YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – “Pagliacci” is a good opera for people who think they will not like opera.
So says both Scott Skiba and Susan Davenny Wyner, the stage and music directors of Opera Western Reserve’s production of “Pagliacci” on Sept. 26 at Powers Auditorium.
The show has the real-life grit that people love – sex, violence, revenge – and characters that are everyday people. It’s a tale of passion that moves at a rapid pace, reaching its conclusion in about 90 minutes, including intermission.
“Pagliacci” was actually the first show ever produced by OWR, back in 2004. The company has not repeated the title until now.
“‘Pagliacci’ is powerful, compact, funny, terrifying and has complicated clowns and glorious music,” Davenny Wyner says. “The way the drama mixes realism with theatricality and combines soloists, chorus and instruments makes the story irresistible.”
Skiba echoes those sentiments.
“It’s very accessible,” he says. “It’s not very long. And the story moves pretty much in real time, so it’s very cinematic in that aspect.”
The opera’s music and script were written by Ruggero Leoncavallo and premiered in 1892 in Milan, Italy. That was an era in which the Italian opera style known as verismo was in vogue.
‘[Verismo] offered slice-of-life realism,” Skiba says. “Imagine gritty crime thrillers that are based on a true story. And you got this shift away from gods and goddesses and counts and countesses – people that the average Joe and Jane might not feel any connection to. The stories instead were about everyday people, whom the audience could really see themselves in.”
The story looks in on a traveling commedia dell’arte theater group. Commedia dell’arte was an Italian street theater style in which each actor creates a comic character with a certain personality. The character is inserted in performances of many different shows but always with the same exaggerated personality that suited the genre’s slapstick style.
One of the actors, Canio, plays the character Pagliaccio, the clown. Canio becomes aware that his wife, Nedda, who is also an actress in the troupe, is cheating on him; and his character on the stage is going through a similar situation.
The troupe’s performance – and the opera itself – ends with Canio murdering his wife and her lover on stage during a performance, as the audience – unsure if what it is seeing is real or part of the show – looks on in shock, confusion and then horror.
Opera lore has it that Leoncavallo’s father, who was a judge, presided over a case in which the same thing happened. Leoncavallo turned it into an opera.
“Whether or not that’s true or apocryphal or embellished in some way, what’s definitely true is that you could see how it could happen,” says Skiba.
A Change in Time
Leoncavallo set “Pagliacci” in 1870, but the OWR version moves the timeframe to the late 1940s – the post-war years. It still takes place in southern Italy, a region that remained agricultural and poor, just as it was in Leoncavallo’s time.
But one thing had changed by then – the automobile had been invented – and that’s why Skiba made the change.
It allows the director to use a comical car to bring Canio and the rest of the troupe of clown actors into town.
“I wanted to find a dynamic way to bring the clowns into town,” he says. “When this opera was originally written, it would have been by horse and buggy. We’re not able to have a horse on stage, but a colleague had just produced ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ and had built this incredible car that drives itself. I saw a picture of it, and I was like, ‘Hey, what are you doing with that after the show?’ And he said, ‘nothing.’ He was kind enough to let us use it for this production because I thought, wouldn’t that be cool to bring in Pagliaccio, the famous clown, and his whole traveling troupe, in this scene? You know, sort of parade style. It’s an open convertible, and he’s standing in the backseat waving while the others are throwing candy and passing out balloons.”
Like any good procedural, “Pagliacci” has visual-only nuances that the audience will pick up on – a telltale cloth that proves the guilt of Canio’s cheating wife, for example.
They add to the ingredients that make “Pagliacci” so much fun to watch. Skiba says it might just be the opera that some people thought didn’t exist.
“For people who might not think they like opera, I always say, ‘Well, we just haven’t encountered the right opera for you yet,’” he says. “I think this one has a lot. It’s got a gritty story, one that’s easy to follow. It’s not convoluted. A wife’s cheating on her husband. He finds out. He exacts his revenge. And there’s an interesting extra layer because there’s a show within the show, like a play within the opera, and the play is mirroring life.”
The Cast
The production includes a cast with some OWR veterans.
Jonny Kaufman, a tenor, will perform the role of Canio. He sang the title role in OWR’s 2025 production of “Faust.”
Sarah Joyce Cooper, soprano, has the role of Nedda, Canio’s wife. She last performed with OWR in 2021, playing the role of Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet.”
Other principal actors are Jose Luis Maldonado (Silvio), OWR veteran Brian Keith Johnson (Tonio) and Ethan E. Burke (Beppe).
Costumes were created by Brian Palumbo of Youngstown.
For tickets to “Pagliacci,” go to experienceyourarts.org or call the box office at 330 259 9651. Tickets can also be purchased in person at the DeYor Performing Arts Center box office.
Pictured at top: Pagliaccio and his troupe of clowns will ride on stage in this specially made theater car in Opera Western Reserve’s production of “Pagliacci.”
