Leoncavallo - "Pagliacci" & Puccini - "Gianni Schicchi" Fully Staged co-production with the Connecticut Lyric Opera FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 8 PM - TRINITY ON MAIN, NEW BRITAIN SATURDAY, MAY 8, 7:30 PM - GARDE, NEW LONDON SATURDAY, MAY 15, 7:30 PM - MHS ARTS CENTER, MIDDLETOWN SUNDAY, MAY 23, 7:30 PM - PALACE THEATER, WATERBURY Conductor - Adrian Sylveen Stage Director - Andy Ottoson Chorus Master - Pawel Jura Technical Director - Peter Strand   Canio / Rinuccio - Daniel Kamalic Gianni Schicchi - Luke Scott Silvio  - Maksim Ivanov Nedda / Lauretta - Jurate Svedaite

NEW>> Interview with Andy Ottoson, Stage Director for the production of Pagliacci" & "Gianni Schicchi">>>     NEW>> Interview with Daniel Kamalic, lead tenor for the production of Pagliacci" & "Gianni Schicchi">>>     NEW>> Interview with Jurate Svedaite lead soprano for the production of Pagliacci" & "Gianni Schicchi">>>     artic

Andy Ottoson has worked throughout the country as a free-lance director, writer and designer. At Dalliance he directed his own adaptation of Strindberg's A Dream Play as well as the world-premieres of Blind Love and Small Talk, in addition to writing Violations. Also in New York, he directed Jeff Lewonczyk's His First Detention with Evil Eye Productions. He has assisted several directors, including Stafford Arima, Richard Jay Alexander, Harold Scott, Steven Woolf, Brian Clay Luedloff, Tara Faircloth, Edward Coffield and others. Stage Management credits include The Dallas Opera, The Atlanta Opera, Nashville Opera, Arrow Rock Lyceum, The Thursday Problem, Lyrico Light Opera, Union Avenue Opera and the Ozark Actors Theater. He is a Graduate of the Webster Conservatory, where his directing credits include Scotland Road by Jeffry Hatcher, The Lesson by Eugene Ionesco, and Waltzing De Niro by Lynn Martin. He is a proud member of AEA and AGMA and a member of the 2008 Lincoln Center Theater Directors' Lab. He is currently directing the world premiere of Eliot Stockton's Refractions at FringeNYC.

CONNECTICUT VIRTUOSI CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
&
CONNECTICUT LYRIC OPERA PRESENTS DOUBLE BILL: LEONCAVALLO’S PAGLIACCI AND PUCCINI’S GIANNI SCHICCHI

By John Deredita, Ph. D.
 

This spring Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra & Connecticut Lyric Opera will stage across its home state two turn-of-the-twentieth-century short operas: Ruggiero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Giacomo Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. Performances are Friday, April 30, 8 p.m. (Trinity-on-Main, New Britain), Saturday, May 8, 7:30 p.m. (Garde Arts Center, New London), Saturday, May 15, 7:30 p.m. (Middletown High School), and Sunday, May 23, 6:00 p.m. (Palace Theater, Waterbury).

This is an unusual pairing, felicitous because both operas bring commedia dell’arte to the opera stage. Ruggiero Leoncavallo’s Verismo drama Pagliacci (1892) usually appears with Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana (1890). Principals die at the end in both. Giacomo Puccini’s only comedy, Gianni Schicchi, formed part of his three-opera bill Il Trittico (1918). CLO assures operagoers of a balanced evening that will end on the happy (and satirical) note provided by Puccini by presenting first Pagliacci, in which the clown in a commedia dell’arte play kills his wife and her lover at the finale, and then the hilarious Schicchi, which ends with the triumph of an astute commoner who bilks a grasping aristocratic family out of their recently deceased rich relative’s legacy and assures that his daughter will marry the honest young man from that family whom she loves,.

Pagliacci was composed to Leoncavallo’s own libretto, loosely inspired by a murder in Calabria adjudicated by his magistrate father but more closely based on two nineteenth-century plays, one French and one Spanish. Perhaps the finest play-within-a-play, self-reflexive opera ever, Pagliacci converts the staged humor of infidelity in the commedia dell’arte into real-life tragedy. Theatrical illusion is immediately broken in the prologue when the hunchbacked comedian Tonio steps out of character to address the audience directly, saying that despite depicting traditional comic theatre, the author (Leoncavallo) will present people of flesh and blood, a slice of life.

Once the action begins, three of the traveling players who have come to perform in a Calabrian town behave as their characters will do in the commedia. Tonio makes a pass at Nedda, the wife of the troupe leader Canio. She rejects him as she will do on stage and then meets her lover from the town, Silvio. Tonio brings Canio to discover the adulterous pair and only another actor, Beppe, prevents Canio from attacking Nedda. When the commedia is presented in Act II, Canio abandons his role as the cuckolded husband Pagliaccio and demands the name of his real wife’s lover. When she refuses to respond, he stabs her and Silvio, who steps in too late to save Nedda. With both dead, Canio addresses both the onstage and opera audience to tell them that “la commedia,” the play, is over, returning to the illusion-breaking level of the prologue.

Canio’s gripping first-act aria, “Vesti la giubba” (Put on the costume), one of the most famous pieces for tenor in all opera, is his complaint at having to laugh and cause laughter as the character Pagliaccio when his real-life love has been shattered. It self-reflexively looks forward to the opera’s outcome, when Canio sings his other impassioned aria rejecting his commedia role, “No, Pagliaccio non son” (No, I am not Pagliaccio). Other excellent arias are Nedda’s wistful invocation of the freedom of flying birds, “Stridono lassù” (They shriek up there) and Tonio’s one-man prologue with its moving andante “Un nido di memorie” (A trove of memories), alluding to the composer’s inspiration. Throughout Pagliacci, Leoncavallo deploys motifs adroitly and creates fascinating harmonic structures. He never surpassed in other operas this masterpiece of Verismo.

Stage director Andy Ottoson wrote this about the CLO production: “Pagliacci is a story about the collapse of fantasies. Nedda had a fantasy of what her life would be like in the theater, and with Canio it has fallen apart. She does still love Canio deeply but can’t stand her life with him—her choice between him or Silvio is gut-wrenching and incomplete until minutes before the ending. Likewise, I believe Tonio is an essentially sweet man who has been embittered by years of rejection for his ugly outside—he is overjoyed to hear Nedda’s song, to learn she shares the same yearning for more that he does, and genuinely believes they are kindred spirits when he courts her…which makes her rejection all the more painful and sends him off the deep end. Canio is a wonderful man but with a temper and machismo even he regrets. Beppe (despite his kindness) seems to be aware that Nedda is having an affair and conceals it. Silvio has won many girls in the past but is surprised to find himself truly in love with Nedda—all incredibly real situations we’ve all experienced or know someone who has.

“We’re downplaying the commedia element itself in the play. The commedia tradition adds a barrier between the show and the audience that I think is easily overcome with a stylized but less rigid ‘clown world’ that allows the performers to bring more of themselves to the show within a show.

“Act I takes place in a small rural town. Our costumes look authentic, the backdrop is photo-realistic, and the lighting richly evocative of an August dusk. However, when we move to Act II, the ‘play-within-a-play,’ we discover that this is indeed more than just a play. Slowly, in the intermezzo, the drop and all the masking legs fly out, stripping us down to the bare theater walls. As reality catches up to the lovers’ fantasy, we in the audience are painfully aware that we are sitting in a theater with them as it happens—there is no division between actor and audience. The only set for Act II, then, is a simple elevated platform plus audience benches on either side. Practical footlights illuminate the onstage action, bringing an eerie glow to what should be a delightful commedia dell’arte piece, turning from meta-theater to a real-life brutal killing in what feels like the blink of an eye.”
 

The only death in Gianni Schicchi has occurred very shortly before the curtain goes up. The aristocratic relatives of the deceased Buoso Donati have gathered at his bedside in his house in Florence, feigning grief over the corpse but in fact worried that he has left his fortune to the monastery. The will that they find confirms their fears. Young Rinuccio suggests that they get advice from clever, middle-class Gianni Schicchi, but the upper-class Donatis reject dealing with someone from a lower rank. Schicchi and his daughter Lauretta arrive because Rinuccio had sent for them during the search for the will in hopes that the family would consent to his marrying Lauretta. The Donatis give Schicchi the cold shoulder, but he is persuaded to stay by Lauretta’s celebrated aria “O mio babbino caro” (Oh, my dear Daddy) pleading with her father and declaring her love for Rinuccio. When the doctor arrives, unaware of Buoso’s death, Schicchi impersonates Buoso, showing the doctor that the wealthy old man is still alive; and this induces the family to agree to his plan: he will dictate a new will. He warns them that secrecy is crucial because falsification of a will is punishable by the loss of a hand and exile from Florence.

In the presence of notary and witnesses, Schicchi, dressed in Buoso’s bedclothes, dictates a will in the old man’s voice. He leaves minor things to each of the relatives but the three major items, including the house they are in, “to my dear, affectionate, devoted friend Gianni Schicchi.” With the notary gone, the relatives erupt in fury, seizing everything they can carry as Schicchi tells them to get out of his house. Rinuccio and Lauretta are united in a tender duet. Gianni Schicchi is taken from a passage of Dante’s Inferno; and at the end of the opera Schicchi turns to the audience asking them to judge him not guilty, begging leave from Dante, who sent him to hell.

Gianni Schicchi’s librettist, Gioacchino Forzano, using ebullient humor and allusions to medieval Florence, turns Dante’s story into a typical commedia dell’arte scenario—conniving relatives worrying over a will—and Puccini’s sparkling score conveys it with awesome vivacity. The music was progressive for Italy in 1918, with Stravinskian rhythmic vitality, effectual motifs, well-placed dissonances, but also lovely diatonic passages such as “O mio babbino caro,” which provides a lyrical moment at the turning point of the action. Rinuccio also sings a fine aria, “Firenze è come un albero fiorito” (Florence is like a flowering tree) to convince his relatives that Gianni Schicchi, like other parvenus in the city such as Giotto and the Medicis, has much to contribute.

Puccini used humor in La bohème and other operas, but Schicchi shows that he could produce a whole work of comic genius.

Andy Ottoson: “Gianni Schicchi is also unique—one of the very few truly ensemble operas. The entire Donati family are unique characters with as much importance to the story as the title character and the young lovers. It’s an enormous challenge for both the singers and the staging, especially when the family has to trash, clean up, then re-trash the entire set in under 50 minutes!

“Schicchi, of course, borders on the brink of tragedy, with a dead body onstage and the inevitable threat of ruin for either the lovers or the family—but from that tragic stew Puccini pulls out a rich comedy. We are staging it in the present day. Puccini’s major themes are incredibly relevant today, particularly our obsession with class, our habit of spending far more than we have, and especially the value that immigrants bring to a culture. I always like to break down the barrier between actor and audience, and for a piece like Gianni Schicchi there’s no better way than to show the audience a mirror of themselves onstage.

“In terms of staging, we are trying to keep Pagliacci as simple as possible—at core, it is a story about how fiction dominates real life, but ultimately reality crashes through illusion. At the heart of the set is the commedia stage itself, present from the beginning as a platform, while “life” happens around it. When the actors at last take to it as the stage, reality quickly follows them on. By stripping away as many of the side elements as we can, we are truly zooming in on the stage as life.

“For Schicchi we’re taking the opposite approach, creating a world where the old man has hoarded furniture and knick-knacks in his late years. Our stage will be flooded with expensive-looking, mismatched furniture, much of it stacked against the walls, clothing, papers (from receipts to the all-important will), and Buoso’s bed (which doubles as the Pagliacci platform commedia stage),

“We begin with the low light of dawn—the family, clad in pajamas, has urgently gathered and is barely awake as they formulate their plan. As the opera progresses, the sun slowly rises, the room floods with an intense sunrise when Rinuccio flings open the outside doors in his aria; and by the end, Schicchi’s new home is bathed in warm, thrilling light.

“Overall, this is a simple romantic comedy that remains very funny to this day. We serve the piece best by being honest to it, building strong charaters in a strongly defined world, then get out of the way: let the family’s greed entertain us, and let us enjoy the ultimate victory of the ‘good guys.’”
 

The Pagliacci cast is Daniel Kamalic, (Canio); Jurate Svedaite (Nedda); Chad Karl (Tonio); Maksim Ivanov (Silvio); Jason Ferrandino (Beppe). In Gianni Schicchi are Luke Scott (title role), Daniel Kamalic (Rinuccio), Jurate Svedaite (Lauretta), Myeongsook Park (Zita), Laurentiu Rotaru (Simone), Deanna Swanson (Nella), Sharon Davis (La Ciesca), and others. The orchestra is the Connecticut Virtuosi.
 

CLO’s conductor and music director Adrian Sylveen Mackiewicz sums up the production as “a compilation of two verismo works, each mirroring an emotional, and thence a musical progression. Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci builds up to a tragic end, in which the emotional well-being of all the characters is destroyed in a mixture of jealousy and desire. Music slowly builds up to the moment in which the husband kills his wife and her lover. ‘La commedia’ is finished.

“In Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi the death takes place at the beginning of the opera, and thus it begins a comic but quite realistic plot of events in which money and power become an object of truly grotesque manipulation. Music plays along the story, with contrapuntal and rhythmic tricks and jokes encoded in Puccini’s genius score.”