Damiano Michieletto directs these new productions of Mascagni's 'Cavalleria Rusticana' and Leoncavallo's 'Pagliacci'. Among the cast members are Eva-Maria Westbroek, Aleksandrs Antonenko and Dimitri Platanias. Antonio Pappano conducts the Royal Opera House Orchestra and Chorus. Review Italian composer Pietro Mascagni was born in Livorno, Tuscany, in 1863. He enjoyed immense success both as a composer and conductor of his own and other people's music and created a variety of styles in his operas: the exotic flavor of Iris, the idylls of L'amico Fritz and Lodoletta, the steely power of Il piccolo Marat, and the post-romanticism of the lush Parisina. Despite this versatility, he is easily best known for the Sicilian passion and warmth of his 1890 masterpiece Cavalleria Rusticana, which caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music. Like Mascagni, Ruggero Leoncavallo has also sometimes been called a one-opera man,although he produced numerous operas and other songs throughout his career(Mattinata was popularised by Enrico Caruso),as well as the symphonic poem La nuit de mai. His most lasting contribution to the operatic repertoire is undoubtedly his short two-act work Pagliacci, written in 1892 and still one of the most-performed operas worldwide. Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci are often produced together as a double bill and here award-winning Damiano Michieletto directs new productions of these crowd-pleasing operas, both set in a poverty stricken village in 1980s southern Italy, where the Mafia has a hold. Antonio Pappano conducts the Royal Opera House Orchestra and Chorus and the cast members include charismatic Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek (Santuzza), Italian soprano Carmen Giannattasio (Nedda), Elena Zilio (Mamma Lucia), Dimitri Platanias (Tonio), and the wonderful Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko (Turiddu). --New Classics, Oct'16 Antonio Pappano knows exactly how these pieces should go, while the ROH forces play and sing their hearts out in realising them, Performance **** Recording *** --BBC Music Magazine,Christmas'16