On Wednesday afternoon conductor Felix Chen led stagehands in a propitiation ceremony in Taipei's Chungshan Hall Square to secure an accident-free run for this weekend's outdoor performances of the most successful one-act opera ever written.
Cavalleria Rusticana may last only 70 minutes but they're minutes crammed with passion. The story is simple. The young Turiddu is still seeing Lola even though she's now married to someone else. His current girlfriend, Santuzza, finds this out and tells Lola's husband. The two men fight a duel in which Turiddu is shot.
Justin Lavender is a British tenor much loved in Taiwan, and rightly so. His lyrical, thrilling voice, and the enormous enthusiasm for Italian music that he conveys so persuasively, combine to make him ideally cast as the ardent, sexually implacable Turiddu.
Lavender sang the faithless lover Pinkerton in Madam Butterfly, and Chen Hsin-an, who was Suzuki in the same opera, will sing Santuzza this weekend.
An astonishing 300 singers have been assembled for the chorus of Sicilian villagers, many of them students who have never been anywhere near an opera before. The orchestra will play inside the hall, with the sound relayed, together with the image of the conductor for the benefit of the singers.
The 4,000 seats to be provided are free, but the best places are likely to be taken up early. Giant video screens, however, will give everyone a close-up of the stage action.
Felix Chiu-sen Chen and the Taipei Symphony Orchestra have had a run of successes with their outdoor operas, from Rigoletto in Da-an Park in 2000 to Madama Butterfly in Chungshan Hall Square last September. That production was repeated in a field in Chiayi County two weeks later before an audience of 30,000 over two nights.
Weather permitting, the short Cavalleria Rusticana will be an excellent and painless introduction to opera for novices. It's certain to be eagerly taken up by enthusiasts, and Lavender and Chen are anyway well worth catching for their own sakes. The production is in Italian with Chinese subtitles.
Cavalleria Rusticana plays in Chungshan Hall Square (MRT Hsimen, Exit 4) today and tomorrow (Oct. 25, 26) at 7:30pm, plus Sunday (Oct. 27) if either scheduled performance is canceled due to rain. Seating is free and no reservations are necessary or possible.
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