Last night was the double bill of Cavelleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci, both of which I had seen before. First off was Mascagni's Cavelleria Rusticana. Basically, Santuzza (sung here by Guang Yang) is looking for her lovair, Turiddu, who is in lovel with an old flame, Lola. The two of them were an item before he had to go off to war (or something) and she got tired of waiting and married Alfio instead. So poor Turiddu had to take comfort in the arms of Santuzza, his baby mamma. But they aren't married and so poor Santa has gotten excommunicated for being such a slut, and Turiddu is still sneaking around with Lola. Santuzza begs him to come back to her, accuses him of an affair with Lola and he just won't listen to her. He runs off and then, conveniently, Alfio shows up. Santuzza is pissed, and hurt, so she blabs to Alfio that Turiddu and his wife are doing the deed. Alfio is a little slow on the uptake ("Santuzza," he sings, "What are you saying?" "Your wife is a ho," she answers. "Do you want me to paint you a picture?" etc.) but eventually he gets it and pledges revenge. Santuzza is instantly sorry she said anything, but it's too late. She prays for... I don't know, something, but Alfio has challenged Turiddo to a duel. He says goodbye to his mamma (played by Judith Christin - who I swore I must have made up - she fell off the planet after I saw her in Lyric's Sweeney Todd in 2003.) "I'm going for a walk," he tells her "And I might not come back." (I swear, this is a direct quote from the supertitles. His poor mother must have been like "Turiddu! You are so high drama!") and then he has a change of heart and asks her to look after Santuzza "The poor girl who loved me." Yeah, right, since when? Rustic chivalry indeed. Whatever, anyway, he goes off to his duel, and Alfio has a bunch of henchmen and Turiddo basically never has a chance. The End.
I wasn't wild about this one (the more time I spend making snarky comments in my head about the characters, the less I am actually engaged in the production. And I don't think it helped that I was surrounded by the noisiest bunch of people that you'd ever want to sit near in the theater. Some woman behind me was like snorffling or something, all kinds of crazy heavy breathing. I was like what on earth is wrong with you? Who breathes like that?? It sounded like my little cat Finnie was sitting behind me and snoring, that's actually what it sounded like. Then, there was some woman hacking up a lung a few seats away (hey, Bill Mason, I wasn't aware you'd seated me in your typhoid section.) while they were singing. She'd coughed for maybe 5 minutes before it occured to her to drink some water. I don't know about you, but when I'm sick I don't suddenly go, "Hey, you know what we should do?? Let's go to the opera! I can spread around my germs and no one will be able to hear! It'll be great!"
Oh, and THEN, there was the rather large headed gentleman in front of me. I think it was a first date with his girlfriend or something, because they were VERY touchy feely. I think there was a large head in front of him as well, because he kept moving around. First he and his girlfriend would put their heads together and then have a little kiss. Then he'd move. Then he'd go all the way to the right side. Then he'd lean forward. Heads back together. Looking straight ahead. To the right, to the left, kiss, kiss, etc. I wanted to scream. I quite liked it when his head was to either side, because then I had a full view of the stage. When he was sitting normally, I couldn't see the entire left side. And then I felt bad about leaning to one side, because I didn't want to obstruct the heavy breather behind me. What a mess!!!!
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