Opera can sometimes seem distant from modern life. Yet its finest works endure because, beneath the music and theatrical scale, they turn on emotions that remain instantly recognizable.
Opera Hong Kong's October double bill brings together two of the most direct and emotionally charged works in the Italian repertory: Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. Presented at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Grand Theatre from October 8 to 11, the pairing feels natural. Both are compact, one-act operas that place ordinary lives and raw feeling at their center.
No gods or kings appear here. The tragedy grows out of recognizable human behavior: jealousy, pride, desire and shame. In Cavalleria Rusticana, a love affair in a Sicilian village becomes entangled with wounded honor and public expectation. In Pagliacci, members of a travelling theatre company discover that the distance between performance and private life has become dangerously small.
Someone says too much, someone conceals too much, and soon the damage can no longer be contained. The music does the rest. Mascagni and Leoncavallo understood that intense feeling does not always arrive in grand gestures. It can begin with a glance, an overheard remark or the knowledge that trust has been broken.
That makes the double bill an apt choice for Opera Hong Kong, which has done much to make opera a familiar and regular presence in the city's cultural life. Opera's growing appeal lies in the combination of orchestra, voices, chorus, design, and drama, all unfolding together in real time.
Italian conductor Roberto Gianola leads the production, with Enrico Castiglione directing and designing the sets and costumes. The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra performs alongside the Opera Hong Kong Chorus and Children Chorus, while alternating international casts bring the principal roles to life.
The two works also remind us of opera's unusual ability to make an audience share an emotional journey. Even when the language is unfamiliar, the force of a voice, the color of an orchestra and the tension on stage communicate directly.
Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci show opera at its most immediate: stories of people overtaken by emotions we know. The settings may be Italian, but the feelings need no translation.
Bernard Charnwut Chan is the chairman of the West Kowloon Cultural District
