History of opera
Verismo

Italian verismo —also known as Giovane Scuola (Young School)— sought to reflect reality, with more popular plots, in rural and proletarians environments, where the protagonists were ordinary characters. This movement grew out of the naturalista literature initiated in France by Émile Zola, which had as exponents in Italy Giovanni Verga and Luigi Capuana. Verist composers denoted the influence of Verdi and Wagner, although they broke with the Romantic tradition. The music was continuous, transcomposed in the Wagnerian style, without cabaletta and with arias without a fixed standard. They eliminated overtures, but added intermezzi, of a showy orchestration of dramatic tone. The voice was taken to the limit of its expressive possibilities. In verismo, leading roles were even given to villains and reprehensible characters, such as murderers, pimps, prostitutes and other characters of low extraction. However, over time, the didactic message that verismo sought to convey drifted into sensationalist plots, which together with colorful and gimmicky orchestration reflected the new tastes of the public.

The beginning of the success of verismo was with two operas: Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni and Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo. Mascagni worked as a conductor with various companies throughout Italy until 1888, when he entered a musical competition organized by the publisher Edoardo Sanzogno with the one-act opera Cavalleria rusticana (premiered in 1890), with which he won the competition and reaped an enormous success. Based on a play by Giovanni Verga, it was notable for its ordinary characters driven by violent passions. He did not repeat such success with his following plays: L'amico Fritz (1891), I Rantzau (1893) and Guglielmo Ratcliff (1895). Leoncavallo composed his first opera at the age of nineteen (Chatterton, 1876). Following a commission from the publisher Giulio Ricordi, he undertook a trilogy in the Wagnerian style, which he never completed. After a time in which he devoted himself mainly to writing, the success of Cavalleria rusticana encouraged him again and he composed his greatest success, Pagliacci (1892), a tragic story about four itinerant actors, with libretto written by himself. His next works were not so successful: I Medici (1893), La bohème (1897) and Zazà (1900).

The most outstanding composer of this trend was Giacomo Puccini. A pupil of Ponchielli, he had a great instinct for suggestive melodies and passionate plots, as well as for combining music and drama in perfect harmony, always with the voice as the central axis of his composition. An admirer of Wagner, he used the leitmotiv in several of his works. He had a first success with Le Villi (The Willis, 1884), but for various reasons his next operatic work, Edgar (1889), which was not well received, was delayed. He did achieve great success with Manon Lescaut (1893), which brought him fame and fortune. In collaboration with librettists Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica he created his three most relevant operas: La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900) and Madama Butterfly (1904). The former, about Parisian bohemian life, blended tragedy, passion and humor, along with seductive music that greatly pleased audiences. Tosca presented an equally tragic plot enhanced by musical dissonances and twisted harmonies, with one of the most complex female roles ever sketched. Her aria E lucevan le stelle is one of the opera's most famous, also known as the Farewell to Life. Madama Butterfly is set in Japan, in keeping with the exotic taste of the time. Although it was not well received at its premiere, over time its tonal coloring and harmonic language have been appreciated. It includes the famous aria Un bel dì, vedremo.

In 1910 he premiered in New York La fanciulla del West (The Girl from the West). After La rondine (La golondrina, 1917), his next project was Il trittico (The Triptych), a set of three operas to be performed in a single session: Il tabarro (The tabard), Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi (1918). His last opera was Turandot, on which he worked between 1920 and the year of his death (1924), and which was completed by Franco Alfano and premiered in 1926. In this work he synthesized his musical style: conjunction of drama and music, real characters of great emotional force and music of great symphonic intensity. It includes the famous aria Nessun dorma.

Other prominent composers of verismo were Umberto Giordano, Alfredo Catalani and Francesco Cilea. Giordano began in Sanzogno's competition with the one-act opera Marina (1889). It was followed by Mala vita (1892) and Regina Diaz (1894). He achieved his greatest success with Andrea Chénier (1896), with libretto by Luigi Illica. He repeated success with Fedora (1898), which was followed by a series of failures, until he renewed fame with La cena delle beffe (The Supper of Mockery, 1924). Catalani evolved from an early Wagnerian influence towards verismo. His first opera, La falce (1875), was to a libretto by Arrigo Boito. It was followed by Elda (1880), transformed ten years later into Loreley. His greatest success was La Wally (1892), in a Germanizing style, with libretto by Luigi Illica. Cilea abandoned law for music. He achieved an early success with Gina (1889), which was followed by La tilda (1892), L'arlesiana (1897) and his masterpiece, Adriana Lecouvreur (1902), a mixture of tragedy and comedy, in which he combined verismo with a certain bel canto.

Otros exponentes fueron: Franco Alfano (Resurrection, 1904), Alberto Franchetti (Christopher Columbus, 1892; Germany, 1902), Franco Leoni (The Oracle, 1905; Francesca da Rimini, 1914), Giacomo Orefice (Chopin, 1901; The Moses, 1905) and Antonio Smareglia (Istrian Wedding, 1895; The Moth, 1897).

Close to verismo, but with a more personal style is Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari. A student of Arrigo Boito, he was an inconstant composer, who seemed not to find his own style. He made veristic works, as well as serious and comic operas, among which stand out: Cenerentola (1900), Le donne curiose (1903), I quatro rusteghi (1906), Il segreto di Susanna (1909) and L'amore medico (1913), which have not lasted in the operatic repertoire.

In the 1910s this style evolved towards a so-called post-Verismo, characterized by the strong influence of the writer Gabriele D'Annunzio and a stronger link to Italian nationalism. Prominent in this current were Italo Montemezzi and Riccardo Zandonai. The former, a largely self-taught composer and conductor, had great success with his first two operas, Giovanni Gallurese (1905) and L'amore dei tre re (1913). He later produced La nave (1918), La notte di Zoraima (1931) and L'incantesimo (1943). Zandonai attracted the attention of the publisher Ricordi with La coppa del re (1907), so he commissioned an opera, Il grillo del focolare (1908), based on a Dickens short story. His first great success was Francesca da Rimini (1914), based on an episode of the Divine Comedy by Dante. He developed a more original style in Giulietta e Romeo (1922), which was followed by I cavalieri di Ekebù (1925). He left his last opera, Il bacio unfinished. Mention should also be made of Alfredo Casella, a composer of cosmopolitan style who was also influenced by post-Romantic and impressionism, author of La donna serpente (1929).

Outside Italy, the veristic influence is denoted in the work of the French Gustave Charpentier. He was a pupil of Massenet and, in 1887, won the Rome prize. It was in that city that he was infected by the verist atmosphere and composed his most famous opera, Louise (1900), the love story of two young people from Montmartre, with libretto by Saint-Pol-Roux. Also in France, Alfred Bruneau set to music several texts by Émile Zola, such as Le rêve (1891), L'Attaque du moulin (1893), Messidor (1897), L'Ouragan (1901) and L'Enfant roi (1905). Henry Février was the author of Monna Vanna (1909), on a text by Maurice Maeterlinck, a semi-Viverist work of symbolist inspiration.

In Germany, Eugen d'Albert was a prolific composer, author of some twenty operas, including Die Abreise (The Departure Journey, 1898) and Tiefland (1903), the latter based on Lowland by Ángel Guimerá.

The Czech Josef Bohuslav Foerster started in a veristic style with his first two operas Debora (1893) and Eva (1899). Later he was the author of Jessika (1905), based on Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, as well as Nepřemožení (The Invincibles, 1919), Srdce (The Heart, 1923) and Bloud (The Klutz, 1936).

The Greek Spyridon Samaras was the author of operas in Italian in the veristic style: La martire (1894), La furia domata (1895), Rhea (1908).
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