon Lescaut, Fiordiligi and Donna Elvira. She performs at English National Opera, Scottish Opera, Opera North, Welsh National Opera, Danish National Opera, and is also a regular at the UK summer festivals including The Grange Festival, Buxton Festival Opera and Opera Holland Park. On the concert platform Elin has performed with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, RSNO, Manchester Camerata and the London Mozart Players.