Mark Gresham | 24 OCT 2020
On Thursday evening, The Atlanta Opera emphatically opened its thoroughly re-imagined 2020-21 season with a performance of Ruggiero Leoncavallo’s opera, Pagliacci, in an outdoor production well-suited to our current times, overshadowed by living in the midst of a world-wide pandemic for the past seven months. That they were able to accomplish it at all under the circumstances is an amazing and courageous feat, much less a very successful one.
Extremely impressive were the measures The Atlanta Opera took to ensure a safe evening for both the guests and the performers, making it possible for the audience to be out and enjoying a night filled with the arts, and for the artists to be making art. The production was as absolutely innovative as it was responsibly done, reinforcing the fact that the company is continuing to be ahead of the curve ind creating new ways to move opera forward in Atlanta, even in a time of crisis. Unlike some other opera companies (most notably, the Metropolitan Opera in New York City recently shut down its entire season completely) they have refused to throw in the towel.
Instead, they threw up a big circus tent on the campus of Oglethorpe University. Artistic and General director Tomer Zvulun and his company have mounted a pair of interleaved productions, Pagliacci and Viktor Ullman’s The Kaiser of Atlantis around the theme as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The tent venue and the production values were designed with the involvement of a panel of public health experts so that, even with the necessary restrictions imposed and the limitations they had to overcome, that the opera company would succeed in that old theatrical axiom: “The show must go on.”
The circus atmosphere, replete with clowns, jugglers and stilt-walking extras in some scenes, set the right festive mood for the Pagliacci story about a troupe of comic performers, even though their story itself is one of tragedy, disconnect, heated jealousy and intrigue – as well as a sense of isolation implied by a set of plastic booths in which the characters sang when unmasked. Their wearing of masks while singing was also a constant reminder of the feelings of necessary distance and isolation that come from our current experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, further amplifying some of the emotions about human relationships found in the story.
In this excellent ensemble cast, Richard Trey Smagur portrays Canio, head of the traveling troupe of commedia dell’arte actors. Talise Trevigne portrays Nedda, Canio’s wife, who is in love with the villager Silvio. Reginald Smith Jr. plays Tonio, the fool, who gives the audience the opera’s prologue, and is himself in love with Nedda. Megan Marino plays the trouser role of Beppe, an actor in the troupe, and Joseph Lattanzi is Silvio, Nedda’s secret lover.
Naturally, there is a commedia dell’arte play-within-a-play in the second act in which Canio plays the role of Pagliaccio while Nedda plays Colombina, Pagliaccio’s wife, who is in love with Arlecchino, played by Beppe. Tonio plays Taddeo, Colombina’s servant. During this, Silvio is watching from within the audience of villagers.
The two not-entirely-parallel stories collide and tragically unravel in the end.
Reginald Smith Jr. as Tonio. (credit: Raftermen)
Richard Trey Smagur as Canio. (credit: Raftermen)
Talise Trevigne as Nedda. (credit Raftermen)
Joseph Lattanzi as Silvio (credit: Raftermen)
Megan Marino as Beppe (credit: Ken-Howard)During the play-within-a-play, the four actor/singers are isolated in their clear plastic isolation chambers, in costume, while the visual roles of the characters they portray are played out by two-dimensional puppets with jointed limbs, manipulated by masked handlers dressed in black.
The downside of the two-dimensionality is that the puppets can only be best seen straight-on, but lose a lot when viewed at an angle. Yet the two-dimensionality also implies artifice and non-reality. It’s when the play-within-a-play begins to break down and the action spills out into the actors’ own reality that the opera comes to its tragic end.
Absent from the stage throughout is the opera’s chorus of villagers. On a pragmatic level, the number of singers required would have posed major problems for COVID-19 precautions, but at the same time they are necessary for the story. The Atlanta Opera came up with a virtual solution: the choral numbers in advance using 16 singers and then put them on a click track, to then be accompanied by conductor Rolando Salazar’s eight-musician chamber orchestra – so the villagers, as a chorus, are heard rather than seen.
One of the happy consequences, however, is that essentially makes the audience into the crowd of villagers who are watching both the opera itself and the collapsing commedia dell’arte play. No surprise that Silvio is at that moment amid the audience, and rushes toward the stage when Nedda is threatened by Canio and she calls for help. In this production’s more contemporary style, and obliged by social distancing among the company’s players, Canio shoots Silvio dead with a handgun instead of stabbing Nedda and Silvio to death. Then comes the infamous final line.
In the original score, the opera’s final line, “La Commedia è finita!” (“The Comedy is ended!”), was given to Tonio, which parallels his singing of the prologue. The practice of re-assigning it to Canio dates back to 1895 – a practice which continues to be standard. But in this production, Zvulun restores the line to Tonio, where it makes the most sense and, frankly, has the greater dramatic impact.
Also in this production, the entire opera is performed without intermission in the span of 90 minutes – a common approximate length among feature films – yet it felt like the time passed much more quickly, as the pace and emotional drama of the production thoroughly engaged and held the attention. On the downside, volume of the orchestra could have been bumped up a bit, relative to the singers, who were all very easily heard in the audio mix.
That doesn’t mean that was the same as the balance heard by the the singers themselves or the orchestra under their canopy behind the stage, or even folks in the front nearest to the stage, but for some of us in the back row pods, a little more presence of the orchestra would have better supported the singers and helped carry the drama, especially in passages for the orchestra alone, such as the Intermezzo between the joined acts. One expects adjustments to things like that will be made over the first couple of nights anyway – that’s natural, especially in such an unfamiliar performance context.
What’s not likely to change is the height of the stage, which could have benefited sight-lines had the platforms been made even a foot taller. In particular, the action on the ground level apron area, which was simply sheets of plywood laid upon the grass, would have been more easily viewed from the back pods if raised up a foot, since the audience was seated on flat ground, rather than seating on raised tiers. Tent poles contributed a little to obstructed view, but audience was aware in advance to expect some of that, depending on pod purchased.
Even with those small audio and visual shortcomings, this innovative Pagliacci proved a compelling performance. ■
Bonus Content Links
Scene from Pagliacci
Read this international France 24 report about The Atlanta Opera‘s Big Tent productions: Masks, plexiglass and puppets: Atlanta takes opera to the Covid circus
[FRANCE 24 | 25 OCT 2020]
Tomer Zvulun
Read Chris Ruel‘s Q&A with Tomer Zvulun on the Courage & Imagination of Making Opera into a Circus
[OPERAWIRE | 24 OCT 2020]
Scene from Pagliacci
Watch PBS News Hour video report which features The Atlanta Opera (TAO segment begins at 5:09): The show will go on! Performing arts pivot during pandemic
[PBS NEWS HOUR | 23 OCT 2020 6:35 PM EDT]
Tomer Zvulun
Watch on YouTube: Change Logic’s Andrew Binns and Michael Tushman speak with Tomer Zvulun about how The Atlanta Opera is embracing an ambidextrous business model.
[CHANGE LOGIC on YOUTUBE | 21 OCT 2020]
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