Post by Captain Snark on Apr 27, 2015 0:19:20 GMT -5
I went to another Met opera cinemacast. This time it was the famous verismo double bill of Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci and Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana. For the unsophisticated, verismo is Italian for "realism" and describes a movement toward greater realism around the end of the 19th century. For example, these operas rarely had "pants roles" where female singers played male characters. Verismo composers believed that they'd discovered real love and real rage and real grief and real joy--as if earlier operas hadn't had all that in heaps! (A bit like the new generation of Hollywood filmmakers around 1970.)
I Pagliacci (Italian for "the Pagliaccos") is about a travelling theatre group who put on commedia dell'arte shows with characters like Harlequin and Columbine. The star Canio is afraid that his wife and co-star Nedda is cheating on him, and with good reason. Nedda spurns a third actor called Tonio, who blabs to Canio that there's another man whom she isn't spurning, so like any red-blooded male Canio turns homicidal, deciding to murder his wife as soon as she reveals her lover's name. (It's Silvio, I think.) After the famous "Vesti la Giubba" aria, they put on a comedy in which Nedda plays Columbine, Tonio plays Taddeo whose chicken interests Columbine more than his dick, and Canio plays Columbine's cuckolded husband Pagliacco. Get the picture? The stage comedy is parallel with the real tragedy, which of course ends in murder. (And Tonio says, "The comedy is finished." Double meaning, see?) This production sets the story in the age of trucks, just to be superficially original.
If Canio got pussy-whipped, Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana got dick-whipped. This one's set in rural Sicily, and the title is Italian for "rustic chivalry." (Irony, geddit?) Turiddu loved Lola, but when he was in the army she married Alfio the well-heeled travelling salesman, and after he got back took up with Santuzza. If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with. (Girls, beware of those rebound guys!) Santuzza, possibly after getting pregnant though back then they couldn't say so, ended up the town skank and got excommunicated. On top of that, the real skank was Lola, who decided that since her husband was away earning a living and starring in jokes, she might as well resume things with Turiddu, whom the plot requires to lack the sense God gave a goose. So now Santuzza's a skank with nobody to be skanky with!
So Santuzza rats out Turiddu to Alfano, who like any red-blooded male turns homicidal. (See a pattern here?) After the Raging Bull music and the drinking song, he challenges Turiddu to a knife fight. Turiddu accepts the challenge by biting Alfio's ear. (Knock a chip off your shoulder? That's for weenies!) So Turiddu tells Mamma Lucia to take care of Santuzza if he dies (now he cares about her!) and goes off and gets stabbed dead. The tragedy is finished.
For what it is, this was a well-staged production, with one of the quickest costume changes I've ever seen. I was eager to see it because I belong to the chorus of the non-professional Toronto City Opera, and five years ago we put on the two operas and I got to know the music. In fact, my avatar is a photograph of me in my Cavalleria Rusticana costume!