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I Pagliacci / Carmina Burana
Ruggerio Leoncavallo / Carl Orff
April 20th, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th - 2004
"A unique pairing of two masterpieces in an unforgettable production. The searing passions of I Pagliacci followed by an exuberantly sung and danced Carmina Burana will have you on the edge of your seat all evening." Maestro John DeMain |
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I Pagliacci
Before the opera begins, the clown Tonio steps before the curtain to say that the author has written about actors, who know the same joys and sorrows as other people.
PART I. Southern Italy, around 1865-70. Excited villagers mill about as a small theatrical road company arrives at the outskirts of a Calabrian town. Canio, head of the troupe, describes that night's offering, and when someone jokingly suggests that the hunchback Tonio is secretly enamoured of his young wife, Canio warns he will tolerate no flirting with Nedda. As vesper bells call the women to church, the men go to the tavern, leaving Nedda alone. Disturbed by her husband's vehemence and suspicious glances, she envies the freedom of the birds soaring overhead. Tonio appears and indeed tries to make love to her, but she scorns him. Enraged, he grabs her, and she lashes out with a whip, getting rid of him but inspiring an oath of vengeance. Nedda in fact does have a lover — Silvio, who now arrives and persuades her to run away with him at midnight. But Tonio, who has seen them, hurries off to tell Canio. Before long the jealous husband bursts in on the guilty pair. Silvio escapes, and Nedda refuses to identify him, even when threatened with a knife. Beppe, another player, has to restrain Canio, and Tonio advises him to wait until evening to catch Nedda's lover. Alone, Canio sobs that he must play the clown though his heart is breaking.
PART II. The villagers, Silvio among them, assemble to see the play Pagliaccio e Colombina. In the absence of her husband, Pagliaccio (played by Canio), Colombina (Nedda) is serenaded by her lover Arlecchino (Beppe), who dismisses her buffoonish servant, Taddeo (Tonio). The sweethearts dine together and plot to poison Pagliaccio, who soon arrives; Arlecchino slips out the window. With pointed malice, Taddeo assures Pagliaccio of his wife's innocence, firing Canio's real-life jealousy. Forgetting the script, he demands that Nedda reveal her lover's name. She tries to continue with the play, the audience applauding the realism of the "acting." Maddened by her defiance, Canio stabs Nedda and then Silvio, who has rushed forward from the crowd to help her. Canio cries out that the comedy is ended.
Carmina Burana
In 1803, a scroll of medieval poems was discovered in the German province of Bavaria among the debris of the secularized monastery of Benedikt-Beuren ("BURANA").
These lyrics, written primarily in Latin, were determined to be the work of renegade monks and wandering poets of the 13th Century. Their words captured a lost world of rebels and dropouts of the medievil clergy: hard lovers, drinkers, on the move, celebrating existence rather than living the meditative, celibate, cloistered life of the monastery.
The poems include the freshness of medieval love lyrics, exuberance of the drinking song, the zest of the sinner's 'confessions', the wild humour of the hymns to gambling and gluttony, the stoic litany to Lady Luck ('Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi') which Orff chose to open and close his score. Sex is also a dominant theme in many of the songs.
The richly gifted poets called themselves 'goliards' (defrocked monks and minstrels). Traditionally they have been identified as 'vagantes' (vagrant students, vagabond monks and minor clerics), and were said to have been 'better known for their rioting, gambling and intemperance than for their scholarship'. Yet whatever their social status, their artistic and technical skill seem to place them among the clerical and academic elite of the age.
In 1935 German composer Carl Orff re-discovered the poems. Impressed with their meaning and rhythm, he composed a cantata utilizing the centuries old verses. He transformed the writings into invocations and profane chants accompanied by numerous instruments and magical representations. These songs ("CARMINA") were divided into three sections: Springtime-the life force renewed; In the Tavern- drinking and gambling: The Court of Love- passion, sensuality. The sections are pervaded and framed by The Wheel of Fortune ("O Fortuna") perpetually turning, perpetually governing the course of man's existence.
The world premiere of Carmina Burana was presented in Frankfurt am Main by the Frankfurt Opera on June 8, 1937, with Bertil Wetzelsberger conducting. The premiere was a big hit and spread to other opera houses. After the second World War it developed into an international triumph. Generally, the work is performed in the concert hall and the 'total theatre' used in the first performance (music words and movement) may not have been duplicated entirely, however there have been many staged performances worldwide. |
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