Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci are being performed at the national theatre as part of the Teatru Manoel BOV Performing Arts Festival. Albert Storace examines the background and rise to fame of these two operas.
By the beginning of the 1880s a new wave was sweeping over Italian opera. Verdi had been the supreme maestro for nigh 40 years, his first great success Nabucco going back to 1842. Time, relentless and unforgiving, spares nobody and the same dynamics which rule life apply also to trends and fashions. The heyday of Romantic opera was practically over and a new wave was spreading in Italy.
Practically single-handedly, with this work Mascagni had launched opera verista
There was a new literary movement, members of which were closer to common men and women in their graphic and dramatic description of everyday life, the vicissitudes and passions of ordinary mortals.
Gone were the days of gods and goddesses, of classical heroes and heroines, of bucolic and arcadian settings and the amorous and tragic adventures of royalty and the aristocracy. At this point one must not forget that even as early as 1851 with Rigoletto and 1853 with La Traviata, Verdi was already becoming a kind of realist.
Here lies the importance of the literary sources the following generation of composers resorted to: the new luminaries of stark realism. Among the main ones were veristi like Luigi Capuana (1839-1915) and his fellow Sicilian Giovanni Verga (1840-1922). Their short stories and novels were based on things they saw around them and which they experienced at first hand. Together with their contemporaries they matured and came into their own after the shaky reunification of Italy.
On the opera scene, some thought that Ponchielli (1834-1886) could stake a claim at being the future leader but cancer cut short his life. Others were in the running by the end of the 1880s. Catalani (1854-1893), a great talent was plagued by weak and silly libretti and was still waiting for his great break. Puccini (1858-1924), too, was still waiting in the wings for his great break which had to wait until 1893 with Manon Lescaut. Among other aspiring hopefuls were the Tuscan Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945) and the Neapolitan Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857-1919).
Ricordi, the Milanese publishing firm, dominated the world of publishing opera libretti and scores and no doubt this stimulated lesser lights in that firmament to challenge the monolith. Edoardo Sonzogno (1836-1920) founded his Casa Sonzogno in 1876 and, in 1883, launched an annual one-act opera competition. Mascagni, inspired by Cavalleria Rusticana, a short story by Verga, wrote his one-act opera based on it. It was also his very first and his librettists were Giovanni Tognoni-Tozzetti (1863-1934) and Guido Menasci (1867-1925).
The opera was finished in 1889 and entered for the following year’s competition. Premiered at Rome’s Teatro Costanzi on May 17, 1890, it was a huge success and was soon being performed all over Italy. By December, Mahler was conducting it in Budapest.
Practically single-handedly, with this work Mascagni had launched opera verista. Yet, sadly for him, none of the other 14 operas he wrote ever notched the same success. A few, like L’Amico Fritz (1891) and Iris (1898) are still occasionally performed.
Leoncavallo had to wait a little longer for his moment of glory with a career that in a way was quite similar to Mascagni’s. One difference is that he was more of a literary man, and as with Pagliacci, he practically wrote all his own libretti. Upon learning of Mascagni’s success with his Cavalleria Rusticana, Leoncavallo decided to compose an opera in verismo style.
His Pagliacci (originally Il Pagliaccio) was also his first opera, but in two acts. He based his story, so he said, on an incident going back to 1865, a crime passionel over which his father, as judge, had presided during the criminal magisterial inquiry.
Unlike Mascagni’s masterpiece, while Pagliacci immediately won over the public, critical opinion was not unanimous. Still, it soon conquered the world too after its Milanese premiere, with Toscanini conducting at the Teatro del Verme on May 21, 1892, two years and two days later. As with Mascagni, none of Leoncavallo’s subsequent nine completed operas achieved the same success.
Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci will be performed between Thursday and next Sunday at the Manoel Theatre at 7.30pm. There will be a pre-opera talk for ticket holders at 6.45pm.
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