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Classic Italian fare
LYNNE WALSH feasts on two great offerings at the Royal Opera House
Authentic: Cavalleria Rusticana [Catherine Ashmore]

Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci
Royal Opera House, London

THERE’S a clever conceit in this staging of opera’s most famous double bill, with characters from each of the two pieces appearing in superbly mimed vignettes in both. This enhances the sense of authenticity of works which are, on one level, pure Italian soap opera, seething with jealousies, violence, damnation and death.

The libretto for Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, based on a newspaper crime report, perhaps has resonance for a London audience — the city saw four young lives taken over the new year holiday in fatal stabbings.

The Sicilian peasants in Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana may be struggling in the grip of poverty with little hope of escape — just as the poor actors in Pagliacci are trapped in a nomadic round of performances in grimy village halls — but there is no despair.

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