Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci – review

Opera Holland Park's season opens with a new production of the most familiar of operatic double bills. Conducted by Stuart Stratford and directed by Stephen Barlow, it forms a vehicle for Peter Auty, who, in one of his finest performances to date, sings the tenor lead in both works. He's on fantastic form. His haunting Turiddu is an unthinking sensualist whose first glimmers of moral awareness come with the realisation that his life is about to be cut short. As Canio, he implodes with disturbing veracity as his world, and with it his grip on reality, collapses round him.

There are flaws elsewhere, though – in particular an unduly low-key start. Stratford's speeds at the opening of Cavalleria Rusticana are overly slow, and the initial lack of tension is further hampered by the inappropriate gentility of Gweneth-Ann Jeffers's bland Santuzza. Barlow's staging further compounds the problem, since it doesn't reveal its secrets until he gets to Pagliacci, which is a bit late.

Cavalleria Rusticana is transposed to fascist Italy. There's no political gloss though, and, apart from an unconventional opening in which we find Auty in bed with Hannah Pedley's Lola, the opera is played straight in ways that seem disquietingly ordinary.

Pagliacci, however, updated to the 1970s, allows Barlow's customary brilliance to break through, and repeated allusions to what we have already seen bolsters the complexity of a work that crisscrosses multiple boundaries between theatrical illusion and reality. Stratford is compelling here, too, conducting with tremendous fire.

Jeffers apart, the singing is uniformly strong. Stephen Gadd doubles Alfio and Tonio to fine effect. Pedley is terrific, while Julia Sporsén is a sympathetic, if sleazy Nedda in Pagliacci. It's Auty's night, though: go and hear him, whatever you think of the rest of it.