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Cavalleria Rusticana & Pagliacci – review

This article is more than 11 years old
City Hall, Glasgow

Scottish Opera turns 50 this year, and a birthday season begins in earnest after the summer. Not to let the big day pass unnoticed, this one-off concert performance marked exactly half a century since Alexander Gibson's new company staged its debut show at the King's theatre, Glasgow. Then the opera was Puccini's Madama Butterfly; now music director Francesco Corti returns to verismo in tribute with a classic Cav & Pag double bill.

The tuneful bravado of Mascagni and Leoncavallo is home territory for Corti, and he conducted with a mix of default mode and affectionate insight. It made for patchy listening: Cavalleria's Prelude dragged, and the Intermezzo sounded utterly inevitable, those famous repeated notes more sawn-out slabs than searing emotion. Pagliacci's skittish passages were dicey and in general missed the quick, comic touches needed to contrast Cav's stodgier score. But there were also moments of fantastic warmth in both operas; at his best, Corti draws elegantly unadorned phrases that surge within simple contours and really blossom at their climaxes. Elevated from their usual home in the pit to the city hall stage with its brilliant in-your-face acoustic, the orchestra sounded brighter, fuller and more assertive than I've heard them.

The chorus was on fine form, too – positively radiant in Cav's Easter Hymn; a bit ropier in Pag's crowd interjections. Soloists were all strong-voiced enough to project over the orchestra, but not charismatic enough to pull off much convincing chemistry. Antonia Cifrone was a cautious Nedda and an impassioned Santuzza: her voice has an edge of shrillness that works for a wronged woman teetering on jealous meltdown. Thomas Oliemans ran into technical mishaps as a slightly foolish Alfio, but was more convincing as Tonio; Francesco Anile sang Turiddu with robust swagger, but his Italianate sheen wore thin as Canio.

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