Symphony Preview: The real thing

It has been a few years since the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus gave us an “Opera in Concert” evening—that is, a program consisting of a classic opera performed without the usual theatrical accoutrements—so the performances at the Stifel Theatre this weekend (November 11 and 12) of the 1890 Melodramma “Cavalleria rusticana” by Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945) is most welcome.

[Preview the music with the SLSO's Spotify playlist.]

Santuzza pleads with Turiddu
By Anonymous restored by Adam Cuerden -
Gallica, PD-US

“Cavalleria rusticana” is usually translated as “Rustic Chivalry” which, to anyone unfamiliar with it, probably conjures up images that are considerably at odds with the subject matter of Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti’s libretto. Based on the novella and play of the same name by Sicilian author Giovanni Verga (1840–1922), the opera takes place during one fateful Easter morning in a 19th century Sicilian village. The “chivalry” is actually the traditional vendetta resulting from a mix of love, betrayal, and jealousy.

For the record, here’s a plot summary from Opera Online:

It is Easter morning in a Sicilian village.  A sad, anxious girl, Santuzza, is looking for her lover Turridu, who betrayed her and went back to his former fiancée, Lola, who had meanwhile married the wealthy Alfio when he returned from the army. Santuzza tries in vain to win back her lover. Mad with jealousy, she tells Alfio, the cuckolded husband, about Lola and Turridu. At that point, Turridu’s fate is sealed. Alfio provokes him to a duel. After saying goodbye to his mother [Lucia], Turridu leaves for his fatal meeting.

Needless to say, nobody lives happily ever after.

Written for a one-act opera competition sponsored by the publisher Edoardo Sonzogno, “Cavalleria Rusticana” was Mascagni’s first and most enduring hit, and it was a whopper. It won the competition (besting 72 rival operas), enjoyed a triumphant premiere at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, and was immediately taken up by opera houses in Europe and the USA. “For over a century,” writes Venetian musicologist Michele Girardi, “it has found a place in the repertory of leading singers and conductors from Mahler, who conducted it in Budapest and included it in the programmes of the Vienna Staatsoper, through Levi and Weingartner and on to Karajan, among more recent performers.” These days it’s usually paired with “I Pagliacci” (1892), the only real hit by Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857–1919).

Scene from the world premiere of the opera
By Uncredited, Public Domain

“Cavalleria Rusticana” is generally regarded as the first (and certainly most successful) example of the operatic genre known as verismo in which (to quote Stanley Sadie in his 1990 “History of Opera”) “opera moved into line with the other arts of the late 19th century in its readiness to accept the daily life of common people, even (indeed especially) at its most squalid, as apt material for treatment.” The parallel Italian literary movement of the same name, championed by Verga and Luigi Capuana, was in turn part of a broader European movement called “naturalism,” the principal exponent of which was Émile Zola.

All of this was itself a reflection of the social, cultural, and technological upheaval that characterized the late 19th and early 20th century. The old Imperial world order was crumbling, and populism (for both good and ill) was on the rise. Stories of great heroes and villains of the past no longer seemed all that relevant. Even today, opera and other forms of theatre are largely grounded in reality. Mascagni and those who followed in his wake were on the cusp of a major change in the performing arts, whether they realized it at the time or not.

Gemma Bellincioni as Santuzza, 
and Roberto Stagno as Turiddu,
in the 1890 premiere
Unknown author, Public Domain

But, of course, historical significance isn’t what has kept “Cavalleria rusticana” an active part of the repertory for nearly a century and a half. For that, credit the composer’s melodic inventiveness, the fast-moving story, the tight dramatic structure, and the compelling passion of the characters. In a promotional video at the SLSO Facebook page tenor Jimmy Stevens (Younger Brother in Union Avenue Opera’s “Ragtime” back in August) describes it “some of the most action-packed music you’re going to hear in an 80-minute period.” I’d say that about covers it.

The orchestra will be conducted by James Gaffigan, who gave us an impassioned evening of Brahms and Mendelssohn with SLSO back in 2014. A graduate of Rice University (my alma mater), Gaffigan has extensive credits on both the concert and opera stages, a fact reflected in his 2023/2024 performance schedule. Less than a month after this weekend’s concert, he’ll be back at the Komische Oper [sp?] Berlin (where he was just appointed General Music Director) conducting, among others, Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Golden Cockrel,” and Wagner’s “Flying Dutchman,” along with a New Year’s Eve concert and an innovative program that combines Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6 with music from David Bowie’s 1977 album “Heroes.” And this after a season that will have included conducting gigs with major orchestras around the world.

The SLSO Chorus will be led by guest director Andrew Whitfield, who did such a fine job directing the Opera Theatre Chorus this past summer.

The Essentials: James Gaffigan conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a concert version of Mascagni’s “Cavalleria rusticana” Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 2 pm, November 11 and 12, at the Stifel Theatre. The cast consists of soprano Heidi Melton as Santuzza, mezzo-soprano Katherine Beck as Lola, contralto Meredith Arwady as Lucia, tenor Antonio Poli as Turiddu, and baritone Anthony Clark Evans as Alfio. 

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Review: Union Avenue Opera's "Tosca" gets the passion right

L-R: March Schapman, Matthew Edwardsen,
Neil Nelson

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This weekend, Union Avenue Opera concludes its very strong production of Puccini's 1900 political melodrama Tosca. Moved from its original 1800 setting to 1940-where the underlying conflict between autocracy and democracy works perfectly well, thanks very much-this is a dramatically arresting show and well worth your time.

Anyone seeking an example of how an operatic classic can have contemporary resonance need look no further than the character of Baron Scarpia, the villain in. A textbook case of how an elaborate display of public piety can be a false front for lust and violence, Scarpia also provides us one of the great moments of Italian opera in the final scene of Act I as he plots the seduction and betrayal of Tosca while the crowd celebrates High Mass. It's a spectacular scene-one of the best examples of dramatic irony you'll ever see-and also a great argument for the separation of Church and State.

Matthew Edwardsen and
Elena O'Connor

The story of Tosca is a mix of passion, deceit, and violence typical of the verismo school of opera, with its emphasis on human emotions, both noble and destructive. Here, they're mostly destructive: the title character's overwhelming desire for her lover, the painter Cavaradossi, results in a jealousy that undoes them both; Scarpia's obsessive lust for Tosca motivates him to break every moral code he claims to support, and eventually results in his death at her hands; and Cavaradossi's passion for human freedom leads him to shelter the rebel Angelotti, which results in a firing squad for the former and suicide for the latter. It's not a cheerful story, Rome wasn't a cheerful place in either 1800 or 1940.

Any successful production of Tosca demands a strong and compelling Scarpia, and it certainly has one in bass-baritone Neil Nelson, who was so outstanding in the somewhat similar role of Di Luna in Winter Opera's Il Trovatore back in March. He's got big, powerful voice that can purr as well as rant and that easily delivered even the lowest notes with authority.

And then there's Elena O'Connor, making a brilliant Union Avenue debut as Tosca. Praised by the Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle has for her "lustrous powerhouse soprano and wonderfully over-the-top theatrics", she's a striking and magnetic stage presence-which is exactly what Tosca should be. She made me believe Scarpia could be completely captivated by her. And the scene in which she stabs and then curses Scarpia as he dies was entirely satisfying.

Her scenes with tenor Matthew Edwardsen, who was such credible Pinkerton in the company's Madama Butterfly three years ago, had real chemistry and passion. Edwardsen, for his part, has a bold, dramatic voice that ran into trouble only in the very loudest passages. And his acting is spot on.

Union Avenue's Tosca has one more performance tonight at 8 p.m. You should definitely catch it if you can; this is one of the better productions of this opera I have seen, and that covers a lot of ground. Check out Union Avenue's web site for details.

The real thing

Robert Brubaker as Luigi and
Emily Pulley as Giorgetta in Il tabarro
Photo: Ken Howard

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Who: Opera Theatre of St. Louis
What: Puccini’s Il Tabarro and Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci
Where: The Loretto-Hilton Center
When: through June 29th

Opera Theatre’s second production this season is a dramatically powerful and musically impeccable combination of two classics of verismo opera: Puccini’s “Il Tabarro” (“The Cloak”) and Leoncavallo’s “I Pagliacci” (“The Clowns”). “Verismo” is, literally, the Italian for “realism”; the verismo libretti deal with the joys and sorrows of ordinary people. Verismo arose as a kind of reaction to the mythic and historical subjects favored by Verdi and earlier masters.

Verismo was, in short, an attempt to make opera more “relevant” to (in the words of critic Stanley Sadie) “a middle-class public, which had a social conscience and expected to be seriously addressed in the course of its entertainment.”

Yesterday’s relevance, however, is today’s historical artifact. The provincial touring commedia dell’arte troupe of “Pagliacci” and, to a lesser extent, the commercial barge on the Seine of “Tabarro” would have been familiar to audiences when the operas were written at the turn of the last century, but now they seem exotic. How do you recapture the immediacy the original composers and librettists had in mind?

Director Ron Daniels has elected to move the action up slightly in time—both operas now appear to take place sometime in the middle of the last century. Otherwise, however, he seems to be willing to let these grim and violent dramas of despair, betrayal, and passion gone rancid speak for themselves—with dramatically powerful results.

Both operas deal with older men in loveless marriages with younger women who yearn for improbable escape with young lovers.

In “Tabarro” the barge owner Michele and his wife Giorgetta clearly loved each other at some point—they even have a poignant duet in which they recall those earlier days—but the death of their infant son has apparently driven a fatal wedge between them. She now dreams of escaping to the town of her birth with the stevedore Luigi, while Michele nurses a grudge and plots revenge. Michele is just sympathetic enough to make him a quintessentially tragic figure.

Kelly Kaduce as Nedda and
Robert Brubaker as Canio in Pagliacci
Photo: Ken Howard

In “Pagliacci,” on the other hand, Canio (Pagliaccio in the troupe’s show) is a boiling reservoir of rage from his first appearance on stage. When a villager jokingly suggests that the hunchback Tonio might have designs on Canio’s wife Nedda (the troupe’s Columbina), his smile becomes the rictus of Batman’s nemesis The Joker as he declares (in a very free translation of the original) “that’s not funny. .” When Tonio, angered by Nedda’s rejection of his crude attempt at seduction, arranges for Canio to find Nedda in flagrante delicto with her lover, the villager Silvio, the increasing spiral of violence is not so much tragic as grimly inevitable—a slow-motion train wreck.

The cast for this production, three of whom appear in both operas, could hardly be better.

Baritone Tim Mix is utterly credible as the tragic Michele, the black-hearted Tonio, and the mild-mannered Prologue of “Pagliacci,” who delivers the artistic manifesto of the verismo movement. It’s a classic triple-threat performance, beautifully sung. Tenor Robert Brubaker is equally remarkable in the contrasting roles of Luigi and Canio, with a powerful, ringing voice and compelling stage presence. I felt he overplayed Canio’s rage a bit in the famous “Vesti la giubba,” but he perfectly captured the despair of Luigi’s short (but technically challenging) aria in “Tabarro”.

Tenor Matthew DiBattista rounds out the double-cast trio as the stevedore Trinca in “Tabarro” and Beppe/Harlequin in “Pagliacci.” Both are relatively lightweight comic roles and he does well by them.

Soprano Emily Pulley makes an auspicious Opera Theatre debut as Giorgetta, perfectly capturing the character’s longing and conflict with a dark, almost mezzo voice and finely tuned acting. Soprano Kelly Kaduce once again captivated me with her combination of first-rate acting and singing as Nedda/Columbina. I’ve seen her in a wide range of roles over the years and she never has failed to impress.

Bass-baritone Thomas Hammons and mezzo Margaret Gawrysiak provide a moving interlude in “Tabarro” as the stevedore Talpa and his wife Frugola, whose longing for a bucolic escape mirrors that of Giorgetta and Luigi.

Both operas call for a considerable amount of offstage action, which can be a challenge for a space like the Loretto-Hilton center, but Mr. Daniels makes ingenious use of both the wings and the house, with large crowd scenes spilling up the aisles and surrounding the audience. That proves to be especially helpful in “Pagliacci” with its crowd of villagers and children (to say nothing of the silent Greek chorus of clowns added by Mr. Daniels). Even in the more intimate “Tabarro,” though, having the strolling song vendor, organ grinder, and unnamed lovers enter and exit through the house adds to the sense of immediacy.

The scores of both operas are musically rich. Puccini’s is clearly the more impressive and through composed of the two, while Leoncavallo is the more overtly theatrical. Both offer considerable challenges to the players and conductor as well, especially with singers coming in from ”here, there, and everywhere.” In his Opera Theatre debut, Ward Stare—who has done such fine work with the symphony over the years—kept everything humming along beautifully and the orchestra sounded great.

Both operas looked great as well, thanks to set designer Riccardo Hernandez and costume designer Emily Rebholz. “Tabarro” takes place in front of a backdrop showing Michele’s barge. The prow of the boat, the suggestion of the river, and the riverbank are all in black and grey, mirroring the bleak world in which the characters live. Even the titular cloak is black. After intermission, the stage appears to be largely unchanged for the Prologue of “Pagliacci,” but that’s an illusion. As soon as the Prologue ends, the silent chorus of clowns whip dark coverings off the stage, the barge backdrop rises, and suddenly we’re thrust into the gaudy world of the circus where the dominant color is, appropriately, a bloody red and the stage is dominated by a huge image of Pagliaccio on the rear wall.

It’s a smart bit of theatre, as is the entire evening. The musical and dramatic values of this production are all exemplary and I recommend it highly.

Opera Theatre’s compelling double bill of “Il Tabarro” and “I Pagliacci” runs through June 29th in rotating repertory with the rest of the OTSL season. For more information and schedules, experienceopera.org.