Pagliacci | The CoOperative
August 4, 2023, Pitt St Uniting Church, Sydney
The CoOperative presented Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci in Pitt St Uniting Church on Friday 4th August to an extremely appreciative audience. Under the angels that are suspended from the rafters, Natasha Gesto as Nedda led a fantastic team of young singers through the minefield that is Leoncavallo’s celebrated opera.
Pagliacci is a difficult production to stage. It tells a story of dysfunctional relationships, love against all odds, cheating, jealousy, revenge, and has been the cause of much discussion around the telling of these stories. The CoOperative exists “To use opera to benefit the world around us”, and very admirably was supporting Domestic Violence Service Management NSW through their short season of Pagliacci. This telling of the story was done through Nedda’s eyes, a choice that made it hit home in a very different way to a ‘traditional’ production where Canio is at the forefront.
Photo: Terence Bright
Natasha Gesto was the unequivocal star of the show, and not just because she had the last bow. Her singing was warm, consistent and very beautiful as she explored the many colours available to her in the role of Nedda. It is an enormous undertaking for a young singer, and one she rose to admirably. Her command of the stage was impressive, as she showed us everything from her fear of Canio through to her love of Silvio, and made us laugh as she and Beppe (Kate Wilmot) performed their live-streamed ‘show’.
Raphael Hudson as Canio stepped up to the plate vocally, and gave us everything you could want from a tenor including some fabulous pauses in the stratosphere. His Canio was menacing, made even more so by taking a back seat to Nedda. Timothy Nunn as Tonio and the Narrator was fantastic, and displayed some beautiful singing even in the midst of being ‘the fool’ Tonio and trying to take advantage of Nedda. Silvio was played by Tristan Entwistle, another fantastic young baritone. He rose to the challenge vocally, and Silvo and Nedda’s duet was a particular highlight. Kate Wilmot as Beppe was perhaps facing a more difficult challenge in singing a tenor part, but she happily played some light relief to the intense drama happening around her.
Photo: Nathaniel Kong
Director Menila Moineaux created a production that challenged the viewer to see Nedda’s situation honestly. From the opening bars of the overture, Nedda was portrayed as a woman in an impossible situation. She is trapped between three men – one she is tethered to in an abusive marriage, one who wants his way with her and would rather see her destroyed than with another man, and one she is madly in love with. Silvio is seemingly her only way out of the grotesque travelling show she is part of, in which she has to play out a comic depiction of her own life every night. It is truly bizarre, and difficult to make sense of through a modern lens. Memories of a happy life were projected onto a white screen that doubled as a backdrop, and gave us a glimpse into how Nedda could have arrived in this situation. I thought that this depiction of the story was so unique and thought-provoking, and I’ll admit I was extremely pleased when Nedda was the one left standing at the end of the opera. It wasn’t a moment of frivolous girl power, but a heavy reclamation of her own life that hit home.
A small band of musicians were ably led through the score by Toby Wong, who was extremely clear and worked very well with the forces in front of him. The chorus was small but effective, if a bit unbalanced by the forces available. Overall, the production was thought-provoking, musically satisfying and challenging. In all these things I believe CoOperative achieved exactly what they set out to do.
Main image: Nathaniel Kong
