It’s a vibrant, colorful performance created by director Ivan Popovski, conductor Gianluca Marciano, set and costume designer Andrey Klimov and lighting designer Konstantin Rozhkov. Passions seething in a world of clowns and jesters, pain and tragedy of lonely hearts touch the audience literally to tears.
The first act of the opera takes place in a picturesque Italian village, to which the wandering comedians arrive to perform; the second act is the very performance itself with the characters of Colombina, Arlecchino and Pagliaccio, who show the villagers, and, of course, the audience in the hall, an authentic commedia dell’arte. For this production Claudio de Maglio, Rector of the Nico Pepe Academy and a leading expert on the commedia dell’arte, has been invited from Italy.
The main parts were brilliantly performed by the Opera Centre graduates Sergey Polyakov (Canio), Konstantin Brzhinsky (Silvio), Aleksandr Aliyev (Tonio) and Savva Tikhonov (Beppe). Nestan Mebonia, Makvala Kasrashvili’s 2nd-year student at the Centre, has splendidly sung as Nedda.
According to the artistic director of the production Olga Rostropovich, «this opera is not shown in Moscow now, and yet it is one of the best operas of the classical repertoire, where art imitates life and life imitates art; wonderful music warms the hearts and souls of all who listen to it».