Star-crossed lovers in opera are happily married in life

They were Nazi-resisting lovers in “The Sound of Music.” They’ll be playful lovers in “Oklahoma” in the spring.

And in the opera “Pagliacci,” Cadie J. and Jonathan Bryan get to play the tragic lovers Nedda and Silvio in November. 

“I’m stealing her from the tenor,” Jonathan, a baritone, says. “I get to be the good guy.”

The Bryans, married opera singers based in New York City, will be in Winston-Salem to perform two of the leading roles in Piedmont Opera’s production of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci.”

She grew up in Louisiana, he grew up in Dallas, and the two of them met when they were both students at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

“I was a year ahead of her,” Jonathon says. “Her freshman year, someone introduced her to me, and I was immediately smitten. I told one of my friends, ‘She will be mine!’”

They both laugh.

“It took a couple of years,” he says. “We became friends for a while.”

“We had a good foundation of being pretty much best friends before we figured out we were in love,” Cadie says.

After their time at LSU, the two went to graduate school at Indiana University Bloomington together. Both graduated in 2018 with master’s degrees in music and starting living bi-coastally while they were resident artists with different companies.

While he was at the Atlanta Opera Studio, Jonathan won the Georgia district Metropolitan Opera audition competition.

“I won the Met competition and suddenly had some extra money in my pocket, so I figured I could by a ring,” Jonathan says.

The two married during the COVID lock-down in May 2020 in Cadie’s sister’s back yard. “It’s been really good and stabilizing coming up in the industry and figuring it all out together,” Jonathan says.

Besides playing Maria and the Captain in “The Sound of Music” and Curly and Laurie in “Oklahoma,” the Bryans rarely get to play the romantic leads even in shows where they are both cast.

“I usually play the brother or the guy the heroine is with before the tenor swoops in and wins her,” Jonathan says. So playing Silvio and Nedda in “Pagliacci” is a special treat.

Want to go?

Piedmont Opera presents “Pagliacci”  at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 8., 3 p.m. Nov. 9 and 7:30 p.m. Nov. 11 at the Millennium Center, 101 W. Fifth St., Winston-Salem, NC 27101. Tickets are $23-$99 at 336-725-7101 or www.piedmontopera.org.

“Pagliacci” (The Clowns) is an Italian opera first performed in 1892. It’s a prime example of Verismo — realistic, gritty stories about ordinary people. Verismo, which was popular in the 1880s and 1890s is considered to be the link between Romantic and Modern operas.

A play within a play, “Pagliacci” is about a traveling theater troupe fraught with jealousy, longing, and betrayal.

The main characters are Canio, the troupe’s leader who plays the clown Pagliaccio; Nedda, Canio’s wife who plays Colombina in the play; Tonio, a hunchbacked clown, secretly in love with Nedda; and Silvio, Nedda’s lover.

The troupe has been making annual stops in a village in southern Italy long enough for Nedda and Silvio to establish a secret relationship. This particular year, Canio warns that while he plays a clown on stage, he won’t tolerate infidelity in real life. Tonio confesses his love to Nedda, but she rejects and mocks him. In revenge, Tonio tells Canio about Nedda’s affair with Silvio.

As he prepares to go on stage that evening, Canio sings the heartbroken and heartbreaking “Vesti la giubba,” one of the most beautiful famous arias in opera. (You can hear it sung by Lucianno Pavarotti here –

Soon, the play mirrors real life. When Canio, in character, confronts Nedda on stage, his rage is real. The line between performance and reality blurs. He demands the name of her lover. When she refuses, he stabs her.

Silvio rushes in, and Canio kills him too, proclaiming the last line in the opera, “La commedia è finita!” – The comedy is finished!

Although it is one of the most popular opera’s in the world, this is only the second time in Piedmont Opera’s its 49-year history that it has produced “Pagliacci.” In a first, the company is using the Millennium Center for the site of an innovative, immersive version of the show.

The Bryans are enthusiastic about their roles in “Pagliacci,” and speak excitedly about the complicated emotions involved. Jonathan has performed in the opera a few times, but this is Cadie’s debut in the role of Nedda.

“Silvio and Nedda’s relationship is really interesting,” Jonathan says. “Silvio is a farm boy. Nedda’s relationship with Canio is not very good. He was her mentor before he became her husband. Now he drinks and is violent. Every year that the troupe comes through his village, Silvio begs Nedda to run away with him. Now, Silvio makes his last stand, telling her, ‘Surely we could be happy wherever we go.’”

“Nedda is looking at what’s a safe option and what’s a risky option,” Cadie explains. “If she goes with Silvio, she’ll be giving up career and her whole life as she has known it, and she’s already done that for one man.”

There are pros and cons for a married couple playing romantic leads, the Bryans explain. Kissing and hugging your life partner is easier than doing it with a stranger.

“It’s definitely more comfortable, but we learned in ‘Sound of Music’ that what feels natural to us doesn’t necessarily translate to the stage. We had to figure out that, yes, this feels natural, but does it look natural to the people out there in the audience, and how do we heighten it?” Cadie points out.

“As actors, we have to physically broadcast the romantic tension between us,” Jonathon says. “In acting, you want to feel like there’s a rubber band between the two of us, and we want to keep it taut.”

The male characters’ relationships are fairly linear, all three of them love Nedda, but her feelings are more complex.

“I get hung up on the way that Nedda treats Tonio, the hunchback,” Cadie explains. “He tries to force himself on her, and she treats him badly and mocks him.

“In other instances, she has fire within her, but she seems helpless. Silvio helps her find her strength, and there’s a freedom of spirit in her opening aria ‘Stridono lassù.’ She wants to be a free bird. I’m excited to perform all those emotional colors.”

While awaiting their star turns in “Pagliacci,” the two are working on socially relevant projects.

Cadie is covering for a leading role in “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” by Michael Chabon at the Metropolitan Opera. It’s based on a historical fiction novel that follows the lives of two Jewish cousins, Josef "Joe" Kavalier, a Czech artist and magician who escapes Nazi-occupied Prague, and Sammy Clay, a Brooklyn-born writer.

Jonathon is both producing for the first time and performing in a stage version of “Winterreise,” a song cycle by Schubert. It’s about a young man who leaves his home and wanders, isolated and melancholy, in a winter landscape. Jonathan is using it to bring awareness to the problems of homelessness and mental illness.

Another out-of-towner Chas Rader-Shieber, who lives in Philadelphia and is known for his interpretations of opera, is the stage director for “Pagliacci.”

Rader-Shieber and Piedmont Opera are setting the opera in a nonspecific time period, but the place is very specific. It will have a carnival atmosphere, with entertainments going on before the show starts to set the mood, and the audience will be very close to the action.

“I met Cadie I met a few years ago at Des Moines Opera,” Rader-Shieber says. “She shined, and I was so impressed with her. She is a sensational performer.”

“We’ve had meetings with the director, Chas, and he’s super collaborative,” Cadie says. “I think we are the perfect people to do this kind of immersive theatre.”

“Cadie and Jonathon have worked together on stage, and they have worked out for themselves how they like to rehearse as a couple and as performers,” Rader-Shieber continues. “They're delightful and smart. They are just stage animals, and that makes it so much fun for me.”

According to the director and the Bryans, this “Pagliacci” has something for everyone. It will be a treat for seasoned opera fans to see an old favorite presented in an innovative way.

And, as for newcomers to the art form: “This is the kind of show that makes you want more,” Jonathan says. “It’s going to be a really exciting night of theatre.”

Lynn Felder | WINSTON-SALEM MAGAZINE

October 31, 2025