In May of this year I reviewed a recording of Janáček’s Jenůfa from the Staatsoper unter den Linden that impressed me enough to get onto my all time favourites list. I really did not expect to come across another as good for a very long time, let alone one that is, perhaps, even better within a few months but I have. It’s the 2021 recording from the Royal Opera House and it’s really fine.
Robert Carsen’s productions of the classic pairing of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, filmed at Dutch National Opera in 2019, are an attempt to extend the meta-theatricality of the former to the latter. To this end he reverses the normal order which allows the prologue of Pagliacci to apply to both works and elements of the Pagliacci to be extended in Cavalleria Rusticana.
operaramblings 