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• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

‘Clowns’ Composed: 1892 Premiered: 1892, Milan Libretto by the composer, based on a newspaper crime report Prologue Tonio addresses the audience. The author has sent him to explain that they are to see real people and real passions. Act I A troupe of four travelling players arrives in a Calabrian village. They are led by Canio, with his ...

• Instruments
• Stringed

for it. In spite of a lull during the early nineteenth century, the mandolin soon regained popularity. Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) used it in Otello (1884–86), Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857–1919) in Pagliacci (1892) and Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) used it his seventh and eighth symphonies and in Das Lied von der Erde (1907). The Modern Mandolin By the beginning of the twentieth century ...

• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

‘The Triptych’ In constructing an operatic triple-bill, Puccini followed no precedent. He had nursed the idea for some time, to the despair of Giulio Ricordi, who felt it would be a box-office disaster. With the publisher’s death in 1912, Puccini soon felt able to work on the project. His librettist for La rondine, Giuseppe Adami, ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

, ended in 1932. Including tours, he gave a total of around 500 performances, singing heavier repertoire in later years with mixed results. His Chénier and Canio in Pagliacci were vocal wonders, but some now consider his style – with its excessive sobs and portamenti – to be old-fashioned. Introduction | Modern Era | Opera Personalities | Alberto ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

1885–1969, Italian Born in a small Italian village, Martinelli scaled the heights of operatic fame, becoming Caruso’s successor in verismo repertoire at the Met. After making his operatic debut in the title role of Verdi’s Ernani, he achieved his breakthrough when engaged by Puccini to sing Dick Johnson in the 1911 European premiere of La fanciulla del ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1876–1949, Italian Zenatello studied as a baritone at Verona and debuted at Belluno in 1898 as Silvio in Pagliacci. He sang Canio in the same opera the following year in Naples. His La Scala debut in 1902 was a success and he regularly appeared there in the years immediately afterwards. He worked extensively in South America and appeared occasionally at ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical
• Singer

b. 1926 Canadian tenor Vickers joined the Covent Garden company in 1957, singing Verdi’s Gustavus and Berlioz’s Aeneas. In 1958 he sang the title-role in the Giulini-Visconti production of Don Carlos, and Siegmund at Bayreuth, followed by Jason in Cherubini’s Medea in Dallas. He sang Siegmund and three other roles in Vienna in 1959. He made his Metropolitan ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

1929–2005, Italian With a warm, expressive baritone voice ideal for Verdi, Cappuccilli had a superb technique that was still evident when he performed Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci in his last performance at Covent Garden, aged 60. Studying at the Teatro Giuseppe Verdi before graduating to the main stage, he made his professional debut in 1957 as ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

, capable of portraying powerful complex emotions. The style continued in Mascagni’s dozen or so less well-known operas including Iris (1898), L’amico Fritz (1905) and Nerone (1935), as well as Pagliacci by Leoncavallo, often given as a companion piece to Cavalleria, and the operas of Puccini. Recommended Recording: Cavalleria rusticana, La Scala Chorus and Orchestra (cond) Herbert von ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

(Rood-jâ’-ro La-on-ka-val’-lo) 1858–1919 Italian composer Leoncavallo’s masterpiece was the one-act opera Pagliacci (‘Clowns’, 1892), for which he wrote the libretto, 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 ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

to present the publisher Sonzogno with an outline for a powerful story of jealously obsessive love, similar in broad outline and ethos to Mascagni’s work. The resulting one-act opera 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 ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Modern Era
• Singer

1877–1953 Italian baritone Ruffo sang for one season only at Covent Garden, before appearing at La Scala, Milan 1903–04, as Verdi’s Rigoletto. His US debut was in 1912; he first sang at the Metropolitan Opera in 1922. His repertory included Don Carlo (Ernani), Tonio (Pagliacci), Rossini’s Figaro and Ambroise Thomas’s (1811–96) Hamlet. Introduction | Modern Era | Classical ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

Falstaff in 1893. Maurel was also instrumental in the career of Ruggero Leoncavallo, introducing the young composer to the publisher Ricordi. He created the role of Tonio for Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci in 1892. Maurel also worked as a director, teacher and designer. Introduction | Turn of the Century | Opera Personalities | Richard Mayr | Turn of the Century | ...

• Opera
• High Romantic

In 1891, when the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) wrote his famous words ‘Life imitates art far more than art imitates life’, he had somehow managed to overlook the artistic realities of the late nineteenth century. By that time, after some 50 years of the High Romantic era, music and opera had brought real life on stage and ...

• Opera
• Turn of the Century

tremendously exciting for audiences, and operas with veristic traits – though perhaps lacking a truly veristic ideology, like Pietro Mascagni’s (1863–1945) Cavalleria rusticana (1890) and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s (1858–1919) Pagliacci (1892) – spread like wildfire across Italy and Europe. The influence of naturalism was soon seen in the approach to staging as well as in the artwork itself. André Antoine ...