Tonight: Scenes from
* Pagliacci ' by Leoncavallo
Marjorie Shires (soprano)
James Johnston (tenor)
John Kentish (tenor)
Roderick Jones (baritone) Douglas Craig (baritone)
BBC Theatre Chorus
BBC Theatre Orchestra
Conductor, Walter Goehr
Story told by Stephen Williams
Pagliacci has become the classic example of the clown who has to laugh and jest while his heart is breaking. The name has passed into nearly every language and the * Pagliacci theme is frequently spoken of by people who have not even heard a note of the opera. Like its inseparable partner Cavalteria Rusticana (they are
(Continued in next column) asually called the Heavenly Twins of opera), Pagliacci tells a fierce, taut, swiftly-moving story of love and crime, in which every bar is afire with dramatic significance. And like Mascagni, Leoncavallo, although he wrote other and more ambitious operas, never achieved such a rebounding success again.—Stephen Williams