The 'Verismo' of Ruggero Leoncavallo: A Source Study of 'Pagliacci' Author(s): Matteo Sansone Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Aug., 1989), pp. 342-362 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/735470 Accessed: 24-08-2018 21:49 UTC 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 https://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 Fri, 24 Aug 2018 21:49:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE 'VERISMO' OF RUGGERO LEONCAVALLO: A SOURCE STUDY OF 'PAGLIACCI' BY MATTEO SANSONE A MUSICIAN AND MAN OF LETTERS WHEN R. A. Streatfeild decided to include Leoncavallo in his Masters of Italian Music, in the company of Verdi, Boito, Mascagni and Puccini, he felt it would be 'an anomaly' and gave two reasons to justify his choice: 'firstly, his Pagliacci is one of the most successful operas of the last few years; and secondly . Leoncavallo, like Boito, is not only a musician but a man of letters as well'.' More recently, John Klein, in a profile of Leoncavallo, was sympathetic but hardly accurate when he wrote that 'Leoncavallo was undoubtedly the intellectual superior of his two more popular contemporaries, Puccini and Mascagni, for he possessed genuine culture and exceptionally wide interests'. Like Streatfeild, Klein also pointed out that Leon- cavallo was 'a poet-musician in certain respects not altogether unlike Arrigo Boito'. 2 Generally considered as a minor representative of a minor genre (operatic verismo), Leoncavallo owes his reputation to three operas, Pagliacci (1892), La boheme (1897) and Zaza (1900), for all of which he also wrote the librettos. His single-handed, earnest efforts to achieve success in the fiercely competitive world of late nineteenth-century Italian opera deserve full recognition, though his output of songs and operettas is of less interest. Leoncavallo could shape a libretto and then versify the text according to his own musical requirements -an ability that none of his colleagues possessed. He was able to research on a chosen subject, be it Medicean Florence or Murger's Bohemians, and insert authentic material, such as songs, poems and historical details, into his librettos. However, the best one can say about his artistic achievement is that, as a composer, he was no more than an ingenious craftsman and that, as a man of letters, he was just a deft manipulator of literary sources and a perceptive observer of current trends. In this respect, any comparison with Boito seems entirely out of place: as a genuine intellectual, an unorthodox poet and a skilful librettist, Boito made an original contribution to Italian culture in the second half of the nineteenth century. That is certainly not the case with Leoncavallo. Yet, both through his limitations as a musician and through his talent as a librettist, Leoncavallo is the one member of the Young Italian School whose operas can fully exemplify the hybrid character of operatic verismo. Pagliacci, La boheme and Zaza, in different ways, are veristic by virtue of the handling of their subjects and of the musico-dramatic treatment. Their documentary value transcends their artistic merits. If we analyse the com- poser's criteria for selecting and arranging his material, we gain an insight into the evolution (or rather the dissolution) of operatic verismo in the ten years between Cavalleria rusticana and Tosca. ' R. A. Streatfeild, Masters of Italian Music, London, 1895, pp. 215-16. 2 John W. Klein, 'Ruggiero Leoncavallo', Opera, ix (1958), 158, 236. 342 This content downloaded from 129.105.215.146 on Fri, 24 Aug 2018 21:49:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The first odd thing emerging from a survey of the limited literature on Leon- cavallo is the confusion until very recently about his date of birth: 23 April 1857. Most articles in reference works or musical journals have given it as 8 March 1858.3 The second oddity is that such contradictory data cannot be blamed on careless compilers and music historians but simply on the composer himself, who apparently lied about his age from the very moment he achieved sudden popularity with Pagliacci. The first opportunity to rejuvenate himself came to Leoncavallo in July 1892 when Sonzogno's periodical II teatro illustrato chose for its cover story the good- natured, thick-moustached musician who, the feature article reported, 'sorti i natali in Napoli 1'8 marzo. 1858'. In 1900 Leoncavallo was asked by Onorato Roux to con- tribute an autobiographical article to his seven-volume work Illustri italiani contem- poranel, Vol. 2 of which was to deal with the major artists in Italy; writing in the first person, he stated that he had been born in March 1858. These are the two sources from which most early writers drew their basic information about him. The only biography of Leoncavallo includes among the illustrations the original birth certificate which belonged to the composer himself.4 Was it, then, just a naive con- cession to his vanity that led Leoncavallo to lie? It has even been suggested that he did so to reduce the gap between himself and Puccini (born on 22 December 1858). How reliable is the information that Leoncavallo provides about various cir- cumstances in his life? For example, in the article he wrote for Roux he claimed that at Bologna University, where he spent a couple of years and attended the lectures of Giosue Carducci, he took a 'diploma di dottore in lettere, a venti anni', that is, in 1877. Apparently there is no record of that graduation in the university archives.5 Rubboli is rather evasive and does not mention any degree in 'lettere' in his biography. Leoncavallo's stay in Bologna was, however, most fruitful for his literary and musical education. That ancient seat of learning (and the Wagnerian citadel in Verdi's Italy) welcomed the promising musician and accomplished pianist from Naples. Carducci stirred up his enthusiasm for the great literature of the Renais- sance. The young poet Giovanni Pascoli became his friend and wrote lines for him to set. In December 1876 Wagner arrived to attend the production of Rienzi at the Teatro Comunale. The overexcited Leoncavallo met the illustrious guest and told him about his ambitious project of a trilogy on the Italian Renaissance which he wanted to call Crepusculum in emulation of Gotterddmmerung. Wagner had kind and generous words of encouragement for his young admirer. While Leoncavallo read voraciously about Lorenzo de' Medici, Poliziano, Savonarola and the Borgias, Alfred de Vigny's play Chatterton fired his imagination, and he put aside the Wagnerian project to concentrate on a more youthful, romantic subject. Thus, in a few months he wrote the libretto and music of his first opera. An aristocratic friend 3 The date 8 March 1858 appears in obituaries in the Musical Times, lx (1919), 476, and the Monthly Musical Record, xlix (1919), 193, in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart ('corrected' to 25 April 1857 in Supplement (Vol. 15)) and in several other dictionaries and encyclopaedias up to at least 1976; Streatfeild and Klein (opp. cit.) also give the wrong date. In 1958 the Teatro S. Carlo at Naples (Leoncavallo's birthplace) celebrated the 'first centenary' of his birth with a revival of La boheme. The correct date is given by Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 9th edn., rev. Nicolas Slonimsky, Oxford, 1984; Eric Blom, The New Everyman Dictionary of Music, ed. David Cummings, London & Melbourne, 1988; and The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, ed. Stanley Sadie, London & Basingstoke, 1988 (The New Grove had given the date as 8 March 1857, as does the New Oxford Com- panion to Music, ed. Denis Arnold, Oxford, 1983). See Daniele Rubboli, Ridi Pagliaccio, Lucca, 1985, P1. 4. See Teresa Lerario, 'Ruggero Leoncavallo e il soggetto dei "Pagliacci" ', Chigiana, xxvi-xxvii (1969-70), 115-22. 343 This content downloaded from 129.105.215.146 on Fri, 24 Aug 2018 21:49:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms offered enough money to have it performed in a Bolognese theatre, but the im- presario was a crook and vanished with the funds. It was 1878, and the broken- hearted Leoncavallo left Bologna for good. Chatterton, a dramma lirico in three acts, would be first performed in Rome in 1896. After a short period in Egypt with an influential uncle, Leoncavallo was to be found in Paris from 1882, making a living as a songwriter and accompanist of cafe singers. The hard-working young man lived his personal boheme until he landed at the Eldorado music-hall, met important people and started a more rewarding job as a singing teacher, repetiteur, and accompanist of distinguished opera singers. He coached Emma Calve and Sybil Sanderson; another young singer, Berthe Ram- baud, who studied with him, eventually married him and abandoned her own career. Leoncavallo was now among the habitues of the Opera and Opera- Comique, and he knew Massenet, Thomas and Gounod. His many acquaintances included Alexandre Dumasfils, Zola, Alphonse Daudet, the publisher Charpentier, the actor Ernest Coquelin and the baritone Victor Maurel (the first lago, at La Scala in 1887).