Verga and Mascagni: The Critics' Response to 'Cavalleria Rusticana' Author(s): Matteo Sansone Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 71, No. 2 (May, 1990), pp. 198-214 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/736436 Accessed: 02-07-2018 17:49 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/736436?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Music & Letters This content downloaded from 129.105.215.146 on Mon, 02 Jul 2018 17:49:54 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms VERGA AND MASCAGNI: THE CRITICS' RESPONSE TO 'CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA' BY MATTEO SANSONE 'CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA' this year celebrates its first centenary. The sensational success of the opera at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 17 May 1890 turned the 27-year-old Pietro Mascagni into a famous composer. Because of the literary source of the libretto (a veristic play by Giovanni Verga), critics and reviewers adopted the term 'verismo' to define the subject of the opera and, by implication, its musico- dramatic language. Cavalleria was soon seen as the prototype of a new genre as, in the 1890s, more operas were written which followed its pattern: low-life subject, small dimensions, coarsely emotional musical setting. Leoncavallo's Pagliacci (1892) and Giordano's Mala vita (1892) are two outstanding examples, though the latter has disappeared from the repertory. The term first used for Cavalleria became so closely linked with the Young Italian School that ever since critics have been at pains to assess the variable degrees of verismo in different composers of this group or in different operas by the same composer.' In most cases, the use of the expression 'operatic verismo' has proved unsatisfactory and misleading. It can at best identify the minor genre which originated from Cavalleria rusticana and had some bearing on the evolution of Italian opera in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth.2 On the other hand, there existed in opera, irrespective of the veristic movement in Italian literature, a naturalistic tendency which stemmed from the erosion of the ideological and formal structures of the romantic melodramma. By 1890, literary verismo had exhausted its innovative drive and had given way to other trends. Verga himself, in turning his short story 'La lupa' into a libretto for Puccini in 1891-4, moved away from his veristic style of the 1880s and created a hybrid that Puccini eventually found himself unable to set.' In any critical assessment of Cavalleria rusticana, a clear distinction should be made between the artistic peculiarities of literary verismo and the merits or short- comings of Mascagni's opera. The two major representatives of the movement- Giovanni Verga (1840-1922) and Luigi Capuana (1839-1915), both of them Sicilian-achieved their best results in their prose works (short stories and novels). Restraint may be singled out as the dominant feature of Verga's stories and novels of ' The term 'School' should be understood as a conventional grouping of composers with different training and cultural backgrounds and, indeed, with distinct artistic personalities: Puccini, Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Giordano, Franchetti, Cilea and others. They were all born around the period 1855-65 and in their formative years were ex- posed to the same national and foreign influences (Ponchielli, Verdi, Gounod, Massenet, Bizet, Wagner), which they assimilated in various degrees. A special case has been made for Puccini in terms of his outstanding achievements and cultural inclinations, but his stylistic references are not far apart from the common ground of the group. 2 Alternative denominations to 'operatic verismo' were suggested: 'naturalistic', 'late Romantic', 'post-Verdian', 'Puccinian', 'of the Young School'. The last one is the most comprehensive and the least compromising, since it is mainly based on a historical criterion. See Matteo Sansone, 'Verga, Puccini and La Lupa', Italian Studies, xliv (1989), 63-76. 198 This content downloaded from 129.105.215.146 on Mon, 02 Jul 2018 17:49:54 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms the 1880s: restraint of passion and emotion in his portrayal of Sicilian peasants and fishermen; formal restraint in his elaboration of a terse, self-effacing, sapid prose style which almost lets the story tell itself and the characters speak their own minds in their own way. Sensationalism and excess are banished on principle. Violence may occur in the form of murder, but more often it manifests itself in the form of natural calamities, acts of God thwarting all efforts to improve material well-being; and it is endured in a dignified way by the 'defeated'. In this fatal struggle with the elements of a hostile nature and with the hardships of an unrewarding life, Verga's peasants and fishermen acquire a universal, epic dimension. Such is the moral world of I Malavoglia (1881), Verga's masterpiece. A deep pessimism inspires the novelist's vision of this apparently inescapable condition. His conservatism prevents him from envisaging any possible or desirable change. His austere presentation fixes the predicament of his people in a mythical stillness. The naturalistic 'human document' is ultimately turned into tragic poetry. Verga's 'Scene popolari in un atto' Cavalleria rusticana (Turin, Teatro Carignano, 14 January 1884) marked a turning-point in the theatre of post- Risorgimento Italy, both for the originality of the subject matter and for its in- novatory dramatic conception. With Verga's Sicilian peasants, an entirely new world was displayed for the first time on the stage. A well-defined social context pro- vided the ideological background for the behaviour of the characters and justified the final resort to violence. The novelty of the play depended partly on the technique of close-knit dialogues and clear-cut scenes strung together by a tense rhythm which leads quickly and effectively to the catastrophe. But no less important was the language that Verga devised as a means of self-characterization and to achieve an instant localization of moral attitudes and social behaviour. The play was the dramatization of a short story from Verga's collection Vita dei campi (1880). In rewriting the story for the stage, Verga kept most of its features, but he eliminated the economic motivation for the behaviour of Turiddu and Lola and expanded the role of Santa, making her the 'dishonoured' and jealous girl desperately in love with an unscrupulous young man. The unfamiliar Sicilian world had to be made in- telligible to an average Italian audience; the relationship between the individuals and their own society had to be adequately focused if certain customs or patterns of behaviour were to be fully and correctly appreciated. Hence the designation 'scene popolari' accompanying the title of the play (and, after its example, of most veristic plays). The adjective indicated the low-class environment and the choral structure of the scenes. The psychological and dramatic identity of the main characters was focused through the interaction between the individual and the social group (neighbours, fellow workmen). This technique entailed, first, a reduction of the plot to one basic situation containing in itself a logical denouement; and second, a fast- moving action relying on unambiguous, striking signals to mark the progress towards the catastrophe (e.g. Santuzza's curse to Turiddu: 'Mala Pasqua a te!'). The combination of these elements never reached a fully satisfactory balance in any veristic play, with the exception of Cavalleria rusticana (though some reservations should perhaps be made about Santuzza's long speech in Scene 1 and a certain slackening in Scene 6). In minor authors, like the Neapolitan Salvatore Di Giacomo, the environment tended to outweigh the individuals. The over-abundance of spectacular and folkloric details turned verismo into picturesqueness, dramatic build-up into a series of sensational jolts, three-dimensional characters into colour- ful vignettes. 199 This content downloaded from 129.105.215.146 on Mon, 02 Jul 2018 17:49:54 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Although the Italian veristic theatre did not match up to the artistic achievements of the novels and short stories, it had a strong, positive effect on the stale national repertory of romantic and bourgeois comedies. The language also benefited from the new veristic models of a supple, full-blooded, direct medium. Furthermore, a new acting style evolved in the theatre in order to render the unsophisticated low- class characters of the 'scene popolari'. Away from the grand, heroic, high-flown postures, veristic interpreters tried to be simple, down-to-earth, natural. The greatest of them all was Eleonora Duse (1858-1924), the first Santuzza. Restraint and naturalness distinguished her approach to the interpretation of the Sicilian pea- sant girl. Reporting on the successful Turin premiere of Verga's play, Eugenio Torelli-Viollier wrote about Duse's acting:4 In the part of the seduced girl who accuses her lover, remaining all the time quiet, restrained, simple, without ever a shout, without ever a violent gesture, she produced highly moving effects and made the spectators shudder and weep.