Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci Reviews

Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended

"...Overall, "Cavalleria rusticana" is the more satisfying part of the double-bill. Baek's beautifully sung Turiddu is just counter-intuitive enough to keep things fresh, and the musically restless Robles is similarly potent and in the present tense: I suspect the debuting Baek will be back. "Pagliacci" starts off fabulously well with Kelsey's magnificently sung prologue. But the overall problem here, as the love, villainy and betrayals begin to unspool, is that you don't feel enough within what should be an empathy machine."

Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended

"...This production of the two operas has baritone and Lyric favorite Quinn Kelsey doing admirable double duty. He is both Alfio, the enraged husband in Cavalleria, and Tonio, the actor who breaks the fourth wall to usher us into and out of the story in Pagliacci. Tenor Russell Thomas is the desperate clown in the title role made famous for earlier audiences by Enrico Caruso and Luciano Pavarotti; soprano Gabriella Reyes is his unhappy spouse; baritone Luke Sutliff is her lover; and Ryan Center member Daniel Luis Espinal displays a bright tenor as Beppe, another clown in their troupe. Yulia Matochkina, in her first performance at Lyric, lofts a strong mezzo-soprano as Santuzza, Cavalleria's woman seduced and abandoned. And Lyric regular contralto Lauren Decker is a pillar of strength as Lucia, mother of the cad who did it."

Chicago Stage and Screen - Highly Recommended

"...You know you are a real opera fan if you know what Cav/Pag IS and you can't wait to see it. Guilty as charged! So let me introduce you: Cav/Pag is a kind of traditional opera double header: Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni and Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo- two one act operas set in Italy and giving a kind of The Soprano's vibe: passions that erupt in violence and "honor" that necessitates killing. In the 1890's, in Italy there was a push to innovate in opera, and these two offerings "stuck" and became beloved classics."

Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended

"...Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci: two Italian operas from the 1890s eternally united by being only a little over an hour long, one-hit wonders for their composers, and the only commonly performed entries in the verismo genre not written by Puccini. This double-header production originally directed by Elijah Moshinsky, with revival direction by Peter McClintock and conducted by Lyric Music Director Enrique Mazzola, returns to the Lyric Opera of Chicago this November."

Chicago Theatre Review - Highly Recommended

"...Leaving the theater, I was struck by the power of both scores and by the way the interpretation of the operas has grown in depth as the years have passed. As old as the stories are, as over the top as the drama was, my heart was in my throat when they came to an end. The beautiful staging, fantastic chorus and emotional performances carry each story easily into another century of song."

Buzz Center Stage - Highly Recommended

"...Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci are two 19th-century Italian operas that strip love of its overwrought grandeur and show it for what it can become: messy, corrosive, and even fatal. Short in length but packed with unforgettable fervor, Cav/Pag, as it's colloquially known in the operaverse, delivers quick emotional blows to the heart. Cavalleria rusticana transports the audience to a Sicilian village on Easter morning, where sacred rituals can't drown out explosive scandal."

Third Coast Review - Highly Recommended

"...The Lyric Opera of Chicago gives us a fall doubleheader with two classic Italian operas rooted in the verismo tradition. Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana (1890) and Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci (1892) departed from the late 19th-century Romantic tradition. Both operas draw on the themes of poverty, adultery, and jealous rage, weaving them into two of the most well-known operas."