Yannis 

Thavoris

Stage 

Design

Cavalleria Rusticana

Cavalleria Rusticana

Cavalleria Rusticana

Cavalleria Rusticana

Cavalleria Rusticana

Cavalleria Rusticana

Cavalleria Rusticana

Pagliacci

Pagliacci

Pagliacci

Pagliacci

Pagliacci

Pagliacci

Pagliacci

Mascagni Cavalleria Rusticana / Leoncavallo Pagliacci Opera Holland Park, June 2013 Director Stephen Barlow Lighting Mark Jonathan

Reviews

... an exciting evening of music theatre at its best... in Yannis Thavoris’s adaptable orange-box set... Both shows grip from start to finish, with the final minutes of Pagliacci keeping the audience right on the edge of their seats. (The Stage)


... ingenious linking coup de theatre... (Independent)


... Stephen Barlow's artfully linked double bill of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana (****) (set here in 1944) and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci (updated to 1974)... Yannis Thavoris's sets offer two walls of orange crates, with appropriate period accessories... (Independent on Sunday)


The settings are updated from the late nineteenth century to 1944 in the case of Cavalleria rusticana and 1974 for Pagliacci, and in this thirty-year gap lies the cleverness of the evening’s concept... Visual interest is, in fact, striven for at every turn... This opening image also hands the entire opera a sense of apocalyptic descent, as we remain acutely aware that we are about to witness a repeat performance... Further parallels are achieved by seeing the wooden crates replaced by blue plastic ones, while the bright seventies costumes cleverly appear alongside a sign advertising the play as a ‘Commedia rusticana’... (musicomh.com)


Directed with suavity and panache by Stephen Barlow, Yannis Thavoris’s clever minimalist set made a virtue of limitation. (platform505.com)


There are various visual references carried over between operas and, as a whole, it's a clever realisation, with the play within a play resembling some tacky sex comedy... these are both fine works and they get OHP's 2013 season off to a fiery start. (WhatsOnStage.com)


Barlow's production opened with something of a coup. Thavoris's set consisted of a wall of wooden boxes, orange boxes from Sicily...

Barlow and Thavoris chose to link (the operas) in a rather neat, and striking way, leaving each independent but interrelated without too much contrivance.

For the opening of Pagliacciwe were confronted with another wall of boxes, not wood this time but blue plastic. After the opening prelude, the wall opened to reveal the closing tableau of the previous opera...Then, in another striking coup, Gadd stepped forward out of character and delivered the prologue...

Barlow and Thavoris had another trick up their sleeves. The play that Canio, Nedda and Beppe enact for the village is in fact a comic version of Cavalleria Rusticanacomplete with love-making on the same bed...

Confused? Don't worry, the comparison wasn't laboured but it was a neat device for linking the two operas and the bedroom farce made a nice complement to Auty's projection of Canio's real jealousy...

Barlow and Thavoris did not belabour their concern to link the two stories and the results were surprisingly satisfying. (Planet Hugill)

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