Both deal with the tragic results of sexual jealousy and were instant hits for the young composers writing their first works in the late 19th century, answering the need for opera to be realistic in its depictions of everyday life. 

Damiano Michelietto links the two dramas by setting the events in the same south Italian village within the space of 24 hours. 

During the musical intermezzo in Cavalleria Rusticana, we see the two lovers fated to be murdered in Pagliacci putting up posters for the coming show.

Michelietto’s staging, first seen two years ago, is updated to the 1980s and begins with the ending of Cavalleria Rusticana, as a crowd gathers silently in the piazza around the body of Turiddu while his mother mourns over him.  

Mama Lucia runs the village bakery and the opera becomes a back story relating the events leading to the tragedy. 

Paolo Fantin’s ingenious set revolves from village square to the interior of the bakery, where Bryan Hymel’s Turiddu, swaggering in leather jacket, rejects his former girlfriend Santuzza and takes up again with old flame Lola (Martina Belli) who is now married to mafioso-type entrepreneur Alfio. 

Nothing stays secret for long in the village.

Santuzza, dishonoured and spurned, takes revenge by spilling the beans to Alfio on his return from a business trip.  

There is only one way this can end as Turiddu, befuddled by wine, goes to face the vengeful husband. 

As Santuzza, Latvian mezzosoprano Elina Garanca is superb, with a lustrous voice that brings out the emotional depths of the character. 

In the aria Voi Lo Sapete, when she tells Mamma Lucia of her son’s perfidy, the visceral intensity is heart-rending. 

Hymel gives a towering performance as Turiddu and bass Mark S Doss is an implacable Alfio.  

Distinguished veteran Elena Zilio brings out the pathos of Mamma Lucia. 

A turn of the revolve takes us to the village hall and dressing room for Pagliacci, in which Bryan Hymel (replacing an indisposed Fabio Sartori) plays Canio, leader of the travelling players, who finds his wife Nedda is unfaithful just before they enact a comic play about a cuckolded husband. 

Carmen Giannattasio’s Nedda plans to run away with the young baker Silvio (Andrzej Filonczyk) and is betrayed by the hunchback clown Tonio (Simon Keenlyside) after she rejects his advances. 

As Nedda plays Columbina to Canio’s Pagliaccio in the play within a play, the realistic acting is applauded by the unwitting audience until the show suddenly turns to nightmare.  

Michieletto uses lurid lighting and inter-cutting to convey the events through the mind of the demented Canio as he demands the name of her lover. 

After Canio stabs to death Nedda and Silvio, the famous last words are spoken by Tonio to the disappearing audience: “La commedia è finita!”

It was Leoncavallo’s masterstroke, never to be matched during the rest of his operatic career.