{"id":29163,"date":"2025-10-29T21:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T21:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/29163\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T21:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T21:11:07","slug":"infidelity-and-violence-are-not-humorous-in-san-diego-operas-the-clowns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/29163\/","title":{"rendered":"Infidelity and violence are not humorous in San Diego Opera’s ‘The Clowns’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jonathan<\/a>Tenor Jonathan Burton in a production of \u201cI Pagliacci.\u201d (Photo courtesy of the San Diego Opera)<\/p>\n

Any production of Leoncavallo<\/a>\u2019s evergreen verismo masterwork I Pagliacci<\/a> (The Clowns) \u2014 including the San Diego Opera<\/a>\u2019s (Oct. 31 \u2013 Nov. 2) \u2014 must grapple with the tension at the opera\u2019s heart: its protagonist, Canio, is both a casualty of his wife\u2019s infidelity and (spoiler alert) a lethally violent guy. His wife Nedda\u2019s not-so-secret affair is the fulcrum around which Canio\u2019s victimhood and his ultimate savagery hinge. So is he a villain or victim?<\/p>\n

Back in composer Ruggero Leoncavallo<\/a>\u2019s nineteenth-century Italy, the fate of indiscreet wives like Nedda fell under the legal doctrine of \u201cdelitto d\u2019onore\u201d (honor killing). The sentence for a vengeful homicide could be reduced from life to a single year if the perp was the husband of an adulterous spouse. This cultural fact might explain the gentle terms Leoncavallo used when describing his Pagliacci: \u201cuna tragedia dell\u2019anima semplice\u201d (\u201ca tragedy of a simple soul\u201d), \u201cla verit\u00e0 dei sentimenti umani\u201d (\u201cthe truth of human feeling\u201d), etc. Canio\u2019s violence, the composer once said, is simply \u201cdestino\u201d (fate).<\/p>\n

How can a modern, post-patriarchal audience sensitized to domestic violence absorb an opera about a marriage gone very, very wrong? That responsibility falls on Christopher Mattaliano, the director of San Diego Opera\u2019s 2025-26 season opener and a veteran of eight previous Pagliacci productions for companies from Orange County, Portland and Utah to Minnesota and Omaha (San Diego Opera\u2019s last production, in 2014, was directed by Andrew Sinclair). <\/p>\n

Will he soften Canio\u2019s guilt by highlighting the perfidy of unfaithful Nedda, her lover Silvio, and\/or Tonio, the lustful hunchback who plots revenge when Nedda rejects him? Or will he place the moral burden squarely on Canio, the possessive alcoholic (and abuser?) who finally explodes?<\/p>\n

Whichever choices Mattaliano makes, it will be the job of dramatic tenor Jonathan Burton, a veteran of fourteen productions as Canio, to make this protagonist believably human, no cardboard lout. Speaking via Zoom from his home in Ohio, Burton explained his approach to Canio by quoting the character Beppe, a member of Canio\u2019s acting troupe: \u201cYou know Canio is violent, but he\u2019s a good man!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat line came up yesterday in rehearsing,\u201d Burton said. \u201cEveryone thought it was sort of a ridiculous thing to say. Well, it\u2019s also one of the foundation pieces of my interpretation of the role. What strikes me about this show, as much or maybe more than every other, is the variance of interpretation that people will bring to it. I never know which type of production I\u2019m involved in until we get in the middle of it. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo some people, Canio is the sympathetic character; they think Tonio is the villain, like Iago in [Verdi\u2019s] Otello. He orchestrates this thing [the opera\u2019s dramatic conclusion], and he makes all the boulders collide, and he does it for fun, because he\u2019s a sicko. They think that Nedda is ungrateful and a cheater and that poor Canio, even though he murders her in the end, is the sympathetic character. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo a certain degree, that seems to be what the composer was thinking. But to other people, Canio is the villain who murdered his wife. It doesn\u2019t matter how nice of a guy. You know, all the neighbors of Ed Gein [the \u201cButcher of Plainfield\u201d Wisconsin] thought he was a lovely old guy too. But he was making lampshades out of people. It\u2019s okay to get all of those different kinds of interpretations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Pagliacci is, according to Opera America, only the fourteenth most-performed opera, the cultural meme of the sad, mad, and\/or violent clown it has spawned lives on in everything from Smokey Robinson pop standards, Marx Brothers movies and Hollywood gangster flicks to television series like Batman, Seinfeld, and the Simpsons. When Burton delivers the opera\u2019s most defining moment, the aria \u201cVesti la giubba\u201d (\u201cPut on the costume\u201d) \u2014 immortalized by legendary tenors from Caruso and Beniamino Gigli to Pavarotti and Domingo \u2014 he\u2019ll be daring a long, exposed crescendo that requires equal parts emotional rawness and disciplined technical control. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Given the role\u2019s emotional intensity, sustained vocal pressures, and Leoncavalla\u2019s thick orchestration, does Burton consider it the toughest in the repertoire? \u201cIt\u2019s subjective. What\u2019s difficult for one person may not be for another,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are people who would be frightened to sing Canio, but I couldn\u2019t sing their role if I had to. It comes down to \u2018If it\u2019s for you, it\u2019s for you\u2019. It isn\u2019t necessarily scary. Something like [the role of] Paul in [Korngold\u2019s] Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City) \u2014 that\u2019s like singing Canio three times! <\/p>\n

\u201cCalaf in [Puccini\u2019s] Turandot takes a lot of similar [challenges] as Canio, but it adds lyricism. The same with Dick Johnson in [Puccini\u2019s] La fanciulla del West\u00a0(The Damsel of the West). All those roles are much longer than Canio. If you take everything that you have to sing, it\u2019s probably only 20 minutes long, but it\u2019s like orange-juice concentrate \u2014 it\u2019s powerful and it\u2019s concentrated, so you need to be able to withstand that short, very intense kind of punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Operatic punishment was not on Burton\u2019s radar as a teenage rock guitarist in southeast Ohio. With the emergence of \u201cattitude\u201d bands like Nirvana, Burton saw the writing was on the wall for the specialized rock guitar he played, and pursued classical guitar until he saw he wasn\u2019t any better than his talented Cincinnati Conservatory classmates. But he\u2019d always sang, so when he was asked to sing in a high school musical, he decided to make sure he would do it right. <\/p>\n

Enter Stan Workman, a former student of Metropolitan Opera dramatic soprano Margaret Harshaw and a local vocal coach, organist, and church music director. Workman \u201cencouraged me to take a voice lesson [to] see what could be done,\u201d Burton recalled. \u201cAfter about maybe the second or third lesson, he said, \u2018You know, have you ever thought about opera?\u2019 Never once in my life had I thought about opera! He ran a little opera company there in Portsmouth, Ohio, and I started doing shows there and I started singing in his church. So that was my early training. It was very intensive, all week long, hours a day. I had probably been in about six or seven operas before I ever saw one in person. It\u2019s been a weird, weird path I\u2019ve taken, I suppose.\u201d<\/p>\n

That weird path has brought him today to a broad and distinguished repertoire (from Puccini, Verdi, and Bellini to Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, and Bizet) and gigs for opera companies as august as the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington National Opera (Kennedy Center), and the U.K.\u2019s Welsh National Opera. Burton speaks of his instrument like it\u2019s a wild, potentially predatory animal he doesn\u2019t know one moment to the next if he\u2019ll be able to use.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour voice is in a different mood every day of the week,\u201d he explained. \u201cYesterday, my voice felt great. Today, I can already feel I don\u2019t want to use it. Tomorrow, it might be great again. When I was at Sea World when I was young, they did Q&A with the audience, and the lady [orca trainer] said, \u2018If you walk around the pool, you can sense the mood in there with them.\u2019 It\u2019s the same with your voice. There are some days it just doesn\u2019t want to, but it will, and you do fine. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut you\u2019re also going to have your colleagues give something different on an average day, or somehow the orchestra seems louder or quieter. There are so many variables that you can\u2019t control, including the ones in your own body. The best thing you can do is think of it like being a gladiator or a samurai: I\u2019ve trained for all of these possibilities, and I\u2019m going to be able to make my best of them when I get thrown the curve ball.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given those curve balls \u2014 the sheer range of real-life variables that a role, performance date, peers, or his own body can present \u2014 Burton\u2019s learned not to worry. \u201cThe most important thing you can do for your voice happens in your mind. If you worry, no good will come of it. If you fear, that will make everything worse,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI agree with Yoda that fear is the path to the dark side. I find it best to just live as normal of a life as you can. You can never really be satisfied \u2014 that you\u2019re done, and there\u2019s no more to learn or perfect. The goal is to be able to forget the technique when you\u2019re called upon to do the job, and to be able to just stand there and do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ NEXT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tenor Jonathan Burton in a production of \u201cI Pagliacci.\u201d (Photo courtesy of the San Diego Opera) Any production…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[21673,21674,21675,10239,21676,74,76,75,21677,21678],"class_list":["post-29163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-honor-killing","tag-infidelity","tag-jonathan-burton","tag-opera","tag-ruggero-leoncavallo","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-opera","tag-the-clowns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}