Pagliacci - Opera Season

On Dec. 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22 Ruggero Leoncavallo's show will be held at the Teatro Comunale Nouveau in Bologna.
The son of a judge, the young Leoncavallo is struck by the case of an honor killing in a company of wandering actors. Chronicle and direct experience enter powerfully into the work as in the literature of Verga and Zola. The irruption of reality, without any more “inventing the true” on the Verdian model, is a principle that does not prescind from the artist's intellectual filter: only a year after Pagliacci, in 1893 Rachmaninov's Aleko, based on Pushkin and with many points in common with Leoncavallo, made its debut in Moscow. The latter in writing the libretto uses the old device of the Prologue that introduces the story and enunciates the author's poetics, while making Tonio a plebeian Jago moved by base instincts. The real is continued to be invented, without idealizing or ennobling it, but rather by wearing its mask and returning a deliberately rough image. Not without ambition: this is how times change, between passionate melodies, realistic and brutal expressions, contrasting styles and sophisticated intentions.