Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, Royal Opera House, review: 'uplifting'

After his controversial Guillaume Tell, director Damiano Michieletto’s latest outing is solid and conventional

Last summer Damiano Michieletto provoked a near-riot at Covent Garden with a contentious production of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell featuring a graphic rape. Anyone secretly hoping that his follow-up interpretation of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci would prove similarly sensational will be disappointed – there was fierce approval and fiercer disapproval for the director at his curtain call, but the booing seemed merely vindictive, the cheering excessive.

Michieletto’s approach to these one-acters is relatively solid and conventional. Unassertively updating them both to a late 20th-century ambience, it makes implicit reference to tropes of Italian cinema. The only exceptional gesture is an attempt to integrate the two narratives – same place, same time, same people – but this is dramatically inconsequential: a tearful reconciliation between Cav’s Santuzza and Mamma Lucia during the intermezzo in Pag, for example, seemed neither here nor there. Isn’t there more potential in an exploration of the differences between the operas – Cav Sicilian and primitive, Pag more urbane and Calabrian?

The persistent revolving of Paolo Fantin’s handsome set became increasingly irritating, and I fail to understand why the action apparently unfolds during a total solar eclipse. Otherwise, however, the physical direction is fluently intelligent, the characterisation strong, the naturalistic detail meticulous – and although Zeffirelli’s productions of these war-horses will remain the benchmark in my memory, there is nothing wilfully outré here that even the most diehard traditionalists could reasonably complain about.