We are exploring timeless arias from Ruggero Leoncavallo’s opera Pagliacci.
Here’s “Vesti la Giubba” (“Put on the Costume”).
This aria is very dear to me. Canio, the circus owner, has just discovered that his wife, Nedda, is having an affair. He is about to go on stage and perform in a play with Nedda, where she plays a wife who is having an affair with Arlecchino. The cruel irony is overwhelming – his real-life tragedy will be enacted as comedy in front of a laughing audience.
This tension between inner turmoil and outward composure made this opera and this aria so dear to me. In 2015, I was having a very difficult time as an investor. I was in pain, dealing with professional setbacks and failures, but I had to show a different face to the external world. My investors and team needed to see confidence and leadership, not the doubt and anguish I was experiencing. Like Canio putting on his white-face paint and costume, I had to dress up in my professional persona every morning and perform.
I ended up writing a chapter about this in Soul in the Game. The aria captures something profound about professional life – how often we must transform our private pain into public performance. Canio’s famous line “Ridi, Pagliaccio” (“Laugh, clown”) became my internal soundtrack during those months. The show must go on, whether you’re a clown in a traveling theater or an investor managing other people’s money. Your personal catastrophe doesn’t stop the world from demanding your performance. #TimelessArias
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ug8OdslZg4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1XkhDU8Y9E
