A new production of the best-known double bill of all time, a pair of works which completely changed the landscape of Italian opera and paved the way for the operas of Giacomo Puccini.

Cavalleria Rusticana

Pietro Mascagni’s 1890 work, which he wrote as a despairing entry in a competition for one-act operas while working as a teacher in a southern Italian backwater, is a vivid, bloody tragedy about the brutal and passionate lives of Sicilian peasants. Santuzza has been made pregnant by Turiddu, but he has returned to his former lover, Lola – who is now married to Alfio. In a jealous fury, Santuzza tells Alfio that his wife is betraying him, and he challenges Turiddu to a fight to the death.

Mascagni intersperses bouts of violent action with stunning scene-setting music, including the well-known Intermezzo and Easter Hymn. This stark and fast-moving piece created a whole new school of opera, which would no longer be about kings and aristocrats but the passionate lives and deaths of earthy peasants: verismo.

Pagliacci

A troupe of travelling players (Pagliacci, or Clowns) arrives in a Calabrian town. Nedda, wife of Canio, the leader of the players, rejects the advances of the hunchback Tonio, and arranges with her lover Silvio to elope after that evening’s performance. Tonio overhears the tryst, and tells Canio.

During the performance Nedda plays the part of Columbine, meeting her lover Harlequin while her husband Pagliaccio, played by Canio, is away. But Pagliaccio returns unexpectedly. Canio, maddened by jealousy, confuses the role he is playing with the real-life situation, and tries to force Nedda to tell him the name of her lover…

Leoncavallo conveys the action in music of great variety, from Canio’s tortured aria ‘Vesti la giubba’ to Nedda’s languid ballatella and a neo-classical pastiche before the final bloody mayhem.

Sung in Italian with English surtitles.

Booking opens from Monday 15th April 2013

Learn more about London operas within the West End.