PARASZTBECSÜLET / BAJAZZÓK

Length of the performance: 3 hours 10 minutes, with 1 break.

"Jealousy was behind the Easter massacre". "The clown killed in the open". These could have been headlines in Edoardo Sonzogno's newspaper. The Milanese newspaper owner and his annual opera competition are to thank for two of Italy's most popular one-act plays. Pietro Mascagni claimed that he had originally intended to enter another opera in Sonzogno's competition, but without his knowledge his wife entered The Honour of the Peasant in 1889. In hindsight, he could be grateful to her, as the opera not only won first prize but quickly conquered the international stage. According to contemporaries, it also needed the outstanding success in Budapest, conducted by Gustav Mahler. Although Ruggero Leoncavallo did not win any prizes, it was under Sonzogno's stewardship that his first opera, The Bajazzos, burst into the public consciousness. The two works are, so to speak, twin operas, with much in common. For their authors, their first operas proved to be both a blessing and a curse: although they went on to write a dozen or so operas, they were never able to repeat the initial success. Moreover, both works are perhaps the most representative of verismo, or naturalistic operas that present the problems of flesh-and-blood characters. No wonder that the custom of performing both works on the same night soon developed. The two operas are directed by Georges Delnon, artistic director of the Hamburg Opera.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)