“Oh, great,” I thought, when I first saw that Pagliacci was scheduled for performance at Seattle Opera’s McCaw Hall. “That old warhorse, that chestnut. How can I even bear it again?” And, luckily for all involved, it turned out quite an easy and worthwhile watch. I mean, on the surface, yes, devoted opera-goers feel that they know every measure of this piece. We all know about tears, we think, and here we go again.
But as it turns out, other than the rather standard set (stairs for the cast to sing, a platform that can get hung with curtains for the clowns to perform, a muslin sky beautifully painted), this was one of those moments that reviewers and audiences are privileged to see: the familiar made new, the old brought to life in new ways.
Oh, yes, this is a Pagliacci to remember. First, Carlo Montanaro’s conducting of this verismo score is heartfelt—not in the way, necessarily, that all Italian operas seems to sob with a sometimes ersatz passion. No, this time, every measure is thought about as if it had been penned the night before with the ink still wet on the pages. It is crystalline, with every motif and every chord and every note singing, even surging, through the action. From the moment of the Prologue sung by baritone Michael Chioldi, which questions the nature of theatre vs. reality—a matter replicated and mixed onto the move from the actors playing a commedia del arte piece to the roles they play till the tragic moment a cold harsh reality plunged deep into both the comedic artifice and the two lovers’ bodies, we are forced to confront that place where the lines between both art and life and comedy and tragedy alike are drawn.
Diego Torre’s Canio (later the Harlequin of the commedia) sings with a fierce intensity that brings the pain of the clown forced to love an unfaithful woman to life in a very real way. Back at the beginning of my opera-going career, I saw either Domingo or Pavarotti sing Canio at the Lyric. I was in my teens or early twenties and I recognised the power of the voice, the lushness (then) of both instruments. But today, I have a lot more experience of life than I did back in those halcyon days—and I understood Canio’s pain in a whole new way, as I did with King Lear with my second go around in my forties. Torre, making his mainstage Seattle Opera debut, will be a force to reckon with in years to come.
And Nedda? Monica Conesa, also making her mainstage debut, has a huge voice that never ever needed to fight against Leoncavallo’s orchestra. We heard every word of her pain, as she was covering the bruises her husband had given her or as she contorted her body as Canio drew her upwards as he threatened her. Her voice already has a bit of an edge to it, but she’s a young singer and has time to refine her technique.
Others have noted that, like Callas, Conesa is amazingly intense, but like Callas too, she could put her instrument in danger. It’s exciting to listen to, but like the young Pavarotti, I remember thinking “just how long will this kind of power last?” I’d get her to relax a bit if I were her teacher / mentor and learn how to project those same emotions which ring so true at every moment of her performance through a piano or mezzo volume. She’s got the size of voice that can be heard at all volumes even in a large American house. She’s got time to grow as an artist too. I look forward to seeing her again.
And finally, John Marzano’s Beppe and Michael J Hawk’s Silvio are both beautifully sung and beautifully acted with fight sequences that really work with Geoffery Alm’s fight direction. The costumes are also beautiful as the performers movedfrom a raucous market to a solemn vespers and back to the market to see a show that ends with two deaths that were not really necessary but also seem—in the context of the opera—absolutely inevitable as Canio descends into madness.