Pappano's Italian Double Bill at the Royal Opera House

Good evening from Covent Garden in London, where tonight

our music director, Antonio Pappano,

leads a star-studded cast

in two great works from the end of the 19th century,

Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci.

They're by two different composers,

but both deal with the complicated lives of ordinary people.

First up is Cavalleria Rusticana, rustic chivalry.

Pietro Mascagni's lush score from 1889 captures the heated passions

and violent tragedies of small-town Italian life.

Drama and music come together like never before in this Olivier

award-winning production by director Damiano Michieletto

conducted by Antonio Pappano.

Let's hear what they had to say during rehearsals.

What I like about this style of composition is it is really direct.

It's hard-hitting, red-blooded musicality and vocality.

It's not intellectual. It's not symbolic.

It's readable and understandable.

It's really popular in a good way.

They went away from writing operas about princesses and kings to

normal people with normal lives

and big emotions that we can really relate to.

I think that's what they call "verismo".

Cavalleria Rusticana is considered probably the first verismo opera.

Verismo. Il vero. This is what is the truth.

In the opening of Cavalleria,

we have the community gathering together to celebrate Easter.

THEY SING: EASTER HYMN

With this religious backdrop which is so powerful, so strong,

so part of that community, you see Santuzza,

one of the main characters, who's excommunicated for her affair

with Turridu singing with them but isolated from the community.

It's terribly cruel.

Santuzza is a girl in distress.

SHE SINGS

'She's not doing so well.'

She's madly in love with Turiddu, but Turiddu actually is not

so much in love with her.

He was in love with Lola, went to the army,

came back and Lola had married somebody else.

He turns to Santuzza who gets, you know, involved with him

and is probably pregnant,

but he doesn't really want to have anything to do with her.

She turns to the mother of Turiddu, saying, "Where is he?

"I want to know where he is, I'm desperate."

"I'm begging you."

'This moment between the two ladies is

interrupted by the arrival of a very funny guy called Alfio.'

# Il calvallo scalpita i sonagli quillano... #

'He's a well-to-do merchant.'

He arrives from one of his travels where he sells any kinds of goods.

Maybe even not the best quality ones but he obviously does very well.

He's very well-off

and he's married to the most beautiful girl in the village, Lola.

In the end we find out he is betrayed.

SINGING

Santuzza's so jealous, Just this wave of rage.

She goes to Lola's husband and tells him what's been going on,

which is of course the biggest mistake of her life...

Because he is somebody who will not take this lightly

and he will have his revenge.

It can happen with your neighbours, with somebody from your family,

it can happen today, yes, because it's true.

# Vi sapro in core il ferro mio... #

That's the wonderful thing, it's a slice of life.

And when people are unhappy

and harsh with each other, disasters happen.

TWO SHOTS RING OUT

The stage is set for the heady mix of love, sex and revenge.

The hallmarks of verismo in Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana.

APPLAUSE

ORCHESTRA BEGINS TO PLAY

TURIDDU SINGS OFFSTAGE IN ITALIAN

SINGING CONTINUES

DRAMATIC FLOURISH FROM ORCHESTRA

SHE SOBS

SOBBING CONTINUES

CHURCH BELLS CHIME

ORCHESTRA MERGES WITH CHURCH BELLS

WOMEN'S CHORUS: # Ah. #

MEN'S CHORUS: # Ah. #

THEY GASP

APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE

BELL CHIMES

GUNSHOTS

APPLAUSE

WHISTLING

Cavalleria Rusticana live from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden,

conducted by Antonio Pappano.

Well, there's plenty of musical highlights still to come tonight

in our second opera of the evening, Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci.

Leoncavallo was hugely influenced by the music

and the drama of Cavalleria.

Pagliacci shares its central premise of a love triangle

set in a small town,

but Leoncavallo really ramps up the theatrical volume

by layering a play within a play, with a prologue that reminds us

we are ourselves watching the action unfold on a stage.

Let's find out more from the cast, conductor and director.

Mascagni's music is raw...

..dark...

..like a very, very strong red wine...

..whereas Leoncavallo, his music has those elements,

but it scintillates, it shines, it has sparks.

Pagliacci opens in a very particular way.

We have a prologue, and the prologue is basically saying to the audience

that you should take theatre as something real.

I try to explain to the people, like the aria says,

of what's going to happen

and then try to tell them that it has to do with normal people.

That's why they call it verismo.

It's something that can really touch you and tells about our life,

the life that we share -

we onstage and you there sitting in the theatre.

And then we meet other characters which are the villagers

of this little, little village

and they are coming to this church hall to attend a show

and we meet Canio, which is the leader of the company and

we meet Nedda, who is his lover and also another actress of the company.

She doesn't love him and probably she never loved him.

She had this dream to become, you know, a famous actress.

She was with him just because...

trying to get the success, which never came.

I found you on the street like actually already dead,

but you were hungry, I gave you my name, honest name,

I gave you love...

..like, it was like, er, fever, hot, and what you do with me?

I never felt that you loved me.

From the beginning, we understand that he's on the verge of a crisis

because he's already filled up with tension

and she has a lover, which is Silvio, a young man of the village.

Silvio, he's like, you know, the dream that she wants.

You know, she found this sensible, sensitive man

who really wants to take care of her

and I think they really are in love, really.

But she's so scared of Canio.

He's jealous, not because he's really in love with her,

because it's the pride, you know, the male pride.

She's his property.

Tonio is another member of the cast and, let's say,

he's the real bad character of Pagliacci.

He's in love with her, with Nedda,

because I think he finds her extremely attractive,

but in a sexual way.

He's so obsessed with her that he turns really bad

because she doesn't want to see him

because how could he approach her, I mean, like he is?

I mean, with his looks and with his...with his ways.

Well, yeah, he becomes very nasty and then we start the real drama

because, little by little, he has to make the husband Canio explode.

And then we have the second part of the story

which is this sort of play in a play.

Onstage they are playing Pagliacci, the comedy,

and the story mixes with the real life

and that will bring to a very tragic conclusion.

This is the sophistication of Leoncavallo.

He's always playing with chiaroscuro, with light and dark,

and this Shakespearean idea of comedy and tragedy is, um...

The greater the comedy, the bigger the tragedy.

It's just genius - the play in the play, the plot in the plot.

It's a rule of show business that if the funny bits,

the light bits, hit home, then the tragedy hits even harder.

I think that is essential in verismo.

Damiano Michieletto has set Pagliacci

on the same day as Cavalleria Rusticana.

After the drama of Turiddu's death, the people of the town

are looking forward to an evening of entertainment

from a travelling theatre troupe,

starring the great Canio as the clown Pagliaccio.

APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE

GUNSHOT

BELL CHIMES

APPLAUSE

SHE LAUGHS IRONICALLY

SHE CRIES

Nedda!

TONIO LAUGHS

DRUM BANGS

HE LAUGHS IRONICALLY

HE CRIES

APPLAUSE

SANTUZZA CRIES

WOLF-WHISTLING

Ah!

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

LAUGHTER

Ah-ha-ha-ha!

LAUGHTER

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

WHISTLING