YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Opera Western Reserve will present “Pagliacci,” the famed opera by Leoncavallo, on Sept. 26 at Powers Auditorium. The performance will start at 7:30 p.m.
Always an audience favorite for its dramatic, passionate music and colorful scenes, “Pagliacci” – which translates as “The Clowns” – is a verismo style opera, featuring realistic characters thrust into everyday life crises. Italian composer Ruggero Leoncavallo wrote both the words and the music in 1892.
Not only is the opera based on a true story, it is perhaps the original “reality show” of the opera repertoire
The story follows a raucous band of traveling clowns, jugglers and actors who arrive in a small Italian town to perform their boisterous comedy act.
Amid the circus-like atmosphere, tensions rise behind the scenes between the actor playing Pagliaccio, the lead clown, and his young wife, whom he suspects is having an affair.
As his personal conflict is mirrored in the drama they are portraying on stage, the boundaries between performance and reality begin to blur.
Consumed with jealousy, suspicion and rage, Pagliaccio is unable to separate his own life from the fictional play they are enacting. A real-life tragedy unfolds on stage while the audience of villagers mistake the emotionally-charged drama as expert acting.
The tenor aria “Vesti la giubba,”(Put on the costume), sung by Pagliacco immediately following his realization that his wife has humiliated him, is the most iconic and famous of the opera. Even though his heart is breaking, he must still play the clown, plaster his face with make-up and a smile. The first record to sell one million copies was famed tenor Enrico Caruso’s 1902 recording of “Vesti la giubba.”
When Opera Western Reserve debuted in 2004 at Stambaugh Auditorium, “Pagliacci” was its inaugural OWR production. The return of this show comes as OWR begins its 22nd year of fully staged, costumed productions with orchestra, chorus and professional singers.
Tickets for “Pagliacci” range from $37 to $87 (including service fees) and will go on sale Friday, July 3. Ticket prices range from $37 to $87, including service fees. Student tickets are also available for $10.
Go to operawesternreserve.org to purchase tickets, or the DeYor Performing Arts Center box office, downtown.