Dark verismo
By Thomas Molke /
Photos by Matthias Jung
One day after Offenbach’s one-act operetta To your health, Mr. Cauliflower! premiered in the Aalto-Theater, the next premiere is already on the program. It was hardly expected that the production, which was actually in the starting blocks at the end of January, could be performed in front of an audience before the season break in June. The comic genre is now followed by Ruggero Leoncavallos Pagliacci serious verismo. The work, which over the years has become a kind of diptych with Pietro Mascagnis Cavalleria rusticana developed and actually after the gloomy one Cavalry The task of cheering up a little before the tragic end with the game in the style of the Commedia dell’arte is certainly now on the program alone, not least because of the strict Corona rules. Theater evenings with a break cannot yet be implemented in the current situation, in which gastronomy cannot be offered either.
The Bajazzo Canio (Sergey Polyakov) killed his wife Nedda (Gabrielle Mouhlen).
Whether Leoncavallo, who wrote the libretto in addition to the music, really, as he claims, was inspired to write this piece by a real experience on an Italian travel stage cannot be proven. With the story of the “Bajazzo” Canio, who is betrayed by his wife Nedda in real life with the farmer Silvio and then kills her on stage because reality and play are blurred, he met at least at the premiere on May 22, 1892 in Milan’s Teatro dal avoid the nerve of the times. The piece was quickly re-enacted around the world, often as an abridged parody in music halls. The famous tenor aria Canios “Vesti la giubba” was recorded by Enrico Caruso as the first record that sold more than a million times. Originally, Leoncavallo had created the piece as a one-act play and wanted to take part in the Sonzogno competition, from which Mascagnis already had Cavalry emerged victorious. Due to the interlude after the great tenor aria, the work became too long for the competition, so Leoncavallo converted it into a two-act, which is still played without a break. It may be confusing that the original title has the plural form Pagliacci used, while in German the singular The Bajazzo prevailed, which at first glance seems to be more correct in terms of content. The baritone Victor Maurel, who paved Leoncavallo’s way into the Parisian cultural and artistic scene, was able to convince Leoncavallo that the betrayed husband in the play was not the only “Bajazzo” and that this term also applied to the figure he embodied, Maurel des Tonio was true, and that is how it became in Italian Clown just Pagliacci.
Canio (Sergey Polyakov, left) as ball from Tonio (Seth Carico)
It is thanks to Maurel’s influence that Leoncavallo added a prologue to the piece. Maurel had asked for a great aria for his role, but Leoncavallo was unable to incorporate it into the play dramaturgically. So he created the prologue for him, which precedes the piece in the piece with a metatheatrical level. Seth Carico scores as Tonio in this prologue with a powerful black baritone, which underlines the diabolical character of the figure. One almost has the impression that Carico is drawing the archetype of the “evil baritone”. In his black embroidered suit, he looks like a game master pulling the strings throughout the play. The directing team around Roland Schwab does without a visual reference to the Commedia dell’arte in play in the game and chooses a consistently gloomy approach. The murder seems to have happened at the beginning of the opera. Canio can be seen covered in blood on a video projection in front of the curtain and Nedda is hanging dead on a pole. When the curtain goes up, there are several Neddas on the stage as corpses. All of them are covered in a black body bag, and only the bright red pumps suggest that it is Nedda in all of the cases. Tonio leads the blood-smeared Canio on a chain across the stage. Canio wears a sign around his neck with the inscription: “Theater has to be”, a requirement that cannot be emphasized often enough during the corona pandemic, even if it is meant a little differently here.
Nedda (Gabrielle Mouhlen) dreams of a future together with Silvio (Tobias Greenhalgh).
Canio seems to be in a kind of endless loop. The dead Neddas rise and transform into the farmers who invite him and the other actors to go out for a drink. So the story begins again. Piero Vinciguerra’s stage set consists of numerous yellow glowing fairy lights, which initially form a kind of circus roof over the revolving stage. Individual strings of lights are already on the floor at the beginning and show the cracks in the world of the acting troupe that cannot be hidden. The stage trumpeter (Jan-Henning Drees) wears a gloomy mask that is just as reminiscent of the personified death as an extra on a pennywheel who circles the play on the revolving stage in the piece in the play in the second act. Nedda, who clearly feels uncomfortable in this world, pulls short white wings over her black dress, perhaps in the hope of escaping this misery, which is also expressed in her aria in the first act when she sings about the freedom of the birds. Gabrielle Mouhlen inspires here with a full soprano and a strong middle range. But the extras meanwhile distribute plucked white feathers on the stage. Your attempt to escape will not be crowned with success. With Tobias Greenhalgh as Silvio, Mouhlen experiences a brief moment of hope before Canio, incited by Tonio, returns and it would be a catastrophe if Beppe (Carlos Cardoso with a slight tenor) did not hold him back with a reference to the upcoming performance.
Nedda (Gabrielle Mouhlen) rejects Tonios (Seth Carico) advertising.
This is followed by the famous tenor aria “Vesti la giubba”, which Sergey Polyakov masters as Canio with cleanly applied top notes and a powerful tenor. In general, he succeeds in presenting the character’s turmoil in a believable and extremely tragic way. You get the feeling that Tonio is leading him like a puppet and is actually the plaything of the wrong friend. In a video projection he sees his first encounter with Nedda again. In Schwab’s production, they seem to have met at a party. Nedda looks very seductive in the projection, and Canio completely succumbs to her charm. There is still no sign of his brutal jealousy here. The text sung shortly before the murder tells a slightly different story. After that, Canio picked Nedda up from the street and offered her a safe home. The game in the game is sometimes quite macabre. The half chicken that the servant Taddeo (Tonio) was supposed to get for Colombina (Nedda) is a long row of sausages that he pulls out of his trouser rack to indicate that he himself desires his master’s wife. When Harlequin (Beppe) comes to dinner as Colombina’s lover, she serves a leg that appears to have come from one of the corpses. Colombina (Nedda) serves itself up to a certain extent. The following catastrophe takes up the picture from the beginning.
The choir, which cannot perform on stage due to the Corona restrictions, is heard over loudspeakers from the hall, which is quite appropriate in this case, since the choir takes on the role of the audience. Robert Jindra and the Essen Philharmonic create a haunting verismo sound from the trench that gets under your skin. So at the end there is enthusiastic applause for everyone involved.
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Leoncavallos The Bajazzo works in Roland Schwab’s gloomy staging even without Mascagnis Cavalry and brings a moving evening at the opera.
