Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci review: Any opera fan should see Covent Garden’s heavenly Christmas offering

Covent Garden’s Christmas offering is everyone’s favourite double bill, even though these twin peaks of verismo – earthy Italian realism – were not designed to be yoked together. But Damiano Michieletto’s production of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana with Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci – universally known as “Cav and Pag” – finds an easy congruence between them. “Cav” is human nature red in tooth and claw, while “Pag” plays games with illusion and reality; “Cav” sits firmly in the 19th-century Romantic musical tradition, while “Pag” strains towards 20th-century musical modernism. open image in gallery Anna Princeva, who is teasingly suductive, and Andrzej Filonczyk in ‘Pagliacci’ But with this production – and this cast – we are vocally and dramatically in heaven.