On Saturday afternoon I went to the Met Opera for the first time this year to hear that famous verismo double bill, Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, both conducted by Nicola Luisotti, music director of the San Francisco Opera.
Cconsidering the circumstances in which they were composed, it's remarkable that these short pieces have gained such a permanent place in the repertoire that they are performed as regularly as works by Verdi and Puccini. Both operas were first attempts by their respective composers, Pietro Mascagni and Ruggero Leoncavallo, who afterwards went on to long careers but never again were able to duplicate their initial successes. Beyond that, the genre verismo itself was a fairly short lived phenomenon that produced no other true masterpieces. And finally, one-act operas themselves, with the possible exception of Puccini's Il Trittico, have rarely captured the imagination of the public.
What the two operas share are compact storylines. It's their very brevity that gives them their power. Each lasts only about an hour and a quarter, but in that short time lurid tales of jealousy and betrayal that end in death have more than enough time to unfold. In Cavalleria Rusticana, with libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, the villager Turridu who has started an affair with a married woman (his former fiancée Lola) after having first seduced the innocent virgin Santuzza is slain by the cuckolded husband Alfio. In Pagliacci, with libretto by the composer Leoncavallo, Canio the clown, egged on by Tonio, slays his wife Nedda and her lover Silvio in front of the circus audience after having discovered her plans to elope with Silvio.
This is not to suggest that there are not major differences between Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci. The former can hardly be termed a tragedy since the slain seducer Turridu is actually the guilty party who, for no other reason than hurt pride, has set in motion the violent events that culminate in his death. It's much different in Pagliacci where Nedda can hardly be blamed for wanting to escape so abusive a husband as Canio. This lends to her death at the clown's hands the tragic element missing from Cavalleria and so allows the audience to sympathize much more fully with her plight. Moreover, the death of Nedda in front of the circus audience - and by extension the opera audience watching alongside - cannot help but have much greater emotional impact than the death of Turridu that occurs offstage.
For the above reasons, I've always considered Pagliacci the better of the two operas. The fact that it had only one librettist - and Leoncallvo was considered next to Boito to be the finest in Italy - results in a more coherent story. And the device of having a performance within a performance makes the opera audience feel it is part of the action. In contrast, especially considering this is verismo, Cavalleria is almost entirely lacking in dramatic action except for the moment Alfio challenges Turiddu. Even more strangely, the fight to the death, which should have been the opera's climactic moment, takes place offstage. This lack of action is only emphasized by the current minimalist production that takes place on a practically bare stage. One feels at times one is watching an oratorio in concert rather than a fully staged opera. In the end, Cavalleria seems to serve more as a prelude to the catharsis the audience experiences at the end of Pagliacci than as a work in its own right.
As for the performance itself, it's always exciting when a scheduled lead singer is unable to perform and an unknown newcomer must take her place. This was especially the case on Saturday as the performance was broadcast via the web to a worldwide audicence. In Pagliacci, Danielle Pastin appeared on short notice in place of an ailing Aleksandra Kurzak in the role of Nedda while in the minor role of Silvio, Alexey Lavrov replaced Alessio Arduini who was also ill. I can't honestly say that either one triumphed in their respective roles, but they were both talented singers and certainly held their own.
Roberto Alagna, who did double duty as both Turridu and Canio, and George Gagnidze, who played both Alfio and Tonio, each turned in strong performances. Ekaterina Semenchuk (whom I had heard sing last month in Verdi's Requiem) as Santuzza was extremely affecting in the difficult part of a woman who first betrays her lover and then is heartbroken by his death. It's a pivotal role on which the success of the opera depends, and Ms. Semenchuk was able to fully capture the sympathy of the audience.
As mentioned above, the David McVicar production of Cavalleria was a bare bones affair, a strategy I did not think right for this opera. According to the Met's Program Notes, McVicar had updated the setting to circa 1900; but there were too few props, mostly chairs and candles, to enable the audience to place the opera in any specific time or place. On the other hand, the production of Pagliacci was definitely one of the best I've seen at the Met in recent years. It evoked perfectly the thrill of a traveling carnival making a stop at a small town. This was one of the few times updating, here to the late 1940's, worked well. The production was extremely handsome without ever being ostentatious.
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