OPERA LEONCAVALLO The Italian Opera Company of Chicago

Ruggero Leoncavallo holds the distinction of being the only man to compose an opera in the standard repertoire based on his own actual experience. Born the son of a well-to-do magistrate in Naples, Leoncavallo was a talented enough pianist to study in his native city's historic Conservatory. In 1876 he continued his studies, with an emphasis on composition, in Bologna. This same year saw the first Italian performance of Rienzi by Richard Wagner (1813-1880) in Bologna, and Leoncavallo met and had a serious discussion with

the German composer that would have a profound impact on the younger man's career. Most importantly, Leoncavallo was convinced that he would never compose an opera to any libretto other than his own. He also decided at this time to compose a trilogy, a kind of Italian Ring cycle, based on the Italian Renaissance. The first opera in this cycle, I Medici, took him a number of years to compose, and was not performed until he was already famous.

Invited by a relative in the Italian Foreign Service, Leoncavallo traveled to Cairo, where he became involved in an intrigue against the British on the side of the French. With the Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882, Leoncavallo fled to Paris, where he made a living doing some writing and playing piano in cafés.

Like Mascagni, Leoncavallo probably would never have escaped obscurity without the intervention of Fate. In this case, it was the famous baritone, Victor Maurel (1848-1923), who took a liking to

Richard Wagner

Victor Maurel

Giulio Ricordi

Leoncavallo and recommended him to Giulio Ricordi, who commissioned the composer to produce an opera for La Scala. Ricordi was not pleased with the submission of Leoncavallo's now-finished I Medici and declined to either publish or produce it. This incident angered Leoncavallo and instigated a lawsuit and the composer's lifelong difficulties with publishers. Ricordi, however, was impressed enough with the libretto of Chatterton, which Leoncavallo had written in 1876, to recommend him to Puccini for the text of Manon Lescaut.

Perhaps the courts were on Leoncavallo's mind when Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana shook the operatic world in 1890. Inspired by Mascagni's success,
Leoncavallo quickly wrote the libretto and composed the music for

Pagliacci (1892). Not on good terms with Ricordi, Leoncavallo offered the work to Sonzogno, who had produced Cavalleria. Threatened with lawsuits by two other authors who claimed that Leoncavallo had plagiarized their works, Leoncavallo responded that the story of the opera was based on the trial of a leader of an itinerant commedia dell'arte troupe, who was accused of murdering his young wife. The composer also claimed that his father had presided over this trial and that he, Leoncavallo, had witnessed the proceedings.

The world believed Leoncavallo and the lawsuits were quickly dropped. Sonzogno, elated at the chance to stick it to Ricordi again, joyfully backed Leoncavallo and Pagliacci was produced in Milan at the Teatro del Verme with the eminent Maurel as Tonio and under the baton of Arturo Toscanini. It was a smashing success.

Edoardo Sonzogno

Arturo Toscanini

Sonzogno also took Leoncavallo's part in the competition with Puccini and Ricordi to see who could produce the best La bohčme. Puccini's opera was finished first, but Leoncavallo's version, premiered in Venice in 1897, was initially the more popular of the two - in Italy. But as the years passed, Leoncavallo's adaptation of Henry Murger's book and play faded from view as did his other works, like the flash-in-the-pan Zazŕ (1900). Again like Mascagni, Leoncavallo is known to posterity for one work only, Pagliacci.

If Cavalleria rusticana is the "alpha" of verismo opera, then Pagliacci is the "omega." These two short works are commonly performed together and are virtually the only true examples of verismo that are heard today with any regularity. There is, however, considerably more to recommend in Pagliacci than Cavalleria, perhaps because Leoncavallo had the luxury of analyzing the earlier work. In a way, Pagliacci out-verismos Mascagni's opera with its promise to deliver "Un squarcio di vita." But it is also a far more traditional work with several arias that can stand on their own (Nedda's aria even has a smattering of coloratura in it), a classical-style Prologue and the timeless "play-within-a-play" device.

Ultimately, it is impossible to come to terms with the reality that the creators of two masterpieces like Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci could never again produce any works even close to these on the level of artistic brilliance.