Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, An Operatic Double Bill by Opera Lyra
There is no longer any doubt that Ottawa has an opera company that it can be proud of. The traditional double bill of those two one act operas, Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, opened in Southam Hall Saturday night with two almost flawless performances. Pagliacci is often presented as an opera in two acts but here two acts become two scenes of one act which did not change the nature of the performance. We saw an almost perfect rendering by the orchestra (conducted by Richard Buckley), the insightful use of the sets, exciting staging, magnificent choral work under Laurence Ewashko’s superb guidance, and singers who carried us off to other realms of reality. A truly wonderful evening.
Cavalleria Rusticana.
There is no doubt that the libretto of Cavalleria Rusticana, based on the play by 19th Century novelist and playwright Giovanni Verga who is steeped in Zola-like naturalism, becomes nonetheless the greatest of all tearjerkers, showing the wide range of esthetic contradictions that make opera such an appealing art form. Turiddu abandons his pregnant companion whom he has not yet decided to marry, and returns to his now married former wife Lola who has become his mistress once again. In the opening moments of the prologue/overture, we hear his voice off stage as he sings a passionate serenade in the middle of the night to Lola, the real love of his life and its Turiddu’s lust for Lola that gives all the energy to this work.
The drama is in place as the sun rises on the town and we see his tearful despairing, pleading pregnant companion Santuzza, shunned by the townspeople and excommunicated by the church, rushing about trying to explain to Mamma Lucia, Turiddu’s mother what has happened.
All the naked emotion and violent feelings that erupt in these encounters turn Turiddu into a fiend in order to heighten Santuzza’s status as the victim. When Lola appears flaunting herself in front of Santuzza like a shameless Sicilian tart, no one in the community seems to mind. The pregnant Santuzza pleads with Turiddu to take her back, she is ready to grovel in the most total state of abjection: Insult me, beat me but don’t abandon me! And Turiddu snaps back that he has had enough of her jealousy and yells at her : “stop spying on me”. (Giggles all around me, even from the most avid of Opera fans!)
The height of all this destructive passion is the moment when, beside herself with grief and rage, the wonderful Lisa Daltirus as Santuzza, takes a dagger and curses Turiddu for all the pain he has caused her. That was acting!. Her voice overwhelmed us all and her gesture was a magnificently theatrical moment that reverberated into the depths of the heart of any woman who has been scorned. Bravo!
Of course we are supposed to forgive the beastly Turiddu at the end when, seeing he is soon to die, he calls out to his first love: “ Mamma”!! (bursts of laughter in the audience) Turiddu begs Mamma Lucia to take care of Santuzza and the baby if anything happens to him. He is even ready to marry her, says he. Of course all that is only possible when he senses that the end is near. Such a despicable coward. And for this we are supposed to forgive him?
And yet, without this conflict, there is no 19th Century opera so we just grit our teeth, tell ourselves these are the operatic conventions of the period, and turn our attention elsewhere for satisfaction,
In fact great satisfaction comes in the form of the music that crescendos and pounds, that incarnates roaring passion, despair, violent emotions, and repressed sexuality and it is all beautifully created by conductor Richard Buckley. Then there is the huge church façade implanted in the middle of the stage so that the the realistic looking Sicilian set symbolizes the way the church dominate the lives of these people. Director Michael Cavanagh created the swarming of daily life in front of the church. The villagers take over the visual aspect of the performance to bring out the contrast between the sombre exterior of the faithful and the lusty emotions of the sinful boiling underneath. Cavanagh’s work was particularly good and added much excitement to the evening.
He also brings to life all the social forces at work in this little town. Apparently Verga read Zola, and Cavanagh has picked it all up. The sexual repression in that town of black clad men and women who float through the streets, the shadowy images of that which cannot be spoken, while brightly clad Lola wiggles her hips through the crowd and tosses insulting looks at poor Santuzza who hovers mortified in the corner. The women gossip and whisper, the men strut their virility, the older generation prays and huddles together for fear of attracting the wrong kind of attention. All have their place in a staging that tries to insert naturalistic movements into the crowd that has stepped out of Verga’s world where the spirit and the flesh are at odds with each other.
Such staging suggests that Cavalleria Rusticana is on the brink of operatic modernity, as it begins to liberate itself from the earlier slightly stilted conventions of the chorus and the way the principals interact musically on stage.
In this case, we noted the strong presence of baritone Gaétan Laperrière as Alfio the teamster, or cart driver, Lola’s furious husband who bites Turiddu’s ear and marks him with the challenge of death. “The Godfather” is not far away, and at that moment we know the fate of Mamma Lucia’s son is sealed. Tenor Richard Crawley (Turiddu) shows the extent of his musical flexibility as well as his acting talents in his most despicable scenes with Santuzza as he pushes her away, telling her to “ go” as soon as he catches site of Lola, simmering on the steps of the Church.
Contralto Emilia Boteva, as Mamma Lucia mother of Turiddu is shocked by all the revelations and she also becomes a very strong contralto voice in this unfolding drama. Most exceptional however in Cavalier Rusticana was soprano Lisa Daltirus whose excellent acting skills and whose rich and powerful voice appeared capable of such a wide range of musical registers that I thought she might have been a mezzo soprano at one point. Although her role offered her the broadest variety of musical expression in the whole production, she still moved effortlessly through explosions of anger, screams of despair, yelling sobbing and roaring anger, and her vocal and acting performance dominated the whole of Cavalleria.
Pagliacci, explicitly constructed by theatre within theatre techniques as it intertwines a reflexion on theatre and on the actors who play the characters on stage, is much more complex and apparently less likely to provoke outbursts of laughter. Quite the contrary. Pagliacci takes place in southern Italy but this production incorporates the Sicilian set of the first opera into the present performance by constructing a small commedia style frontal stage in the town square directly opposite the church facade that imposed itself in the first opera.
Actors and theatre public swarm about this little stage waiting impatiently for the travelling players of the Commedia dell’arte who are coming to town. They will see their favourite Commedia types such as Columbine, Harlequin and Columbine’s husband Pagliaccio on that little stage in the centre of the town square. However soon the actors will also live another personal and disturbing drama off stage that will spill over into their Commedia characters and bring about another kind of tragic ending.
The opera’s structure is extremely interesting. It begins with a prologue by Tonio, the hunchbacked and deformed clown, sung by Gaétan Laperrière, telling us that actors also have lives and feelings like everyone else and we are about to witness this. Pagliacci unfolds in two parts. Nedda, Canio’s beautiful young wife and leading actress in the troupe is sung by soprano Yannick-Muriel Noah . In a playful, bubbly rendering of the beautifully melodious Ballatella, the singer reveals the “real” side of the commedia actress, a basically happy nature which also has a strong yearning for a life free from any chains. The ballad is one of the moments of captivating lyrical beauty that revealed the great versatility of this singer.
Later because Tonio is angered by Nedda,s rejection, he vows revenge and brings Canio on stage just at the moment when he can overhear the conversation between Nedda and Sylvio (baritone Jonathan Estabrooks) who express their great love and discuss their plans to run away together. In that tender moment of great warmth and passion between the two lovers, Jonathan Estabrooks as Sylvio had trouble affirming his presence both vocally and as an actor. The high notes came through very well but the lower ranges disappeared in the musical landscape, and the especially rich voice of Yannick-Muriel Noah made the contrast even more obvious. It was also clear that next to the vibrantly warm presence of Nedda who was a perfectly convincing as a woman torn by her loyalty to her husband and her desire for a better life, Estabrooks appears rigid. He didn’t know where to put his arms, especially when the two lovers were locked in a passionate embrace and this caused some awkwardness in those scenes.
However, after hearing that fateful conversation between Nedda and her lover Silvio, Richard Leech becomes a heartbroken sobbing Canio, singing the famous Vesti la giubba, pouring out his heart as he tells us that the clown is supposed to laugh and that even though his heart is breaking he must go on stage and perform. Leech’s musical cry full of pathos and soaring notes, was a magnificent entry into that frenzy of madness that ends in the bloody tableau with the real actors draped over the stage, their throats slit. Leech, transforms Canio into the ultimate tragic presence as he steps out of his Pagliaccio "personnage" and becomes the vengeful husband , gazing in horror at what he has done. This heightened moment of tragedy beautifully avoided any sense of over the top melodrama that we felt in Cavalleria Rusticana, the kind that drew attention to its own outdated form and provoked laughter around me. The "effect " of realism in Cavalleria perhaps did not quite work but it certainly did in Pagliacci. But then, surrounded as we are today by TV soap operas and violent drama, can we really judge the nature of unbridled passion in 19th Century Sicily as it is echoed in Mascagni’s music?.
Opera Lyra offers us a thrilling performance that might be too over the top for some, but the evening shows us that jealousy, unbridled passion, lust, hate, betrayal vengeance and blood , are the stuff of which exciting opera is made. We must suspend our disbelief, give our attention to the music, to those magnificent voices, and to the heightened spectacle that no other form of performance can possibly offer us nowadays. Thus the pleasure will be complete .
Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci can be seen Septembre 12, 14, 17 in Southam Hall.
Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana – Opera Lyra
Director: Michael Cavanagh
Conductor: Richard Buckley
Chorus master: Laurence Ewashko
Lighting designer: Harry Frehner
Sets provided by the Opéra de Montréal (designed by Claude Girard)
Costumes provided by the Opéra de Montréal (designed by Meredith Caron)
CAST
Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni adapted from the novel by Giovanni Verga
Santuzza Lisa Daltirus
Mama Lucia Emilia Boteva
Alfio Gaetan Laperrière
Turridu Richard Crawley
Pagliacci by Ruggiero Leoncavallo
Tonio Gaetan Laperrière
Canio Richard Leech
Beppe Antionio Figueroa
Nedda Yannick-Muriel Noah
Silvio Jonathan Estabrooks