Clowns have feelings too, at Opera Holland Park
Forget Covent Garden! If you want to see a really moving performance of Leoncavallo’s short opera I Pagliacci, go to Opera Holland Park.
A group of commedia dell’arte players, led by Canio, are putting on a performance where his wife Nedda is apparently unfaithful to him. As life imitates art, he murders her and her lover Silvio during the performance, and we are very much there with a poor Italian audience watching the play when things go horribly awry.
At Holland Park the orchestra is surrounded both behind and in front by the players and their audience on an open stage. We see the stage preparations being made and can identify with the spectators in a small southern Italian town. The concept of a play within a play is brilliantly conveyed by director Martin Lloyd-Evans, with designs by Bridget Kimak showing ordinary working people coming together for an evening’s entertainment. You simply can’t get such an atmosphere in a large opera house, and the drama was absolutely gripping.
Indeed the opera was a hit from its first performance in 1892, and the UK premiere in London followed a year later with Nellie Melba as Nedda. The French baritone engaged to sing Tonio (the fool) at the Italian premiere felt his role had demanded more heft, and Leoncavallo inserted a prologue which is extremely effective. This is where Tonio can tell us that the tears we actors shed are not real, and yet of course at the end they very much are. We see Canio silently weeping as he puts on his makeup front stage, with his back to the audience. At the end, in one of the audience gangways, we witness his murder, knife in hand, of Nedda. It all seems terribly real and under the baton of Francesco Cilluffo with the City of London Sinfonia, the raw emotion in the orchestra came through brilliantly. Cilluffo was well chosen by Opera Holland Park — an Italian conductor who wrote his musical thesis on one of the greatest twentieth century emotional rollercoasters, Britten’s Billy Budd.
As Tonio, who sings the prologue, Robert Hayward gave a hugely sympathetic portrayal, as he reminds the audience that actors have feelings too. Already we see a man fighting his own demons, a man who will instigate the destruction of the small company he works for, and the death of the woman (Nedda) he is obsessed with. As for Nedda, beautifully portrayed by Alison Langer, we already see her exchanging glances with Harry Thatcher’s attractive and vocally passionate Silvio before the main drama commences. Her husband Canio was brilliantly sung by David Butt Philip, who has now developed a real dramatic presence. His Vesti la giubba, delivered as a serious contribution to the story rather than a lollipop, was rewarded with thunderous applause. Indeed the whole performance, including a fine Beppe by Zwakele Tshabalala, received well-deserved cheers. This is as fine as it gets — a thoroughly convincing Pagliacci that should not be missed.
It was preceded by another short opera to open the evening: Il Segreto di Susannah by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari. This drawing room comedy featured Clare Presland as an attractive Countess Susannah, who hides her secret, with Richard Burkhard singing brilliantly as her husband, and John Savournin as their servant playing the role almost silently as a frazzled John Cleese. The lightness of the music under the fine baton of John Andrews made this a delightful precursor to the main evening’s entertainment. Altogether a huge success.
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