Pietro Mascagni’s “Cavalleria rusticana” might have been a one-hit wonder for its composer but it was Satchmo’s favorite opera. In the mid-1920s, Louis Armstrong would pop out of the pit at the Vendome Theatre at 3145 S. State St., where he gigged with the Erskine Tate Orchestra, to play the famed, three-minute “Intermezzo” on his trumpet and once noted that if any opera could swing, it would be this one.
Lyric musical director Enrique Mazzola didn’t exactly make the Lyric Orchestra swing Saturday night, mi dispiace, no, but he certainly pushed for a lush, enveloping volume, an accessibly immersive melodic experience that influenced the scores of Andrew Lloyd Webber, John Williams and even the Scottish composer John Lunn, who wrote the music for “Downton Abbey.”
