Pagliacci climaxes in a show-within-a-show: a efficiency (which works utterly haywire) of conventional Italian comedy, commedia dell’arte. This historical theatrical type is probably finest understood as live-action Looney Tunes. Commedia exhibits didn’t have a lot by the use of plot. They didn’t use scripts. As a substitute, inventory characters and conditions present a framework for improvised jokes, buffoonery, and rampant silliness. The title commedia dell’arte finest interprets as “artisanal comedy,” i.e. a bespoke efficiency, just like the form of cheese offered at a farmer’s market. Sure, they adopted a recipe, nevertheless it comes out in another way every time, that’s half the enjoyable.
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| Canio (Diego Torre) and Nedda (Gabriella Reyes) from the 2023 Lyric Opera of Kansas Metropolis manufacturing of Pagliacci. © Ken Howard |
Every commedia performer would specialise in a sure position, and will improvise as that character with the characters turning into better-known than the artists who portrayed them. In efficiency, commedia characters wore masks. The masks helped exaggerate the characters, in an over-the-top, cartoonish approach, and made them immediately recognizable from a distance, regardless of who was enjoying them that point.
The present they’re performing in Pagliacci stars Columbina, her lover Harlequin, her husband Pagliaccio, and their servant Taddeo. Harlequin, considered one of commedia’s hottest characters, was a poor servant motivated largely by lust and starvation. Columbina was a sensible and sassy lower-class lady; she’s at all times getting the perfect of richer characters or male characters (most of whom lust after her). Pagliaccio, was often candy, sluggish, dreamy, and annoyed in love. Taddeo is an enormous man who’s straightforward to frighten and intimidate, one thing like The Wizard of Oz’s Cowardly Lion.
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| Zerbinetta (Rachele Gilmore) and Harlekin (Andrew Garland) from our 2015 manufacturing of Ariadne auf Naxos. © Elise Bakketun |
As offered in Pagliacci, Taddeo appears to have picked up traits of Pulcinello, or Punch, together with a hunchback (higher described, at the moment, as “a curvature of the backbone”). In our 2024 Pagliacci, the hunch (“gobbo” in Italian) belongs to Taddeo (the character), to not Tonio (the actor); it’s a costume-piece that will get tossed round onstage as they’re organising the show-within-a-show. In Tonio/Taddeo Leoncavallo created a personality who appears to have internalized what was an exterior situation. Or, as Nedda tells him, after Tonio tries to rape her: “You’re just like the character you play: twisted, warped!”
You will discover masses extra details about commedia dell’arte on-line. For a scene of the purest commedia affect on music theater, take pleasure in this sequence from Stephen Sondheim’s A Humorous Factor Occurred On The Method To The Discussion board. The 1966 movie directed by Richard Lester starred (on this specific scene) Buster Keaton because the dim outdated man, Jack Gilford because the nervous servant, and the incomparable Zero Mostel because the artful servant:
Pagliacci runs August 3–17, 2024 at McCaw Corridor.
Tickets and information at seattleopera.org/pagliacci.
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