Pagliacci

The Primorsky troupe brings to St Petersburg one of its most vivid performances – Pagliacci, directed by the renowned dramatic director Marat Gatsalov. Marat is remembered by the Petersburg audience for his unique interpretation of Richard Strauss's Salome, staged at Mariinsky-2 in 2017. At the Primorsky stage Marat has created a captivating spectacle, fully utilizing video installations and framing Leoncavallo's opera in the aesthetics of Italian neorealism cinema.
Pagliacci presents a stark gender imbalance with four men and a single woman, where all four men, in one way or another, vie for the sole heroine: one in jest, three in earnest. In Leoncavallo’s opera, the jealous husband, the passionate lover, the rejected suitor are not standard operatic roles but human souls turned inside out. It turns out there is no pure love, only a tangle of heated emotions where love intertwines with pride, jealousy, lust, and predominantly – the fear of loneliness. The verismo composers, to which Leoncavallo belonged, aimed to explore people's genuine feelings, including their most unsightly aspects, with meticulous authenticity.
Originally, the opera was titled slightly differently – Il Pagliaccio, following the tradition of highlighting the main character. Indeed, Leoncavallo’s composition is a "tenor’s opera" with the tragic figure of Canio, the suffering clown, at its core. Canio’s role, with its famous aria Vesti la giubba, belongs to the golden fund of the tenor repertoire. However, on the eve of the world premiere in 1892 in Milan, the performer of Tonio’s part refused to go on stage unless his character was included in the title. Thus, instead of Il Pagliaccio, the opera was renamed Pagliacci. This change from singular to plural gave the opera title additional meanings. How much is ‘clowning’ inherent in every person? Where is a person's true face, and where is their social mask? The second act of the opera is built on the principle of a matryoshka, a theatre within a theatre: Canio's wandering troupe performs a commedia dell'arte for the locals. Gradually, real life overwhelms the stage, and the actors' performance becomes more convincing because it ceases to be just that. Eventually, the stage is drenched in blood – real, not theatrical one.
Leoncavallo insisted that he borrowed the plot of his opera from real-life court cases. Either way, he made the audience – us, sitting in the grand hall – a kind of jury. In this extraordinarily compact story there is no author's moralizing; the audience must pass judgment on the criminal. The compellingly expressive music of Pagliacci is unlikely to lead to a guilty verdict. Christina Batyushina