Early Reviews Mixed For Patricia Racette As Nedda At MET

Tears of a Clown: Patricia Racette as Nedda with Marcelo Álvarez as Canio at the MET

Yesterday, the new David McVicar's production of Pagliacci by Leoncavallo had its opening night at the Metropolitan Opera. Critics didn't all agree on Patricia Racette's performance:

"Patricia Racette as the doomed Nedda gives one of her finest performances in recent memory, finding focus and honey in her middle range. She wholly inhabits her role, playing the wanton scamp 'Colombina' with aplomb, but earnestly yearning to be free of her life with Canio. Even in the midst of her infidelity, she commands sympathy in her duet with Lucas Meachem, who brought a warm, smooth baritone to the role of Silvio." [Source]

"But as Nedda, the luminous Patricia Racette is an optimist in spite of everything, her bright soprano spinning buoyantly in her duet with the orchestral birds in 'Stridono lassù.' Still, Ms. Racette is ready to switch into play-acting whenever she must." [Source]

"Patricia Racette delivers a fine performance as Nedda in Pagliacci, fiery in her aria 'Stridono lassu' and sultry in her love scenes with Silvio, making out on the running board of the truck." [Source]

"The soprano Patricia Racette may have a slight hard-edged quality in her full-voiced top notes these days. Still, as Canio’s wife, Nedda, who has become involved with the villager Silvio, she sang with beguiling feistiness, sizable sound and great character. She looked charming and captured the suffocating young woman’s restlessness." [Source]

"Patricia Racette as Nedda, the floozy with a heart of tarnished gold, acts, reacts, shimmies and swishes with such virtuosic glee that one wants to disregard some patchy vocalism." [Source]

"He has persuaded some of the singers to match his elegance, especially Patricia Racette, whose sultry Nedda in Pagliacci is the second-best reason to buy tickets. Equipped with a sumptuous black wig and a deluxe soprano in its prime, she toggles between heavy passion and light mockery. In the duet with her lover, Silvio, Racette’s voice rides the orchestra’s warm currents in long, legato glides, making the physical craving she inspires in men seem like an acoustical phenomenon." [Source]

"Joining them was Patricia Racette, who played Nedda like a has been hooker, and sounded like an over-the-hill soprano." [Source]

"In Pag, Patricia Racette's ever-widening vibrato (recalling late-period Maria Callas) meant that redemption for this Cav/Pag skeptic wasn't in the cards, even though David McVicar's production is perfectly respectable at worst and full of impressive, dramatically-relevant theatrical flourishes at best." [Source]

Jerry Seinfeld's 1971 Daytona Ferrari Breakdown Is No Clowning Matter

If only Starbucks had roadside assistance: Amy and Jerry stuck on the side of the road. "Oh Ferrari, so sorry."

In his web series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld is joined by friends for a cup of coffee and a drive in a classic car, sharing stories all along the way. In the episode featuring Amy Schumer, the 1971 Daytona Ferrari they are driving breaks down. As they linger off the West Side Highway we hear "Recitar! Mentre preso dal delirio...." which is the beginning of "Vesti la giubba" from Leoncavallo's opera I Pagliacci. Mr. Seinfeld was also caught in the same predicament of not knowing whether he was a man or a clown. See the video of how it all goes down, and a clip of Plácido Domingo singing the famous aria, after the jump. This isn't the first time opera has dropped by the coffee shop. In season four, Jerry takes Robert Klein out and the latter breaks into a bit about being an opera pimp looking for his commission on the latest Così fan tutte performances. Watch that episode by clicking here. For more about the series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee click here.

AHS Makes Clowns More Terrifying Than Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci"

John Carroll Lynch plays the murderous kidnapping 
clown in American Horror Story: Freak Show

"American Horror Story: Freak Show caps off centuries of suspicion towards Bozo & co. 'You know, Dave,' Chicago children's entertainer Pogo reportedly said over dinner with two cops who'd been tailing him, 'clowns can get away with murder.' Pogo would know, because outside of his clown identity he was John Wayne Gacy, the notorious 1970s serial killer and maybe one of the worst things to happen to clowns since the 1892 opera Pagliacci. Clowns, it's fair to say, are not currently having the best time of it, PR-wise. The fourth season of American Horror Story, which debuted Wednesday, features Twisty the Clown as the primary antagonist: a terrifying perversion of the profession with a mask of grinning, oversized teeth and distorted black lips. In the opening episode, Twisty bounds up to a young couple in broad daylight, knocks them both out with juggling clubs, stabs the young man over and over again, kidnaps the woman and locks her up with a young boy in a decrepit old school bus, and forces them both to watch him craft balloon animals (there being clearly no limits to his malevolence).

Even a dandy can turn into an evil clown with the right 
accessories: Finn Wittrock stars as the twisted Mr. Mott

In addition to this new incarnation of the monstrous, murdering clown trope, rogue scary clowns have been spotted recently stalking the streets of Wasco, California. In July, a 'creepy' clown wearing a red wig and clutching a handful of pink balloons was sighted walking through Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. The professional clown industry, for once, isn't smiling. Membership of the World Clown Association, a U.S.-based trade group for performers, has fallen from 3,500 to 2,500 over the last 10 years. In the UK, a similar group, Clown International, has lost almost 90 percent of its members from its peak in the 1980s. Earlier this year, Butlin's holiday camp, in the popular destination of Bognor Regis, withdrew its annual offer to sponsor the group's annual gathering thanks to a decline in overall clown approval ratings....Despite all this, clowns were typically viewed in a positive light for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, even though Leoncavallo's aforementioned 1892 opera, Pagliacci, told the story of a clown who murders his unfaithful wife and her lover with a knife. ('Se il viso è pallido, è di vergogna,' the clown sings, or, 'If my face is white, it is for shame.') The turning point, culture-wise, appears to have been the arrest of Gacy, dubbed "the Killer Clown" by the media, whose grisly string of sexual assaults and murders contrasted so vividly with his alternate clown persona. As Pogo, Gacy

Tears of a Clown: Plácido Domingo as
Canio in the opera Pagliacci

performed at parades, parties, and charitable events, even meeting First Lady Rosalynn Carter in 1978 thanks to his role as director of Chicago's Polish Constitution Day Parade. While on death row, he painted a number of portraits of clowns, many depicting himself as Pogo, claiming that he wanted to use the paintings 'to bring joy into people's lives.'" [Source] After the jump, find portraits of over 100 tenors who have sung the role of Canio over the last century and watch tenor Jonas Kaufmann record the famous aria "Vesti la giubba" from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. An interesting article from 2008 showing how often popular media use the famous aria in advertising can be read here. Most recently Wendy's referenced it in their new "99¢ Right Size Menu" campaign. Watch the video below:

Fast Food For Sad Clowns: Taco Bell's New Commercial

Richard Margison Appears in Verismo After 22-Year Absence

"The celebrated Canadian tenor headlined Edmonton Opera's season opener of Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci, a classic double bill with musical riffs familiar to even the most uneducated opera ear. Opera fans here have been patient. Margison last appeared with this company 22 years ago in 1989 (though he did perform at the Winspear's grand opening in 1997). Edmonton won't want to wait so long again, especially now they've witnessed his brilliance as the legendary sad clown in Pagliacci, Leoncavallo's genius play-withinan-opera. Margison owned the role, killed it - quickly, without thought, a crime of

passion. Like Canio's betrayers, the audience didn't have a chance...Luckily, we got Margison in both operas; he's so good as a cold-hearted Turiddu, the jerk who dumps his pregnant girlfriend for an old flame. I felt some pangs of sympathy during 'Mamma, quel vino e generoso,' the famed aria where Turiddu asks mother for one last kiss, but that was the blinding light from Margison's lungs. Frankly, Turiddu deserves it." [Source]

(Photos: John Lucas/Edmonton Journal)