Review: Met Opera’s Dreary January Is Brightened by ‘Cav/Pag’

NEW YORK — With a healthy roll of the eyes, call it a minifestival.

Maybe it’s to give the Metropolitan Opera’s audience some context for its grand new production of Puccini’s “Tosca” (which first debuted in Rome in 1900) that the company is reviving Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” (Rome, 1890) and Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci” (Milan, 1892), the standard double bill that opened Monday. Perhaps the Met carefully planned this deep dive into verismo, that blood-and-guts, heart-on-sleeve, homicidally inclined genre of Italian potboiler that flourished around the turn of the 20th century.

Yeah, right. The juxtaposition of these three operas of congruent period, place and style is in all likelihood a coincidence, spurred — more than any creative consideration — by the sales-conscious programming that has made this one of the most unexciting Met seasons in memory. It is a particularly dull January: Besides a final, schlocky “Merry Widow” on Thursday, there is no break from the same old diet of classic Italian operas until “Parsifal” opens Feb. 5.

But “Tosca,” directed with extravagant naturalism on a severely raked stage by David McVicar, had pleasures in a thoughtful Sonya Yoncheva and the puppy-dog energy of Vittorio Grigolo. And “Cav/Pag,” as it’s known, was also a thoroughly satisfying night at the opera.

This is also a McVicar show, first unveiled in 2015, and it’s more interventionist than his “Tosca,” and more successful. (Amusingly, the set, dominated by aged, looming brick walls, like an old brewery, resembles that of the unpopular Luc Bondy “Tosca” that McVicar has just replaced.)

The two operas are staged in the same small-town Italian square, a few decades apart; a program note, and the transition from candles to electric light, suggests that we go from about 1900 (“Cav”) to 1950 (“Pag”).

“Cav,” in this telling, is a grave tale told on a woozily rotating set, filled with people somberly dancing, dressed in black; “Pag” has the antic sparkle that a traveling comedy troupe might indeed have inspired in a country still recovering from war. Nicola Luisotti’s conducting, like the staging, renders the two operas both distinct and of a piece — lugubrious (just a touch too much so) in “Cav”; sunnier in “Pag”; both rich and vigorous throughout.

Roberto Alagna — who at 54 has become that paradox, an underrated star — plays both tenor leads, the caddish Turiddu of “Cav” and the jealous clown in “Pag,” with commitment and brightly shining tone. More of a paternal figure these days than a youthful rebel, he gives the show a solemn solidity.

Mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk is an imposingly earthy foil to him as Santuzza in “Cav.” In “Pag,” soprano Aleksandra Kurzak, married to Alagna in real life, is here the wife who betrays him, to her doom, playing Nedda as more headstrong than wistful, her voice vulnerable in texture but firm in presence. The brooding George Gagnidze sings compactly and well in both operas; Rihab Chaieb has a resiny cameo as Lola in “Cav,” Andrew Bidlack a charming one as Beppe in “Pag.”

If the Met is going to insist on serving us the stalest selections possible, the least it can do is present them with this degree of polish and professionalism.

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“Cavalleria Rusticana" and “Pagliacci” run through Feb. 1 at the Metropolitan Opera House