Organization

Singer

Soprano

Evgenia Muraveva

Nedda

Tenor

Yuri Marusin

Canio

Stage director

Isabelle Partiot-Pieri

Lighting designer

Vladimir Lukasevich

Anton Nikolaev

Set designer

Chorus master

Irina Yatsemirskaya

Ahmed Agadi

Tatiana Pavlovskaya

Ekaterina Sannikova

Mikhaïl Vekua

Baritone

Edem Umerov

Tonio

Roman Burdenko

Gamid Abdulov

Peppe

Alexander Timchenko

Vladimir Moroz

Silvio

Gregory Chernetsov

Conductor

Mikhail Sinkevich

Migran Agadzhanyan

Repetiteur

Alla Brosterman

Hovhannes Ayvazyan

Vladislav Sulimsky

Vladislav Kupriyanov

Georgy Albegov

Konstantin Rylov

Anzhelika Minasova

Mariinsky Theatre

Others

The Mariinsky Chorus

Orchestra

Orchester des Mariinski-Theaters

Mariinsky Opera Children Chorus

Italian

Pagliacci

Saint Petersburg

Russia

Mariinsky-2

Public

Russian

English

Approved

Four men and one woman – the gender profile of Pagliacci stands apart for its blatant imbalance. Moreover, all four of the men have a claim, one way or another, on the only female protagonist: one merely shamming, the other three in all seriousness. a jealous husband, a passionate lover, a spurned admir-er – with Leoncavallo these are not standard operatic characters, but rather human souls turned inside out. On the surface it would appear that not one of these loves is pure, while underneath there is a network of passionate emotions, where alongside love there is pride, envy, lust and – first and foremost – the fear of loneliness. Verist composers considered that researching people’s genuine emotions (in-cluding those that are the most unsightly) with scrupulous accuracy was their duty, and alongside Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, their artistic manifesto was to be em-bodied in the thirty-three year-old Leoncavallo’s opera.

Initially it’s name was slightly different – Il pagliaccio, in accordance with the tradition of indicating the titular character on the playbill. In actual fact, Leoncavallo’s opus is an opera “for a tenor”, with the tragic figure of Canio, the suffering clown, at its centre. the role of Canio with the famous aria “Vesti la giubba” lies among the gold reserves of the tenor repertoire. On the eve of the world premiere in Milan in 1892, however, the performer of the role of Tonio refused to come on-stage unless the title were to include his character too. And so in-stead of Il pagliaccio the opera came to be known as Pagliacci. the change from singular to plural gave the opera’s title ad-ditional nuanced meanings. How typical is “clowning around” of any person? Where is a man’s true face, and where is his social mask? the opera’s second act is structured around the principle of a Russian nesting doll, it is a play within a play: Canio’s travelling company acts out a piece of commedia dell’arte for some local res-idents. Gradually, real life takes over the stage, and the acting becomes ever more convincing, because it indeed ceases to be acting. Finally the stage is covered with blood – real and not theatrical blood.

Leoncavallo stated that he had borrowed the opera’s plot from a legal case that had actually taken place. One way or another, he has made the audience – those of us sitting in the large auditorium – into a kind of jury. In this incredibly compact story there is no moralising “from the author”, and the audience must pro-nounce its own verdict on the criminal. the staggeringly expressive music of Pagliacci could hardly make it accusatory. Khristina Batyushina

Pagliacci by Leoncavallo, From (2021/2022), Directed by Isabelle Partiot-Pieri,, Conductor Mikhail Sinkevich, Migran Agadzhanyan, Georgy Albegov, Mariinsky Theatre, Saint Petersburg, Russia

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew

Ensemble

Programme, About & Synopsis

Photos

Further reading

Performance Dates & Venues

Venues