The melodramatic Sicilian stories of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Ruggiero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci have been around for over a century and most people here in New York who attend performances at The Metropolitan Opera have seen the 1970 Met production by Franco Zeffirelli. This year, 2015, after 45 years, the Met is debuting its fresh modern take on the classic double bill with director and producer, Sir David McVicar and a production team of new names making their Met debuts. The well-known Zeffirelli production had traditional sets with a church façade for Cavalleria and a Sicilian hillside for Pagliacci. The old production of Cavalleria had traditional costumes with the chorus women in Italian peasant costumes in white and red and the men in black while Pagliacci had old commedia dell'arte clown costumes for the leads. The new set incarnations by Rae Smith, in her Met debut, are drastically different in many ways. First off, Cavalleria is not set in front of a church, but on a Les Miserables-like turntable with dark brick walls surrounding it. I actually prefer the brick walls in this production versus those in the relatively new Met production of Puccini’s Tosca because the starkness is more relevant to the story here than in the more hopeful Tosca (even though Tosca also ends in tragedy with three deaths.) The curtain opened on this set with old fashioned wooden tavern chairs situated neatly around the “lazy-Susan” set. The chorus – all women and men in black – entered the stage and took their seats so that all the chairs were filled as if it were a sort of trial and they were the jury observing -- which was quite dramatic. Eva-Maria Westbroek, as Santuzza, took her place alone in the center of the circle with the follow spotlight on her sporting a long blond wig. She looked almost like a Brunhilde versus a Santuzza with the blond, but it, like the rest of this modern set and production, was refreshing. It made her more sexually inviting and flirtatious than if she was in a black or brown wig of medium length or some kind of updo.
All the costumes in this production were black including those of the leads. Lola, acted and sung ravishingly by Lindemann Young Artists graduate, Ginger Costa-Jackson, had on mostly black with a white peasant under-blouse highlighting her breasts to emphasize her forward and antagonistic sexuality. Both young female leads had long hair which gave them a youthfulness that made the sexual frustration of those involved in the love quadrangle more believable than if they had been wearing old fashioned hairdos. Turiddu, played by Marcelo Alvarez, wore a white shirt with his black vest and pants which, actually, showed his partiality to Lola off very well since they matched with “white” and “white.” They were sort of marked as “together” in this way. Mamma Lucia, played by longtime Met veteran, Jane Bunnell, had a glamorous peplum bodice with a full, long gown-like skirt. The costuming was appropriate and, although the colors were all the same, there were some visible distinctions upon close observation that drew the eye. The costumes were done by Moritz Junge in his Met debut.
Lighting by Paule Constable was insightful with spotlights only on choristers faces for most of the opera while the rest of the set was more or less dark. It was surrealist. She did similar lighting for the principal players with lots of spotlighting of only the faces while keeping the bodies dark. This was a theme of this production and was very “New York” in a way since New Yorkers have a reputation of wearing lots of black while theatrically highlighting only their faces. The famous chorus scene where the “Regina Coeli” is sung was very unique with only a light coming from a door to indicate a church (which is reminiscent of the Met production or Suor Angelica when the child comes out to its nun mother). The only real element of a religious procession was the carrying of two “feast float icons” like the kind you used to see at San Gennaro, possibly, with Christian deities in vibrant gold and purple with gorgeous flowers flanking them. Spotlights were used on the “floats” to give an eerie effect since there was hardly any light otherwise on the stage at the time. The chorus swayed ominously in a crowded circle while singing to the audience and then stood perfectly still in a stoic manner to finish the piece. It was haunting and was more like Sweeney Todd than a religious hymn. But, to some, that’s what made it interesting.
Choreography is not something Cavalleria is particularly know for, and yet, McVicar and choreographer, Andrew George, found a way to bring dancing that was almost pornographic to the piece with a set of three Italian male dancers in fedoras and black suits with white handerchiefs performing recurring sensual and aggressive dances throughout the opera. It should be noted here that the notion of three mischievous or “cursing” imps was a theme that was duplicated later in the evening in Pagliacci which also had a set of three dancers who fortold tragedy and godlessness in their dancing. Pagliacci had a Vaudeville consultant, Emil Wolk, also making his Met debut with Rae Smith and Moritz Junge, who may have routed the choreography towards a silliness that would have been appropriate in the 1940s in a Vaudeville act. McVicar’s direction of Cavalleria was insightful with Santuzza not being very kinetic versus Lola, which indicated a sort of boringness or conservatism whereas Lola had more loose body movements like those, stereotypically, of a harlot. Alfio, played by George Gadnizde, was directed to have stand-offish posture which showed him off to be tough and cold. This fit since he winds up being the murderer of Turiddu.
In Pagliacci, McVicar and choreographer Andrew George did some really creative things that caught the eye and brought out the themes of the story, as they did in Cavalleria. The usual gold Met curtain was replaced with a strikingly gaudy electric blue shimmering curtain with metallic gold trim and an abundance of metallic gold and blue stars everywhere on it. It was magical. In the Prologue, sung by the character, Tonio, in front of the curtain, singer, George Gagnidze, in a pink satin jacket with a large sequins lapel had a “run-in” with other clowns from the troupe. The three imp-ish dancers appeared at this time and came out onto the stage grasping the microphone cord like a tug-of-war rope while Gagnidze pulled the rope back in a jocular “fight.” His physicality made him appear like a circus ringmaster and the scene attracted laughter from the audience. McVicar and George also pulled off something gorgeous and different with Nedda having Patricia Racette doing a feather dance with “Vegas”-style showgirl blue feathers in the first scene – not in the Ballatella, as might be expected for the use of feathers. It actually took the arrival scene to a new level of celebration because, if you know the Ballatella scene, there is a depressing feeling to it, so seeing feathers, reminiscent of birds, at the start of the show, lifted the feeling of the entire opening scene. It also, actually, made the Ballatella scene less dark because you were looking at showgirl feathers in the happy first scene which made a simple song about the freedom of birds more ridiculous. This made the whole story less upsetting, in a way, because you see that Nedda actually had real freedom before her murder. Sure, she dies, but in other productions, she has been portrayed, initially, as more of a victim or controlled by Canio. If you are a feminist at all, you would have taken joy in seeing this new idea of Nedda actually being free in her life before her death.