Cavalleria rusticana NZ Opera - not actual principalsCaval­ler­ia rus­tic­ana by Mas­cagni, and Pagliacci,  by Leon­cavallo, are appar­ently oper­a’s most fam­ous double bill. Both oper­as cov­er betrayed love and jeal­ousy.  Both end with a death.  They are sat­is­fy­ingly epic in this pro­duc­tion by New Zea­l­and Opera, sup­por­ted by the Vec­tor Wel­ling­ton Orches­tra.

The cur­tain rises on an enorm­ous rocky out­crop. It’s a bar­ren land­scape which makes the human drama stand out. The stage revolves which was used to par­tic­u­lar effect in CAV dur­ing the pro­ces­sion up to the church. (The night I went one of the loose pieces of set threatened to roll off and bean the per­formers dur­ing one of the spins. Opera – so excit­ing!) There are four prin­cip­al sing­ers in each opera. I thought the first cast were more power­ful (i.e. louder) than the second cast, and the second cast were more dra­mat­ic. They are ably sup­por­ted by a huge chor­us which includes chil­dren.

CAV is tragedy all the way through. PAG is more comed­ic. The prin­cipals made the most of this oppor­tun­ity. In CAV they staggered about fol­low­ing the story to the inev­it­able, shock­ing con­clu­sion. In PAG they played to the audi­ence, mak­ing the most of their crazy char­ac­ters. It’s not all won­der­ful. Some­times the sta­ging is ser­i­ously awk­ward. The sur­titles occa­sion­ally stopped for no reas­on that I could see. Luck­ily there are only a few of those WTF moments in a mostly bril­liant pro­duc­tion. (And the singing is fab­ulous.)