Pagliacci

A confession: I have never appreciated opera. Pretending to be entranced, I had sat through a performance by Maria Callas at La Scala. That was followed by a number of years in Rome and New York suffering through operas at the Met, both old and new.

This afternoon I watched a 1982 filming of Franco Zeffirelli’s production of Pagliacci. Finally, I got it. I was blow away by Plácido Domingo and Teresa Stratas singing on the Met’s recreation of a church’s very steep stairs. I’d been told that filming opera gave the viewer a sense of the drama. It’s true.