Tag Archives: Pagliacci

Il segreto di Susannah, and I pagliacci, Holland Park Opera, July 2024

In this excellent double bill the lightness of Wolf-Ferrari’s I segreto di Susannah (the secret is she smokes) was followed by the disturbing emotions displayed in Leoncavallo’s opera about a troupe of actors, brilliantly conducted and performed at OHP. See my review in The Article.

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Cavalleria Rusticana/ Pagliacci, Royal Opera, ROH, Covent Garden, December 2017

When Leoncavallo wrote Pagliacci he had in mind the brilliant success of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana — written to win a prize competition — and in this production of the double bill, director Damiano Michieletto cleverly combines the two operas. The travelling players of Pagliacci appear in the village where Cavalleria Rusticana takes place, and in …

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Cavalleria rusticana and I Pagliacci, Cav and Pag, Royal Opera, ROH, Covent Garden, December 2015.

Damiano Michieletto’s production of Rossini’s William Tell in June this year was widely panned, so I awaited his new production of Cav and Pag with some apprehension. I need not have. The gritty realism of Giovanni Verga’s 1880 short story Cavalleria Rusticana, later made into a play and taken up by the young composer Pietro …

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