Smokey Robinson & the Miracles – "Tears of a Clown" (1970)

 

Just like Pagliacci did

I try to keep my sadness hid

I’m aware of three well-known popular songs that make reference to the famous Leoncavallo opera, Pagliacci. 

The first is “The Masquerade is Over,” an Allie Wrubel-Herb Magidson collaboration that was first recorded in 1939:

I guess I’ll have to play Pagliacci

And get myself a clown’s disguise

And learn to laugh like Pagliacci

With tears in my eyes

The song was covered by everyone from Sarah Vaughan to Patti Page to Marvin Gaye to Stevie Wonder to Peggy Lee to José Feliciano to Aretha Franklin to . . . well, you get the picture.  Click here to listen to Sarah Vaughan’s 1956 recording.

Enrico Caruso in Pagliacci

“Mister Sandman” – a #1 hit for the Chordettes in 1954 – includes these lines:

Mister Sandman, bring us a dream

Give him a pair of eyes with a come-hither gleam

Give him a lonely heart like Pagliacci

And lots of wavy hair like Liberace

Click here to listen to the Chordettes’ version of “Mister Sandman.”

Today’s featured song – “Tears of a Clown” – also makes reference to “Pagliacci” in the lines quoted at the beginning of this post.  

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Pagliacci – which was a big hit when it was first performed 1892, and remains very popular among contemporary opera fans – has a “play within a play” structure (like Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Chekhov’s The Seagull).

The opera is about a troupe of traveling actors who are putting on a play in which a character named Pagliaccio learns the identity of his adulterous wife’s lover and stabs both of them.  We have a case of life imitating art here: the actor who portrays Pagliaccio is actually married to the actress playing his wife, who is having a real-life affair with the actor who has the role of her lover in the play.  

When Pagliaccio stabs his wife and her lover in the play, he’s not just acting – he really stabs his wife and her lover, killing both of them.

That must have come as quite a surprise to the audience.

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Did you notice that the character’s name is “Pagliaccio” – not “Pagliacci”?  All three of the songs discussed above mistakenly use “Pagliacci” when they really meant “Pagliaccio.” 

“Pagliacci” – which is the title of the opera – is the plural form of the Italian word for “clown.”  “Pagliaccio” – the name of the character who murders his wife and her lover – is the singular form of that word.  

It’s not unusual for even a major character in a play not to be identified by his given name.  For example, Our Town has the “Stage Manager,” and Cabaret has “The Master of Ceremonies” – famously portrayed by Joel Grey in the 1972 movie.  

There’s good reason to identify the main character in Pagliacci simply as “The Clown” because that is his role in the play with the play (or the play within the opera.)

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“Tears of a Clown” – the final member of this year’s group of inductees into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME – was originally released on the 1967 Smokey Robinson and the Miracles album, Make It Happen.  

Three years later, some genius decided to release it as single in the UK, where it promptly went to #1.

When it was subsequently released as a single in the U.S., it went to #1 just as promptly.  (Better late than never.)

Click here to listen to “Tears of a Clown,” which is yet another note-perfect Motown production. 

Click on the link below to buy the record from Amazon: