Review | Shanghai Opera House’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci for Hong Kong Arts Festival offer hits and misses
- The closing performances of the 2022 Hong Kong Arts Festival, streamed free online, these Italian operas are a study in contrasts
- Cavalleria Rusticana is staged but in concert dress, which robs it of drama. Pagliacci in costume works better; Han Peng and He Hui deliver in the lead roles
Before the fifth wave of the Covid-19 outbreak in Hong Kong forced the cancellation of all live performances for the 50th Hong Kong Arts Festival, Shanghai Opera House was scheduled to present a production of 19th century French composer Gounod’s opera Roméo et Juliette to close it out.
Instead, the opera house ended up streaming a pre-recorded double bill of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci as the festival’s grand finale.
The performances were recorded in September 2021 in the Shanghai Grand Theatre and are available for free viewing anywhere in the world until April 23.
The two operas have been paired together in performance since 1893 because of their relative brevity and their complementary verismo approach to depicting tales of the Italian peasantry.
With an all-Chinese cast tackling these emblems of the Italian realist movement with minimal attention to mise-en-scène and costume design, the intent was presumably to highlight the works’ musical attributes with as few distractions as possible.
