Metropolitan Opera broadcasts continue on Classical 90.5 at 11:00 a.m. this Saturday with a double bill. The first performance will be Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni, set to a libretto in Italian by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play and short story written by Giovanni Verga. The second work on the program will be Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo, with an Italian libretto by the composer. The performance will run approximately three hours and twenty minutes. Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi is at the podium.
Two tales of passion, jealousy, and death set in southern Italy, Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci have been all but inseparable on the opera stages of the world since the Met first presented them as a double bill in 1893. The overwhelming success of Cavalleria was crucial in launching the verismo movement, inspiring other composers (including Leoncavallo) to turn to stories and characters from real life, and often from society’s grittier elements.
The score of Cavalleria is direct, unadorned, and honest. The famous intermezzo, often heard outside the opera’s context, summarizes its musical plan: gorgeous, melancholy melody carried by unison strings with very little harmonization. In some ways, Pagliacci expresses verismo ideals even more strongly, most notably in the unity of each scene and the seamless transitions between individual solos. There is, as in Cavalleria, a powerful orchestral intermezzo, but Pagliacci is most noted for its Act I climax, the tenor aria “Vesti la giubba,” one of the world’s most familiar melodies. It was, in Caruso’s rendition, the recording industry’s first million-seller.
THE CAST
Santuzza: Violetta Urmana
Turridu: Yonghoon Lee
Alfio: Ambrogio Maestri
Nedda: Barbara Frittoli
Canio: Roberto Alagna
Tonio: George Gagnidze
Silivio: Alexey Lavrov
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