Mid-Wales Opera has been sweating blood and tears in recent months, striving to save its company from the kiss of arts council death. Staging Leoncavallo’s Pagaliacci for their SmallStages tour is in itself a miracle of resistance and resilience – thanks in part to 11th-hour financial lifelines and public donations – and the opera’s story of a group of travelling players, the clowns of the title, and the emotional turmoil behind the greasepaint, feels singularly appropriate.
The staging may be scaled to the bare minimum – a central dais has a metal frame decorated with lantern-lights – yet its concept is loving homage to the commedia dell’arte tradition and its stock characters of Pierrot, Colombine and Harlequin. Director Richard Studer’s costume design has a monochromatic clarity for the actors and then, for the play within a play, he is true to the essential period look with its ruffs, frills and pompoms. Equally striking in its simplicity is the makeup: each white face is given a single black harlequin diamond on one eye, a mix of playful and sinister, symbolic of the precarious balance between laughter and tragedy that is the clowns’ existence.
