Cavalleria rusticana / Pagliacci at Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff - review: an evening of taut, no-nonsense drama

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails

Sign up to our free breaking news emails

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

Seventy years ago, Welsh National Opera’s first ever production was of Mascagni and Leoncavallo’s oft-twinned, white-hot verismo ‘Cav & Pag’. Life in the operas’ rural Italy might be ‘nasty, brutish and short’ for those embroiled in love vendettas but WNO has more than endured, becoming a vital part of the opera world. In celebration, they are reviving Elijah Moshinsky’s much loved 1996 half-centenary staging of the double-bill, conducted by the same Carlo Rizzi, now WNO Conductor Laureate.

Rizzi’s expert musicality drove an evening of taut, no-nonsense drama, well sung by the principals and gloriously performed by the WNO chorus and orchestra. David Kempster and Gwyn Hughes Jones straddled the testosterone-fuelled divide as Tonio-Alfio and Turiddu-Canio respectively, while Camilla Roberts (Santuzza) and Meeta Raval (Nedda) matched them passion for passion.

Neither staging proved the worse for its patina of nostalgia: Cav evokes 19th-century village life whilst Pag is a prewar of motor cars and sunglasses-adorned housewives. The emotions are viscerally timeless: jealousy, lust and bitter hatred leading to murder, double murder. But it’s Leoncavallo’s washed-up, ageing clowns which most tug the heartstrings as tragedy overpowers his clever play within a play, turned violently real and unfunny.

Until June 11. Wales Millennium Centre: 029 2063 6464 / Birmingham Hippodrome: 0844 338 5000 www.wno.org.uk