Knoxville Opera Company’s 'Pagliacci' doubly engaging

Singer/actors playing themselves and also playing characters, who, in turn, play other characters in a play within the play sounds like fun trying to figure out.

That's the challenge Knoxville Opera director Brian Salesky has put together for the company's production of "Pagliacci," Ruggiero Leoncavallo's short, 1892 opera, which will be performed at the Tennessee Theatre during the Rossini Festival's Italian Street Fair at 6 p.m. Saturday, April 25 and again at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, April 26.

In another doubly engaging move designed to encourage festival-goers to take in the opera and allow opera-goers time to get involved in the street fair, Saturday's performance will be at 6 p.m.

"We are planning to have the musicians on a stage in front of the Tennessee Theatre giving the crowd a taste of the opera before we go inside to do the full-scale production," Salesky said. "Then, when the opera is over, our audience will still have time to enjoy all the activity on the street."

Pagliacci is actually a comic character in the play within the opera. It's about Pagliacci's troubles and vengeance that is to be performed by a traveling troupe of actors, all of which ends up being reflected in the lives of the characters in the opera. Pagliacci is played by Canio, who in Knoxville Opera's production is the role sung by tenor Michael Hayes.

Sitting around a table with Salesky, Hayes, baritone Scott Bearden (who sings the role of Tonio, a clown who plays Taddeo in the comedy) and soprano Joyce El-Khoury (who sings Nedda, Canio's wife, and who plays Colombina in the comedy), sorting out whether this opera is a comedy or a tragedy proved an interesting discussion.

Nedda is having an affair with Tonio, of which a distressed Canio finds out.

"If the comedy isn't very funny, then you lose the tragedy," Hayes said.

"Canio is angry because he has to perform before an audience while all this other stuff is going on," Bearden said.

"When I did this role for the first time, I learned that what Canio is feeling just kind of cooks inside your body," Hayes said.

"He is rooted in his relationship with Nedda. But he is also very aware of how old he is and how young she is," Bearden said.

As El-Khoury has settled into the role of Nedda, her feelings about her character have changed. "At first, I thought about her as an adultress," she said. "But now I see her more as an orphan. She is caught between her life with Canio and the life she wants with Tonio."

"When you first do a show, you want to hold on to your vision of a character," Bearden said. "But doing 'Pagliacci' the way this production is put together is an amazing, eye-opening experience."

Completing the cast for "Pagliacci" is baritone John-Andrew Fernandez who sings the role of Silvio, and tenor Adam Lloyd who sings Beppe.

Harold Duckett is a freelance contributor to the News Sentinel.

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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