Palermo-Munich Roundtrip (****½)
Francesco Micheli directs Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci in Munich [live]
Two years after its premiere (Rome, 1890), Cavalleria Rusticana had already been performed in no fewer than 290 theaters around the world. Spurred on by Pietro Mascagni's success, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, the creative magpie, shut himself away for five months, copied the structure of Cavalleria Rusticana almost literally, and achieved similar success with Pagliacci. What is remarkable is that both works have retained their place in the repertoire without any difficulty, while we hear hardly anything of the other output of either composer.
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