Live opera returns to the Festival Drayton Centre in Market Drayton with spectacular 'intense' performances expected
Fully-staged live opera is returning to Market Drayton.
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The North Wales Studio returns to the stage at the Festival Drayton Centre on May 9 and 10 to present Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci.
Seduction, jealousy, and betrayal will drive intense performances that are set to wow audiences in the North Shropshire town.
The two short operas, that are almost always performed together and are known as Cav and Pag, focus on 'ordinary' working people. But, there is nothing humble about their passion or the anguished emotion of the music in which they express it.
Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana is set in a Sicilian village over the course of a single Easter Sunday. It’s a dark, gritty story of adultery and murder includes the sublimely beautiful Intermezzo with its well-known tune.
Meanwhile, in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, the head of a troupe of touring actors murders his wife and her lover on stage during a performance to villagers.
The cast will include some 'rising stars' that are new to the North Wales Studio. Meanwhile, some stars from previous performances at the Festival Drayton Centre will return including Marcus Jakhelin Dawson from Norway, who played Don Giovanni last year, Khrystyna Makar from Ukraine, and mezzo-soprano Sam Lewis from Gobowen who will play Lola in Cavalleria Rusticana.
"Festival Drayton Centre has superb facilities for staging operas like these," said director Anne Williams-King.
"We loved performing Mozart’s Don Giovanni here last year and it’s going to be a joy to present these two gems of Italian verismo opera. Yes, there’s violence and melodrama but it’s all underwritten with such relatable passion. There is tenderness and humour too amidst the simmering tension. And fantastic singing."
Both operas will be sung in Italian. The cast is accompanied by Ensemble SY1, conducted by Andrew Charity.
The curtain will rise at 7pm on Friday, May 9 and on Saturday May 10.
Tickets are £18 and available at the Festival Drayton Centre.
