For years I’ve wondered why the two one-act operas Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci are always performed in that order. Last week, watching the DVD of Karajan’s versions from 1968 and 1970, I suddenly saw the answer — it’s because Pagliacci is the finer work.
Last month I wrote that Jon Vickers’ singing of Vesti la Giubba — all I had seen of either piece at the time — had “less than total visual clarity,” but I now realize this was because the image was intended to be of him looking at himself in a cheap hand mirror. The reality is that both operas are etched with astonishing vividness and color, as well as being highly dramatic. Karajan, who was “artistic supervisor” as well as conductor, mixes onstage action with Sicilian landscapes in Cavalleria Rusticana and urban back streets in Pagliacci.
It’s the stars, though, that are the big draw. In the first opera, Fiorenza Cossotto is a fierce and yet also soulful Santuzza, with Gianfranco Ceccele as a moody but implacable Turiddu. But most of all, it’s Vickers — as Canio in Pagliacci — who is incomparably wonderful, and supported by a very strong cast, notably Peter Glossop as Tonio. These are probably the two most dynamic melodramas, both based on sexual jealousy, in all Italian opera, and their release on this single DVD will inevitably be compared with Zeffirelli’s 1983 pair with Placido Domingo and Teresa Stratas. It’s impossible to choose between them, and the only solution is therefore to buy them both.
RSS