I PAGLIACCI AT THE ARTS THEATRE

Nedda played by Paula and Ronald Samm as Canio

 A Play within a Play I Pagliacci might be short but it sure is powerful. Leoncavallo wrote it as a Verismo opera – it aims to be gritty realistic and true to life. The story is a play within a play. Canio the leader of a group of actors is fearful his wife Nedda is having an affair in real life, whilst on stage he is forced to play the betrayed husband as he inwardly rages with grief and revenge. Pagliacci begins this desperate story with an unusual opener. Tonio, one of the cast and a brilliant baritone ,sings a Prologue . Toni reminds us that the performers we are about to watch are people with their own anguish sadness and disappointment a beautiful bass singer, he takes a deep dive into the plot. These people, he tells us, have real emotions. He asks us to understand how near to real life the shows will be.

As the company prepares their final rehearsal Director Canio is already consumed with jealous suspicion. The music is familiar and lovely but the violence apparent from the outset is disturbing. Lovely Nedda longs for freedom. But her heartbreak is muted as she talks of the high soaring starlings around her from the interior of the dismal rehearsal room. Paula Sides has lovely voice, but in this incongruous setting, the image loses its potency, she is checking through her script as she sings.

Meanwhile Silvio arrives to reveal Nedda is already having an affair and the couple plan to escape that evening. Tonio  ( who lusts after lovely Nedda himself and is furious by her rejection) tells the seething Canio of the plan .The scene is set for tragedy. Ronald Samm conveys the strained heartbreak of betrayal as he sings the famous ‘Vesti la giubba”  he expresses an anguish more poignant as we just  have seen him with his Nedda in a warm marital embrace.

Paula Sides as Nedda

There was then an interval. These twenty minutes broke up the tension and when the audience reconvened, it was before a surrealistic fantasy kitchen where everyone was garbed in fluorescent pink. Nedda, no longer the troubled wife in love with another man, is now a showgirl with a 1950s wig and rock n’roll tight fitting jeans. Silvio, the lover somehow breaks the fourth wall to appear as himself whilst a tortured Canio writhes in revulsion as the cast now dressed in Japanese style Noh costumes and masks, torment him with his fears of betrayal. Suddenly he awakes from this nightmare only to realize Nedda is untrue. In a repellent scene of violence, he strangles her with the modish telephone cord. Silvio strangely appears to survive this revenge.

So we had a play of two halves. The touching traditional set (although this had its vicious threatening tropes towards the unfaithful wife) and a second half where the chorus assume a surreal role. Imaginative it may be , but I felt this did not work and was miles from the verismo realism Tonio ‘s Prologue had promised .

Yet overwhelming and sometimes demanding, this was a brilliant version of a famous piece alongside a wonderful orchestra. The reception in the auditorium was massive. This entirely new interpretation enchanted the Cambridge audience and continues to pursue your reviewer into deeper and more profound appreciation of the show - both of them,