| "Perfect Choice for Resourceful Opera Company" |
At Mid Wales Opera |
| Pagliacci , Wyeside Arts Centre , November 26, 2024 |
“Pagliacci” (Clowns) is the short, late 19th century opera by Ruggero Leoncavallo that Mid Wales Opera have chosen as their “Small Stages” offering this Autumn, performing at Wyeside in Builth Wells on 15th November. It is a perfect choice of work for this beleaguered but resourceful small opera company. Time and again they have shown themselves to be endlessly innovative and inventive in their choice of works to perform and in their ability to produce high quality work with excellent production values on an astonishing shoestring and this production is no exception.Just ten performers, five singers and five musicians (onstage with the performers). Jonathen Lyness, who is musical director of the company, is one of the five musicians (playing with the Ensemble as well as conducting from the piano). As orchestrator he has the truly remarkable ability to reduce the most complex and majestic opera scores, making sense of the music yet keeping the intrinsic quality of the original when re-scoring for just a handful of musicians, as in this case. And then there is production concept and design, co-director of MWO, Richard Studer, is truly gifted at finding exactly the right way to pitch his productions as both director and designer, conveying layers of meaning with just a few items of stage dressing, props and lighting (sympathetically designed by Bridget Wallbank). So there is always the sense of a total concept working from both a dramatic and design point of view and in Pagliacci’s case this is spot on. Studer has drawn out the notion of “play within a play” at least four times, since the opera itself is a play within a play, where we lose all sense of what is real and what is not, where the line between tragedy and comedy is blurred. But then the setting for MWO is a small, approximately eight metre square, platform – a kind of false stage - enclosed by a metal structure from which are strung old fashioned coloured light bulbs, framing the action in a circus-like way. Another humorous and “spot on” bit of retro is the footlights lighting the white faces from below to heighten the look of sinister clownishness, the reflectors that shield the lights from the audience in the classic form of black shells. All the action happens on this square, wooden rostrum erected on the actual stage, the performers stepping on and off or sitting on its edge. The four singers are permanently in white face, clown make-up hinted at with a black line or diamond over the eye or exaggeratedly carmined lips. Silvio, Nedda’s lover, is the outsider entering from the audience, since we are all the “villagers” of whom he is one. The clowns are in a touring show going from village to village (perfect for small town Mid Wales) yet they are also playing out a time honoured tradition, Studer has interwoven the clear Commedia del Arte narrative into his many layered show. Nedda is Columbine; Tonio is clearly a slightly menacing and perfidious Pulcinella; Beppe is perfect as a dancer like Harlequin and the tragic Canio is sad clown, Pierrot. The characters all start dressed in black and white workaday clothes, shirt sleeves rolled, black waistcoats etc., as they prepare to perform. We could be in rural Southern Italy circa 1940 (the Pagliacci story is based on a true happening in Calabria). But when the clown show starts, everything comes into focus – we’ve seen this story before - Beppe, the only one not chasing Nedda, has become Harlequin and serenades her, now Columbine in a ridiculous pom-pom of multi-layered tutu and so on - all the characters have revealed their true selves as they each become their own Commedia clown -. Baritone, Philip Smith, as Tonio/Pulcinella kicks the show off with his powerfully delivered scene setting aria. Versatile soprano, Elin Pritchard is convincingly frustrated as Nedda and a comical Columbine. Sam Marston is a wonderfully graceful Beppe/Harlequin. Johnny Herford is the outsider villager and Nedda’s new lover, Silvio, and the peerless Robin Lyn Evans, is a bitter and troubled Canio/Pierrot, who sings his tragic “Vesti la Giubba” aria - the pinnacle of the opera - with just the right level of sobbing passion. Evans is an excellent dramatic tenor who is also a bit of a shape shifter, seeming to transform himself physically for each role he takes, this is the first time he has sung Canio. The five musicians pack a punch for so few, especially the strings who have an important role in conveying the emotionality of the opera: Eluned Owen, violin; Nicola Pearce, cello and Elfair Grug, harp. Lyness conducts from the piano and Peryn Clement-Evans plays clarinet. Pagliacci is only an hour long, so MWO perform a rousing cabaret of songs on this same little platform (a wry, fourth layer) to make a full evening’s entertainment, the artists are still in clownish white-face and their workaday black and white clothes. All the songs are inspired by clowns, some familiar, some less known, like “Pierrot’s Tanzlied” from Die Tote Stadt by Korngold, “Parisian Pierrot” by Noel Coward, Harlekin’s aria from Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos etc, sandwiched between “Wilkommen” from Cabaret and “Razzle Dazzle” from Chicago and delivered with energy and panache by both singers and musicians. A full Wyeside was delighted with the evening, work of this quality is much appreciated and needed by Mid Wales audiences and when Richard Studer announced that MWO has secured enough funding to continue for another year or so, a whoop went up. Picture credit: Matthew Williams-Ellis. Other articles about Mid Wales Opera by Jenny March below: Macbeth – March 2024 Beatrice and Benedict - November 2023: Eugene Onegin – April 2018 The Bear - November 2017 A guide to the productions of Mid Wales Opera can be read on the first link below. |
Reviewed by: Jenny March |
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