AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• 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 ...

• 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

1857–1919, Italian Leoncavallo was born and studied in Naples. His first opera, Chatterton (1876), written to a libretto by himself, did not initially procure any performances and, in spite of encouragement from his family, Leoncavallo did not appear to be going far in the world of opera. However, with the support of the baritone Victor ...

• Instruments
• Stringed

The mandolin is a small, teardrop shaped, plucked stringed instrument. Its most famous form is the Neopolitan mandolin, beloved of all romantics for its use on Venetian gondolas. It is descended from the lute and, since its rejuvenation in the nineteenth century, has remained a popular and versatile instrument. Mandola The mandolin developed from the Italian ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

(A-dwär La-lo’) 1823–92 French composer After studies at the Paris Conservatoire, Lalo joined a string quartet, composing salon music and songs. In 1874, after a fallow period, he first achieved success with the Symphonie espagnole (‘Spanish Symphony’, 1874), a scintillating violin concerto whose five movements exude Spanish rhythmic zest and lyricism (he was of Spanish descent). This was ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1870–1948, Austro–Hungarian Lehár’s father worked as a bandmaster as well as composing dances and marches. Lehár himself played in the theatre orchestra at Barmen-Elberfeld before playing in a band for his military service. He left the military having arrived in Vienna, where he took up a position as conductor at the Theater an der Wien. Lehár’s youth and early ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1848–1923, French Maurel studied in Paris and made his debut in Marseilles in Rossini’s Guillaume Tell in 1867. He appeared in Paris shortly afterwards and steadily expanded his international career by appearing in Cairo, Venice and St Petersburg. Maurel was much admired by Verdi, who chose him to create the first Iago in 1887 and the first Falstaff ...

• 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 ...

• Stage & Scene
• Early & Middle Baroque
• Opera

The commedia dell’arte, which originated in Italy in the sixteenth century, was a forerunner of opera. The influence of commedia dell’arte was evident in both the cast lists and the plots of operas. There were, for example, slapstick sequences called zanni and comic servants, an elderly parent or guardian, usually named Pantalone, and his ...

• 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 ...

• 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
• Classical
• Composer
• Instrumentalist
• Late Romantic

(Oi’-gan Dal’-ber) 1864–1932 German pianist and composer Born in Glasgow to a ballet composer, at 17 D’Albert moved to Vienna, befriending the great Wagner conductors Richter and Bülow, as well as Brahms and Liszt, with whom he studied. Widely admired as a piano virtuoso (several of his six wives were noted musicians), D’Albert was increasingly drawn to operatic composition. ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1884–1970, Italian Librettist 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 ...

• 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 ...

• Styles & Forms
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

Richard Wagner (1813–83) and Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) were the dominant figures as opera moved from the nineteenth into the twentieth century, and it was the great German whose influence was most pervasive. His particular use of mythical subjects, symphonic conceptions, compositional techniques, philosophy and psychology left an indelible mark on all composers who came after him. On ...