No doubt opera goers will dawn their best this Easter weekend as the San Diego Opera opens with its third production of the season, Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci.

Director Lotfi Mansouri, who is the former general director of San Francisco Opera and the Canadian Opera, made his San Diego Opera debut in 1973. This weekend he returns to direct the third production of the San Diego Opera 2008 Season with Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci. While preparing for the daunting task of directing, not one, but two operas in one night, Mansouri took time out to give the Gay & Lesbian Times readers some insight into these two productions and his rich opera history.

Gay & Lesbian Times: First, the obvious. What are the challenges of doing two smaller pieces in one night as opposed to one longer piece?

Lotfi Mansouri: These two pieces are very, very strong and originally they were not meant to be together. So the challenge is to underline the strengths and similarities of each opera.

GLT: What would you consider the similarities of the two operas to be?

LM: One is that they both define this category called “verismo” that comes from the Italian word “vero,” which means truth. Both are about average people.

Cavelleria is about a very, very tight, small village community in Sicily, with a long history of culture, religion and a traditional code behavior that is there that has been there for centuries. Of course the Catholicism is fanatical. I don’t want to exaggerate, but in its purity and the conflict it’s a little like some of the Greek tragedies, like Amadea.

Both of these pieces have to be incredibly convincing because the motivations are all about basic human emotions. It’s about love, jealousy, betrayal. Everything that all of us feel, but in a more sophisticated society we try to externalize it in different ways. These pieces are not set in intellectual communities, yet they are very emotional and passionate communities.

The danger of these two pieces is that they would be dramatic, very dramatic, but not melodramatic.

So I take that terminology verismo, very, very seriously.

GLT: What would you consider the difference of the two operas to be?

LM: In Cavelleria, I try to make it rather stark. In Sicily the dominant colors are white and black. The men wear darker colors. And it is a very, very closed community and the center of the community is the square in the village, and the dominant feature of any of those features is the church which hovers over all their lives.

Cavalleria takes place on Easter Sunday in the countryside of Calabria, which was one of the last parts of Italy to be modernized. As many people know, after Christmas, Easter is the biggest day in the Catholic countries because of the resurrection of Christ.

Yet, Pagliacci is completely different, so that they don’t end up by being too much of a good thing or too much of the same thing.

Pagliacci takes place more in the open country, so it is much more colorful. It is the Feast of the Assumption, which is in the middle of August.

So I tried in some subtle ways, with colors and attitudes, to differentiate the two pieces.

GLT: Is it in two acts?

LM: Definitely! We start with Cavalleria and then there is a break and we resume with Pagliacci.

GLT: The San Diego Opera’s last piece, Mary, Queen of Scots, was raved by audiences for being so well paced, so seamless in transitions. How does presenting two different pieces challenge the audience this time?

LM: Maria Sturuda is one story, with conflict between Mary and Elizabeth. These are two completely different pieces, with completely different backgrounds and different conflicts.

Most North American audiences don’t have that kind of a background of the fanatical Catholic society. So I tried to clarify that a little bit to help the audience understand these incredibly fanatical societies, which have these strict rules of honor and of communal behavior.

Anytime I have seen productions where they have tried to unify these two things, I have been disappointed because it hasn’t worked. So what I’ve tried to do is take each of these pieces singularly and believe in them. I make a case for each piece.

Yet again, I think one thing that they have in common is the humanity of the characters which everyone can relate to.

The text of Pagliacci is practically in Shakespearean context. This is not like the old grimaces that you see. It’s not that old kind of phony emotion, but these are real. And I offered up the idea that by true veracity and the rhythm of the drama is the rhythym of the heartbeat of a human being. So if you look at the text of the prologue, it is quite significant.

GLT: Speaking of text, tell readers a bit about the history of how you helped bring text to the opera audience.

LM: A lot of operas have marvelous stories and a lot of them are based on plays by Shakespeare and Schiller. But in the old days most of the audience had no idea what in the hell was going on. As a stage director I got very frustrated, so I started the titles on the top of the proscenium.

I did that first in Canada. Beverly Sills, who was called “America’s Queen of Opera” by Time Magazine, saw it and brought it to America.

I was watching a telecast of Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen with my wife who was very much a Wagner fan. The telecast had subtitle’s and my wife said that the production wasn’t as dark as she thought. So all of a sudden, it was like Newton’s apple hitting me on the head; I realized, that we should do this in theatre.

The subtitles are not supposed to be a substitute, but they are aids that are meant to be a key to open a wonderful, wonderful box of all sorts of stuff.

When Beverly Sills, who I absolutely loved, did marketing research, she learned that she’d increased her audience by more than 20 percent. So now of course audiences can really get involved with the motivational attitudes, so it is not so generic.

I’m a film fan, so if I go to see a film and don’t understand the language, I don’t know what is going on. So I said, if you can do it in film, then why can’t you do it in opera?

GLT: Logically, it would seem that a shorter opera is easier for people to digest and discuss, or at least those who might just be getting into opera. How is that helpful from your perspective?

LM: As a film fan it’s kind of like going to see a double feature. So you should really look at it and take each piece at its face value, because as I said, the only thing that they really have in common is the humanity and the humanities motivation of behavior, such as love, betrayal and jealousy, which we all have, no matter what society, what country or what language – this is human nature.

That is the thread that they share, but the stories are different.

GLT: Short or not, Cavalleria is a pretty complex series of love entanglements. Aside from the subtitles, how do you make it accessible to the general public?

LM: The psychology behind all of it is that it really is like a greek tradgedy, with human drama and understandable human relationships.

Yet, I don’t want to hit the audience on the head with it.

As a stage director I have the goal for the audience to walk out and say, Gee, that was a good piece.” But because if they notice the work of the stage director then the stage director has failed. That means that you have distracted them or they are bored.

Some of the best films get the viewer involved in the emotions and at the end you have had a very rich experience.

That is always my goal, whether it is a comedy or tragedy; I want the audience to leave saying that it was a good piece, especially introducing things to a North American audience, I want them to leave saying that it is a good piece. This is a strong piece and I would like to see it again.

GLT: Would you say that a North American audience is tougher?

LM: Yes. I would love when people see Cavellerria and Paglacci, which hasn’t been done in nearly 30 years here, to leave and say that they want to see it again. Then I have accomplished what I sat out to accomplish.

GLT: Would you say that is your main goal?

LM: As a stage director that is always my goal, to have the audience walk out enjoying it and saying, “I hope I will come to see this again!” SYNOPSIS

As Easter dawns in a Sicilian village, Turiddu’s voice is heard singing in praise of Lola, wife of the prosperous carter Alfio. Soon the townsfolk gather, dressed in their holiday best. When they disperse, Santuzza approaches Mamma Lucia’s tavern in search of Turiddu; the older woman says her son is out of town getting wine. Alfio enters with his companions, boasting of his horse and his new wife, Lola. He leaves as the villagers follow a religious procession to Mass. Santuzza stays behind to tell Mamma Lucia that Turiddu has abandoned her for his old flame, Lola. When the old woman goes off to worship, Santuzza confronts Turiddu until Lola saunters by, infuriating Santuzza with her sarcasm. Lola enters the church, and Santuzza resumes her pleading, but Turiddu refuses to listen. Pushing her to the ground, he runs into the church, cursed by Santuzza. When Alfio happens by, Santuzza avenges herself by revealing his wife’s infidelity. The carter vows to get even and rushes away. Peace settles on the empty square.

Leaving Mass, the villagers join Turiddu in a drinking song, only to scatter when Alfio enters and insults Turiddu, following with a challenge to duel with knives. Turiddu admits his guilt but says he will fight to win for Santuzza’s sake. Left alone with his mother, Turiddu bids her a tearful farewell, begging her to care for Santuzza if he does not come back. As Mamma Lucia waits anxiously, shouts rise in the distance. A woman stumbles in crying that Turiddu has been killed.

In the Prologue, Tonio the clown steps before the curtain to announce that the author has written about actors, who know the same joys and sorrows as other people.

PART I. Villagers mill around as a small theatrical road company arrives at the outskirts of a Calabrian town. Canio, head of the troupe, describes that night’s offering, and when someone jests that the hunchbacked Tonio is secretly courting his wife, Nedda, Canio warns that her fidelity is no joking matter. Vesper bells call the women to church and the men to the tavern, leaving Nedda alone. Disturbed by her husband’s vehemence and suspicious glances, she envies the freedom of the birds soaring overhead. Tonio appears and tries to make love to her, but she laughs at him. Enraged, he reaches for her, and she lashes out with a whip. Nedda in fact does have a lover – Silvio, who now appears and persuades her to run away with him after the evening’s performance. But Tonio, who has seen them, hurries off to tell Canio. Soon the jealous husband bursts in. Silvio escapes, and Nedda refuses to identify him, even when threatened with a knife. Beppe, another player, restrains Canio, and Tonio advises him to wait until evening to catch Nedda’s lover. Alone, Canio cries out that he must play the clown though his heart is breaking.

PART II. The villagers, Silvio among them, assemble to see the play Pagliaccio e Colombina. In the absence of her husband, Pagliaccio (played by Canio), Colombina (Nedda) is serenaded by her lover Arlecchino (Beppe), who dismisses her buffoonish servant Taddeo (Tonio). The two sweethearts dine together and plot to poison Pagliaccio, who soon arrives; Arlecchino slips out the window. With pointed malice, Taddeo assures Pagliaccio of his wife’s innocence, firing Canio’s real-life jealousy. Forgetting the play, he demands that Nedda tell him her lover’s name. She tries to continue with the script, the audience applauding the realism of the “acting.” Maddened by her defiance, Canio stabs Nedda and then Silvio, who has rushed forward to help her. The comedy is ended.