On September 2018 Madlenianum Opera staged revival of the opera Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo, in direction and staging of the well-known and acclaimed Russian director Yuri Alexandrov, with a refreshed team of the performers led by soprano Branislava Podrumac as Neda.
Pagliacci is a real example of veristic opera with great arias that have been sung by master world’s soloists, from Caruso to Pavarotti, with a strong, exciting high thrilling drama plot. The plot intertwines fiction and reality, bringing a scene into scene, stirring the privacy of the protagonists and their roles in a particular type of the Renaissance theatre called commedia dell’arte. Passion, love, jealousy, the intensity of emotions shall lead to tragedy.
Modern, erotic, dramatic, exciting and artistically splendid staging was arranged by the old acquaintance of Madlenianum, the guest director from St. Petersburg. In the explication of his direction Yuri Alexandrov says: “I am, first of all, guided by my attitude towards theatre, to which I dedicated my life. A theatre which is a subject of hatred and an object of worship, which is cynical and vulnerable, which oppresses and releases, a theatre of slaves and gods! A theatre of artists and buffoons! You can enumerate endlessly. In Pagliacci are my contemplations about inside of a theatre, the theatre which audience does not know. It is in a way the product of my struggle, my disappointments and enthusiasm, victories and defeats … One of the topics of this play is the relationship between theatre and audience, more precisely- relationships with those ones that stand between theatre and audience.”