Page 196 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

194 IN CONTEXT

EMOTIONAL FOCUS

Verismo

BEFORE
ART IS A KIND 1890 Winner of a competition
for a new one-act opera,
Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria
rusticana launches the
“verismo” (realism) music
OF ILLNESS movement in Rome.

1892 Modeled on Cavalleria,
Ruggero Leoncavallo’s opera

consolidating verismo style.
TOSCA (1900), GIACOMO PUCCINI Pagliacci is a hit in Milan,
AFTER
1904 Puccini suffers a setback
when Madama Butterfly is
booed at its premiere in Milan,
although it bounces back three
months later in Brescia.

1926 Two years after Puccini’s
death, his Turandot, completed
by his younger colleague
Franco Alfano, is premiered
at La Scala in Milan.

ith the first performance
of Cavalleria rusticana
W in 1890, a new kind
of opera was born. Rather than
being based on romanticized
historical or legendary subjects,
it strove for realism (or verismo, in
Italian), embracing down-to-earth,
sometimes sordid events, lived by
believably ordinary people in often
contemporary settings.
At this time, Puccini, a former
flatmate of Cavalleria’s composer
Pietro Mascagni, was six years into
an opera career. This had begun in
1884 with Le villi, a picturesque
leggenda drammatica (dramatic
legend) based on the same story of
dead spirits as the romantic ballet

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