opera notebook
some operas I have seen on videoPietro Mascagni, Cavalleria Rusticana (1890)
libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti & Guido Menasci
Opéra National Montpellier Occitanie, 2026
- Conductor: Yoel Gamzou
- Director: Silvia Paoli
- Set Designer: Emanuele Sinisi
- Santuzza: Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur
- Turiddu: Azer Zada
This is a frightfully busy Cavalleria. It seems that nothing can happen on stage without dancers and mimes underscoring every action and significance. It's Easter, so there's an Easter bunny. The chorus sings the Easter Hymn while holding Perugina chocolate eggs, as dancers do a heavy-handed re-enactment of the Crucifixion and Pietà (which isn't even Easter, it's Good Friday). The design concept (including costumes by Agnese Rabatti) sets the action in a scruffy world familiar from productions like Calixto Bieito's Carmen. This is not in itself very distracting, though it makes the small-business people of Verga's village into down-and-outers. Less explicable is director Silvia Paoli's idea of having Santuzza be heavily pregnant. That's a possibility if one were freely adapting the story, but since the libretto never mentions such an obvious pregnancy, it makes no dramatic sense in this opera.
Orchestra, conductor Yoel Gamzou, and the cast – especially Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur as Santuzza and Azer Zada as Turiddu – do stellar work here, though, and it's a very fine production to listen to. Gamzou pays attention to the whole texture of the score, not just the big highlights.