Not so much Verismo: Eleanor Burke's somewhat abstract staging of Leoncavallo's Pagliacci for English Touring Opera provides a fine setting for Ronald Samm's powerful performance as Canio

Leoncavallo: Pagliacci - Harry Grigg, Matthew Siveter, Ronald Samm - English Touring Opera (Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith)

Leoncavallo: Pagliacci; Ronald Samm, Paula Sides, Matthew Siveter, director: Eleanor Burke, conductor: Gerry Cornelius; English Touring Opera at Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield.
Reviewed 21 March 2026

A modern dress refocussing of Leoncavallo's Verismo classic loses a little in the translation but makes a superb vehicle for Ronald Samm's Canio, powerful study in mental disintegration.

For the second opera of their Spring Season, English Touring Opera presented Leoncavallo's Pagliacci sung in a new English translation by Robin Norton-Hale. We caught the opening performance at the Lyceum Theatre in Sheffield on Saturday 21 March 2026. Pagliacci was directed by Eleanor Burke, founder of Green Opera, with designs by Michael Pavelka (sets) and Laura Jane Stanfield (costumes). Ronald Samm was Canio with Paula Sides as Nedda, Matthew Siveter as Tonio, Danny Shelvey as Silvio and Harry Grigg as Beppe.

Pagliacci is one of the great operas about performance, combining a view of the players with the stage audience alongside the audience itself, with Tonio breaking the fourth wall in the prologue to address us. For her production, Burke refocused the opera. As Tonio, Matthew Siveter addressed a press conference (remarkably lacking in members of the press) in the prologue, only breaking the fourth wall at the last moment. Act One took place in the rehearsal studio and the excited crowds were off-stage and largely in Canio's (Ronald Samm) head. This continued in Act Two where Canio's mental disturbance was palpable from the beginning.

During Act One, for the moments that did not quite fit her script, Burke took the Regietheater route and had the performers rehearsing a script. This meant that Tonio's declaration that he was ugly and unloved was something Matthew Siveter's Tonio delivered from a script. Similarly, Paula Sides' Nedda sang about the freedom of birds as script read through rather than expressing what the character, Nedda, was feeling.

Leoncavallo: Pagliacci - Danny Shelvey, Paula Sides, Ronald Samm - English Touring Opera (Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith)

Burke had provided a new synopsis in the programme book, but thankfully it was not needed, the refocused dramaturgy was presented with great clarity and commitment by the cast.

The production worked because it created a setting for Ronald Samm's astonishing performance as Canio. This is a role we have seen him in before (at West Green House Opera in 2023, see my review), but here in far more claustrophobic, probing staging his performance more than simmered. This Canio had problems from the start, and Samm brought out the man's uncertain temper. 'Vesti la giubba' sung, before the curtain for the interval, was the pained outpourings of a defeated man, whilst the conclusion of Act Two was as shocking as it should be. The way Samm unravelled Canio's character simply breathtaking.

Paula Sides' Nedda was poised and together. She didn't long for freedom so much as want to avoid Canio's control. But Sides and Samm successfully brought out the way the couple came together only to come apart again: a cycle much repeated. Sides was lovely in the bird aria, even though the context was different, and the way she toyed with Denny Shelvey's Silvio was masterly. This Nedda was not entirely nice and not completely hard done by.

Leoncavallo: Pagliacci - Danny Shelvey, Paula Sides - English Touring Opera (Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith)

Matthew Siveter (in complete contrast to his tour de forces as the Mephistophelian grand inquisitor in the previous evenings The Gondoliers) made Tonio rather more sympathetic than usual. Lacking the confession of being ugly and unloved (now a play reading), this Tonio was simply a man in love, yet also with a manipulative side to him. His prologue lacked the vocal swagger and sheer tonal amplitude but compensated by a wonderful directness and meaning. Harry Grigg (who was in the ensemble for The Gondoliers) turned in an eager Beppe with a ravishingly sung account of the serenade in Act Two. Danny Shelvey was an ardent Silvio. In his scene with Sides' Nedda in Act One he seemed far less put-upon than usual, far more Nedda's equal. We last saw Shelvey as Oreste in Gluck's Iphigenia in Tauris in Blackheath, and I do hope we see more of him.

The actual play itself was brilliantly done. In fact, this can be a tricky moment in modern dress productions, but here Burke and the desginers had created a wonderful bubble-gum pink surreal farce. Only the character of Pagliacco (Samm's Canio) was in ordinary dress. The work was sung in Robin Norton-Hale's new English translation. This was plain and direct. Now, I know that we cannot sing 'On with the motley' any more, but I felt that Norton-Hale's practical solutions rather lacked poetry.

In the pit we heard Patrick Bailey's orchestration with reduced forces and less thick writing than usual. Conductor Gerry Cornelius made the most of this and coaxed playing that was lithe and urgent as well as passionate. We did not feel short-changed.

Leoncavallo: Pagliacci - Ronald Samm - English Touring Opera (Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith)

There was a degree of abstraction in this production which went against the Verismo ideas of Leoncavallo's original, with its villagers singing of the church bells heard in the orchestra. Burke and her cast made it work as psychological study of the disintegration of a relationship thanks to a strong and sympathetic Nedda from Paula Sides and the astonishing Canio of Ronald Samm.

Never miss out on future posts by following us

The blog is free, but I'd be delighted if you were to show your appreciation by buying me a coffee.

Elsewhere on this blog

• Wonderful joy, energy, & sheer engagement: Gilbert & Sullivan's The Gondoliers from English Touring Opera, directed by Liam Steel - opera review 
• He is not here: composer Oliver Tarney introduces his St Mark Passion with its highlighting of voices that we do not normally hear from - interview 
• Handel's Rinaldo recast as pacey drama by Royal Academy of Music with some star quality in the solo roles - opera review
• All-IN-4Art with Bettina Bermbach of Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben (DSM, the German Foundation for Musical Life) - interview
• French fireworks & German heroes: David Butt Philip & Friends gala at St Paul's Opera, Clapham  - opera review 
• Memories of a County Kerry childhood & a travelling Scot: Stephen McNeff's Ballads of a Bogman & RVW's Songs of Travel at Wigmore Hall for St Patrick's Day - review 
• Vital & engaging: Handel's early English masque, Acis & Galatea, & his setting of Dryden's A Song for St Cecilia, harking back to concerts in 1739 - review
• Home