Small wonders

It has been a reasonably good week for peripatetic opera-loving female-underwear fetishists. In La bohème at Covent Garden Musetta slipped out of her knickers and swung them round, as everyone, except me, mentioned in their reviews; and now, in Leeds, in the first of Opera North’s ‘Little Greats’, what laughter the actors in the drama got was from Tonio and others trying on Nedda’s bra.

This new production of Pagliacci by Charles Edwards, sadly under-attended, was possibly too ingenious. It is set in a rehearsal room, and we see the first day of rehearsals and then the final run-through. It kind of works, but anyone unfamiliar with the opera would have found it mysterious, and some of the time I felt I was on shifting sands. Still, the central thrust of this sole real masterpiece of verismo hit one powerfully, from the superbly delivered prologue by the Tonio of Richard Burkhard to the final despairing cry that the comedy is over. There are occasional vulgarities in the score, the last few bars being the most egregious case. But mainly it is dramatically pungent, wonderfully melodious, and frequently inspired. Its usual twin, the shameless Cavalleria rusticana, is perhaps more coarsely enjoyable, but Pagliacci has refinement and, in the relatively complex figure of Tonio, the deformed (not that he was here) and jealous clown, pathos
and unease.

With an all-round excellent cast, Peter Auty’s Canio stood out, dramatically frightening and with his superb voice on its best form. But Canio is given the most chances; the build-up from suspicion to conviction to crime passionnel is plotted by the composer-librettist with skill, the performer of the role just having to be careful that he doesn’t feel too much too soon. Jon Vickers set the standard here, but Auty can be ranked alongside him.