Though billed under its usual nickname, "Cav and Pag", Raymond Gubbay's latest Albert Hall offering should be retitled "Pag and Cav", since the traditional order of this most familiar of operatic double bills has been reversed.
Musically, the transposition makes sense. Cavalleria Rusticana, Mascagni's groundbreaking study of sexual obsession and Catholic guilt, is the better score, a relentless musical arc that contains not a single redundant note or superfluous dramatic gesture. Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, dealing with the members of an itinerant theatre company who fatally blur the dividing lines between life and art, is discursive by comparison.
Ultimately, however, one suspects that the reason behind the switch is theatrical. The director is Martin Duncan, and Cavalleria Rusticana has clearly fired his imagination in ways that Pagliacci has not. Preserving the Sicilian setting, he has updated Mascagni's opera to the early 1940s, with vague hints of fascism and Mafia dealings heightening its oppressive atmosphere.
It is apparent from the furtive erotic gestures among the chorus that this is a society founded on codes of sexual secrecy. The tragedy derives from the fact that the unholy combination of desire and religious fanaticism has driven Santuzza to go public with what should remain hidden. Played by Anne-Marie Owens as a woman at once dowdy, self-dramatising and resolute, Santuzza exultantly charges John Hudson's bullish Turiddu with betrayal at the foot of an enormous crucifix as Michelle Walton's glamour girl Lola looks snidely on. The singing is raw, which it should be - an exposure of naked emotions spiralling gradually out of control.
Pagliacci, however, is messy. Though the opera is rooted in literary naturalism, Duncan uses Leoncavallo's emphasis on reality and illusion as an excuse to juxtapose different theatrical styles. Every monologue is accompanied by a wash of symbolist lighting. The chorus indulge in Broadway-type dance routines. The result is alienating when it should be in-your-face, and the cast struggle with it.
David Rendall just about manages to rouse your sympathies for Canio's plight, though he is hampered by Duncan turning him into a violent drunk, when Leoncavallo was after a more complex figure. Mary Hegarty's Nedda sounds gorgeous, but isn't nearly sluttish or cruel enough. Phillip Joll, his voice frayed, is uninteresting as Tonio. The conductor, Brad Cohen, is superb in Cavalleria Rusticana, though Pagliacci is marred by wretched co-ordination between orchestra and singers. "Pag and Cav", as we must now call it, has become "Cav" on its own.
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