Chan 3005 book cover.qxd 24/7/07 2:33 pm Page 1 MASCAGNI: CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA/LEONCAVALL0: PAGLIACCI RUSTICANA/LEONCAVALL0: MASCAGNI: CAVALLERIA CHANDOS O PERA I N ENGLISH PAG PAGLIACCI PAGLIACCI MASCAGNI LEONCAVALLO CAVALLERIACAV RUSTICANA ENGLISH O PERA N N I I CHANDOS CHAN 3005(2) CHAN CHAN 3005(2) CHAN 3003 BOOK.qxd 24/7/07 2:42 pm Page 2 Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857–1919) AKG Pagliacci (The Touring Company) Opera in a prologue and two acts Libretto by Leoncavallo English translation by Edmund Tracey with amendments by David Parry Tonio (in the play, Taddeo), a clown ................................................................ Alan Opie baritone Canio (in the play, Pagliaccio), leader of the players ...................................... Dennis O’Neill tenor Beppe (in the play, Harlequin) ........................................................................ Peter Bronder tenor Nedda (in the play, Columbina), Canio’s wife ............................................ Rosa Mannion soprano Silvio, a villager ...................................................................................... William Dazeley baritone Two locals .................................................................... Paul Parfitt bass-baritone • Peter Hall tenor Geoffrey Mitchell Choir The Peter Kay Children’s Choir London Philharmonic Orchestra Brad Cohen assistant conductor Ruggero Leoncavallo, 1894 David Parry 3 CHAN 3003 BOOK.qxd 24/7/07 2:42 pm Page 4 Prologue Time Page Duet Time Page 1 ‘Hello… Hello…’ 8:12 48 9 ‘Nedda!’ 1:28 55 Tonio Silvio, Nedda 10 ‘Why do you go on with this tormented life?’ 2:44 55 Act I 35:26 [p. 54] Silvio, Nedda Chorus 11 ‘I must be strong’ 3:19 56 2 ‘Hey! They’re back! They’re back!’ 2:58 49 Nedda, Silvio, Tonio Chorus, Canio, Beppe 12 ‘How can you tell me you ever loved me’ 4:18 56 Aria Silvio, Nedda 3 ‘Your most humble servant’ 2:48 50 Scene and Finale Canio, Chorus, Tonio, Beppe 13 ‘Be very careful, and then we can surprise them’ 5:00 57 Cantabile Tonio, Silvio, Nedda, Canio, Beppe 4 ‘If he tried it, I promise you’ 3:09 51 Introduction Canio, Nedda, Chorus 14 ‘Go on stage’ 0:46 59 Chorus Canio 5 ‘Do you hear them playing?’ 4:10 51 Aria Chorus, Canio 15 ‘Put on your costume’ 2:59 60 Introduction Canio 6 ‘The ugly look he gave me!’ 2:44 52 Nedda 16 Intermezzo 3:45 60 Aria 7 ‘Swallow, fly away’ 2:23 52 Act II 35:26 [p. 54] Nedda Chorus Duet 17 ‘Ohe! Ohe! Quickly! Hurry!’ 4:07 60 8 ‘It’s you! I thought that you had gone with Canio’ 5:02 53 Chorus, Tonio, Beppe, Silvio, Nedda Nedda, Tonio 4 5 CHAN 3003 BOOK.qxd 24/7/07 2:42 pm Page 6 The Play Time Page 18 ‘Pagliaccio, that’s my husband’ 1:40 62 Ruggero Leoncavallo: Pagliacci Nedda (Columbina), Beppe (Harlequin) Serenade Another composer’s success and a court case biographical and musical background. His 19 ‘Oh, Columbina’ 2:45 63 were, in a very real sense, the progenitors of father, as we have seen, was a judge, his mother Beppe (Harlequin), Columbina Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. Had it not been for a painter, famous at the time in Naples, where 20 ‘She’s waiting. She is a goddess!’ 3:50 63 Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, produced in the composer was born on 8 March 1857. He Tonio (Taddeo), Columbina, Harlequin 1890, it is doubtful whether the publisher studied with various piano teachers before 21 ‘Arlecchin!’ ‘Columbina’ 1:57 64 Sonzogno would have accepted Leoncavallo’s entering the Naples Conservatory. While a Columbina, Harlequin, Taddeo work or whether the composer would have student he heard Tannhäuser at Bologna, an 22 ‘Pour the potion in his glass at midnight!’ 3:04 65 even taken it to him. experience that made a deep impression on him. Harlequin, Columbina/Nedda, Canio (Pagliaccio), Tonio The story of the court case goes back to the A meeting with Wagner in the town shortly Aria composer’s boyhood. His father was a judge, after made an even deeper impression. 23 ‘No, we’re not in a play!’ 6:31 66 and Leoncavallo vividly recalled the trial of an Apparently Wagner said to him: ‘Voyez, je lutte Canio, Chorus, Silvio, Nedda, Beppe, Tonio actor who, seized with jealousy, murdered his encore’ (See, I’m still struggling). The memory TT 79:45 wife at the end of a performance. The prisoner, of those words cheered Leoncavallo during his apparently a figure of tragic power, faced up to own years of struggle to gain recognition. the accusation, grief-stricken yet unbending. Shortly after completing his studies, when he Leoncavallo remembered years later the man’s was eighteen, he wrote his first opera Chatterton, rough voice echoing through the court. This but efforts to get it produced proved abortive. awesome figure, a model for Canio, arose in While earning his living by playing the his mind as a subject for a short, taut drama piano he began composing a Wagner-inspired after Cavalleria rusticana had been produced. trilogy entitled Crepusculum, dealing with the He completed his own libretto and its setting Renaissance in Italy. At one point, while in five months. Sued later for plagiarism, he touring in the Middle East (1882), he was had only to tell the true story for the irate offered the post in Cairo as chief of military author to drop his case. bands, which he might have accepted had the Leoncavallo’s verismo technique is not activities of the British Army not forced him to unexpected from a man with Leoncavallo’s flee to Ismailia disguised as an Arab! 6 7 CHAN 3003 BOOK.qxd 24/7/07 2:42 pm Page 8 Next he completed I Medici, part of his following year to conduct a new piece, Zingari done for the present with legendary heroes and been as it is had Wagner never existed. trilogy, but though Ricordi had signed a (The Gypsies), written specially for that cloudy myths’ – a sally, of course, at Wagner – However, the work as a whole has a contract for the work, he did not see fit to theatre. He sought in vain to repeat the ‘Their personages are too far removed; they are recognisably Italian flavour: the choral publish it, being more impressed with overwhelming success of Pagliacci, and his not flesh of our flesh and bone of our bones. passages, for instance, place the action Leoncavallo as a poet of the theatre than as a reputation will continue to depend on the Nowadays the demand is for Human unmistakably in Southern Italy and, whether composer. After three years attempting to get survival of his most noted work. Documents, for characters in tale and drama the composer is being unpretentiously and I Medici performed, he wrote Pagliacci, which What is its fascination and worth? Let’s first that are our kin, not our exaggerated selves’. sensuously tuneful as in Beppe’s (Harlequin’s) he gave to Ricordi’s great rival Sonzogno. It look at some contemporary opinions. More recently, more succinctly the critic Spike Serenade or Nedda’s Ballatella, or strongly proved an almost immediate success when Hermann Klein, a leading critic of the time, Hughes wrote that Leoncavallo was fulfilling ‘A impassioned, as in the ‘Ridi, Pagliaccio’ (Make produced at the Teatro dal Verme on 21 May wrote in his memoirs of its first London Long Felt Want’. Here were no longer the it amusing) theme of ‘Vesti la giubba’ (Put on 1892, conducted by Toscanini. So successful performance in May 1893 (when the composer conventional romantic hero, nor yet again your costume), the music evinces a transalpine was it that the following year I Medici was at was present), ‘The fame of Leoncavallo’s figures from Norse saga, but real people – lyricism. These and other set pieces, such as the last staged – in the same theatre. As it proved a sensational opera had preceded it, and the earthy, passionate, full of life. erotic duet for Nedda and Silvio, are fully failure, Leoncavallo did not pursue the public expected something remarkable. They Of course, the tale of the clown whose heart integrated into a unified structure in the remaining parts of the trilogy, Savonarola and were not disappointed. I have rarely seen an is breaking but who must go on playing out his manner of Verdi’s late masterpieces. Cesare Borgia, but Chatterton was eventually audience so breathless with excitement over the comic part is not new; nor is the device of a Leoncavallo brings off a brilliant coup de produced (1896) and then his version of La development of an opera plot’. He then goes play within a play. Leoncavallo’s skill was to théâtre with the Prologue in which Tonio pokes bohème (1897), which suffered virtual eclipse on to describe and praise the cast, Fernando de clothe these devices in music that was his head through the curtain, then comes out in view of Puccini’s more inspired setting of Lucia as Canio, Melba as Nedda and Mario touching, immediately accessible and to tell the members of the audience directly Murger’s novel. Zazà came next (1900) and Ancona as Tonio, adding that ‘Leoncavallo, attractive, tuneful without being tawdry. He that even the actors are men and women like these are the only works of the composer’s still modest and unassuming, waited quietly in the was an accomplished librettist and by adhering themselves, passionate, rejoicing, suffering. seen in Italy today other than Pagliacci. background till the end, and then had to be to the Aristotelian unities of time and space, The play within a play, somewhat reminiscent He continued to write until his death in forced on to the stage by the artists to his scenario is at once credible and swift- of that in Hamlet in its relevance to the main 1919.