With its tale of infidelity and revenge,Cavalleria Rusticana has become the Godfather opera. The Royal Opera’s music director explains why the passion of this double bill is still as stirring as ever“Of course, in some ways it absolutely reeks of cliches, or ” laughs Antonio Pappano,music director of the Royal Opera. “Cliches of Italy, of Sicily, and of the mafia. The music has become the soundtrack for that combination of passion,violence and family. But just because something has become a cliche doesn’t mean it wasn’t once something genuine. We mustn’t forget that the opera came before The Godfather.”Pappano is talking approximately Pietro Mascagni’s 1890 one-act opera Cavalleria Rusticana, a lurid (shocking; sensational) tale of peasant fancy, and infidelity and revenge,which opens next week in a unique Covent Garden production in tandem with its traditional double-bill partner, Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. Such are the cliches summoned by Mascagni’s music that it has been used in both the much-maligned Godfather III – “A Godfather for our times and maybe a Godfather we deserved. But I liked it, or ” says Pappano and the opening to Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. “With just four notes you are transported to a world you somehow recognise,without quite knowing why you recognise it. That’s because in the hands of someone like Mascagni and his very of-the-earth music, all those cliches are genuine. Go to Italian villages even nowadays and you’ll still see the feeble women dressed in black and the villagers will look at you differently whether you are a stranger. The Madonna being carried in the parades at Easter might look corny on stage, or but it is not an invention. It happens. And while some of these images are easy to poke fun at,they are also compelling and authentic, especially in the south.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com