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• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

in films about American-Italians. The intermezzo is used to great effect in Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull and the prelude is used in Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather III. Personalities | Pietro Mascagni | Turn of the Century | Opera ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

(Pe-a’-tro Mas-kan’-ye) 1863–1945 Italian composer The son of a baker, Mascagni studied law before becoming a conductor and piano teacher. In 1890, while a conductor in Cerignola, he shot into the limelight with his prize-winning one-act opera Cavalleria rusticana which, at its legendary premiere at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, received an unprecedented 60 curtain calls. Based ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1863–1945, Italian Mascagni was a precocious talent and surprised nobody by disobeying his father’s wishes and pursuing musical studies at the Milan Conservatory. There he shared a room with Puccini, to whom he would remain close throughout his life, but he was not inclined to study and soon left to tour Italy as a conductor with various companies. ...

• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

‘The Bohemian Life’ Puccini’s first work following the overwhelming triumph of Manon Lescaut was immediately beset by problems. Leoncavallo had already begun preparations on the same scenario and, on hearing of Puccini’s choice of subject, publicly berated his rival and friend and claimed priority over the project. Puccini responded calmly by declaring that both composers should go to work ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1878–1933, Czech Born in Prague as Ema Kittl, Destinn studied with Marie Loewe-Destinn, whose name she adopted out of gratitude. She made her debut at the Hofoper in Berlin with the role of Santuzza from Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana. Her most famous performances are those of Minnie in the premiere of Puccini’s La fanciulla del West at the Metropolitan ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Instrumentalist
• Late Romantic

drawn to operatic composition. His 22 operas range from comic (Der Rubin) to occult (Der Golem) and introduced into German opera the gutsy realism of the Italian verismo style of Mascagni and Leoncavallo. His best-known opera, Tiefland (‘Lowland’), combines Wagnerian intensity and Puccinian melody in its tale of jealousy, passion and violence. Recommended Recording: Tiefland, soloists, Bavarian ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1863–1938, French D’Annunzio’s most famous influence on music was Debussy’s elaborate incidental music for his extraordinarily long play The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (1911). In fact, his connections with music were far wider. He was an extravagant eccentric and continually sought the company of musicians. The French pianist Raoul Pugno and the composer Nadia Boulanger collaborated on a setting ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

Forzano found his métier in writing and was a follower of Arrigo Boito. Forzano also worked with several other leading Italian composers, particularly those representative of verismo such as Mascagni and Leoncavallo. Forzano also worked as a stage director, producing Puccini’s Turandot in 1926. Introduction | Turn of the Century | Opera Personalities | Mary Garden | Turn of ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

into a play shortly afterwards and it was this version that was adapted for Mascagni’s eponymous opera. Verga’s strident passion and simmering violence were to prove a powerful catalyst for Mascagni and the resulting work signalled the birth of a new style in Italian opera. In many ways, Mascagni’s music underplays the violence of the play, which, both ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Conductor
• Late Romantic

strains of the Adagietto and even turns the story’s protagonist, originally a writer, into a composer not unlike Mahler. Introduction | Late Romantic | Classical Personalities | Pietro Mascagni | Late Romantic | Classical ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

Ariane et Barbe-bleu, the very play in which we learn that Mélisande was once a wife of Bluebeard. Introduction | Turn of the Century | Opera Personalities | Pietro Mascagni | Turn of the Century | Opera Techniques | Symbolism or Impressionism ? | Turn of the Century | Opera ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

based on an incident in the Italian town where his father was a judge. In its realistic subject and passionately expressive style, it embodies the verismo movement pioneered by Mascagni, with whose Cavalleria rusticana (‘Rustic Chivalry’, 1890) it is often twinned in performance. Pagliacci was performed with great success across the world months after its premiere in Milan in ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

Pagliacci, written again to his own libretto, was a smash hit. Its fast pace and robust music ensure that the audience is pulled right into the drama. Like Mascagni, Leoncavallo was unable to repeat the triumph of Pagliacci. His work focused increasingly on the lighter side but he suffered from his unwillingness or inability to develop with the ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

by his father, Giordano studied at the Naples Conservatory and entered a one-act opera, Marina, in the Sonzogno competition in 1889. This was the year in which Mascagni blew away the competition with Cavalleria rusticana and Giordano came a respectable sixth. Even so, Sonzogno (a music publisher and rival of Ricordi) was sufficiently taken with the work ...

• Opera
• Turn of the Century

The schools of naturalism and realism had an immediate effect in Italy. With scant literary tradition to draw on from this period, Italian writers in the second half of the nineteenth century seized upon Zola’s beliefs as a potent dramatic source. The style they developed came to be known as verismo and was exemplified by writers such as Giovanni Verga ...