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Home , Chatterton (opera), I Medici, I Rantzau, Operetta, Pagliacci, Ridi pagliaccio

The '' of : A Source Study of '' Author(s): Matteo Sansone Source: & Letters, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Aug., 1989), pp. 342-362 Published by: Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/735470 Accessed: 24-08-2018 21:49 UTC

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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 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 '. 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 . His single-handed, earnest efforts to achieve success in the fiercely competitive world of late nineteenth-century Italian deserve full recognition, though his output of songs and is of less interest. Leoncavallo could shape a 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 , 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 -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 and .

' R. A. Streatfeild, Masters of Italian Music, , 1895, pp. 215-16. 2 John W. Klein, 'Ruggiero Leoncavallo', Opera, ix (1958), 158, 236.

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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 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 . 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 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. , 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.

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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 (the first lago, at in 1887). Such a stimulating environment and his contacts with the French naturalists did not immediately affect Leoncavallo's cultural inclinations. His ambitions as an opera composer were still firmly tied to the projected Wagnerian Crepusculum. As soon as his improved position eased the financial pressure on him, Leoncavallo resumed work on it and wrote the libretto of ; it should have been followed by Gerolamo Savonarola and Cesare Borgia. The work was subtitled 'Azione storica in quattro atti' and was set in Florence between 1471 and 1478. It opens with the idyll between Giuliano de' Medici and Simonetta Cattaneo, and closes with the murder of Giuliano by Francesco de' Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini in the church of S. Reparata. Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano, Archbishop Salviati and Giambat- tista da Montesecco (who was to have killed Lorenzo) are among the characters. The libretto is meticulously annotated with references to Guicciardini, Machiavelli, William Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo and Carducci's writings on Lorenzo and Poliziano, whose poetical works are often quoted. In II, for example, a chorus of young men and women sing and dance Poliziano's canzone a ballo 'Ben venga maggio'. The versification relies heavily on archaisms, to be consistent with the frequent quotations from Renaissance poetry. The overall effect of the libretto is that of a pretentious collage of anthologized excerpts; yet it does have a certain charm and dramatic interest. In 1887 Leoncavallo showed I Medici to Maurel, who was so impressed that he of- fered to introduce him to Giulio Ricordi. So, in 1888, his Parisian life came to an end, and the Leoncavallos settled in . In 1889 the publisher and the composer signed a contract for the composition of I Medici; Leoncavallo received 2,400 lire in monthly instalments and started writing the music. In the same year he was asked by Ricordi to help with the first draft of the libretto of for Puccini. No fewer than four other people shared the responsibility of that toilsome task -Marco Praga, Domenico Oliva, Ricordi and Illica, not to mention Puccini himself-and it is still unclear who exactly did what, as Eugenio Gara has pointed out.6 The composition of I Medici was soon completed, and the restless composer faced a long wait to have the opera performed. In October 1891 something seemed to hap- pen at last: Ricordi negotiated the production of the opera with a Milanese

6 Eugenio Gara, Carteggi pucciniani, Milan, 1958, pp. 42-45.

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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 impresario; but at the last minute he changed his mind and made a deal for the re- vival of Puccini's Edgar in a new, shorter version (Ferrara, 28 February 1892). It was a tremendous blow for Leoncavallo. However, frustration and despair sometimes breed new and daring ideas. He took a good look round: Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana was the craze of the moment. Should he not try a veristic subject? Accord- ing to Leoncavallo, in five months (November 1891-March 1892) he wrote both words and music of Pagliacci. He first offered the libretto to Ricordi (he was bound to do so by the Medici contract). When Ricordi declined to commit himself, Leon- cavallo rushed to his rival, Edoardo Sonzogno, who showed excellent judgement in securing the property of what was to be one of the two best veristic operas.7 On 21 May 1892, at the in Milan, the 35-year-old composer could taste success to an extent he would never again experience in his life. At this point, the history of I Medici is very similar to that of Mascagni's . It was not until his first veristic opera established his reputation that the huge, four-act could be performed. But it would do very little to improve that reputation. Sonzogno managed to buy I Medici from Ricordi, and Leoncavallo recruited the best Italian for the role of Giuliano: , the first interpreter of . The opera was premiered at the Teatro Dal Verme on 9 November 1893. In spite of all the philological fussiness of the libretto, the music showed an unashamed dependence on Wagnerian motifs. Because of the composer's popularity the premiere attracted the attention of foreign reviewers no less than the Italian critics. One London reviewer commented: 'Unfor- tunately, he seems to have borrowed from Wagner not only the notion of being his own librettist, but a good number of musical ideas and phrases, so that, with all his skill in treatment, the opera is far too much a patchwork of reminiscences'.8 One example will suffice. Act I is partly taken from Poliziano's Stanze per la giostra di Giuliano -where the meeting between the handsome and gallant Giuliano and the dreamy, Botticellian Simonetta is transfigured into one between a god and a nymph or the chaste Diana. In the Andante of the love duet, Leoncavallo ap- propriately recalls Briinnhilde's motif 'Ewig war ich, ewig bin ich' from Act III scene 3 of Siegfried.9 Plagiarism and the banalization of Wagnerian motifs could well be detected in other operas of the period, 10 but in I Medici one mostly resents the gran- diloquence and hopeless lack of originality. It was only by breaking with stifling erudition and over-ambitious projects that Leoncavallo could strike a personal note and score the one genuine success of his career.

PAGLIA CCI, AN OPERATIC TRANCHE DE VIE The libretto of Pagliacci is generally regarded as a highly effective, dramatically tight work, skilfully blending a veristic story with the well-tried device of the play- within-a-play. The as a symbol of the antithesis appearance/reality-the Pirandellian 'Maschera nuda'- comes to life in the thanks to the clever differentiation in the musical treatment of the main story and the inset 'Commedia'.

' Leoncavallo stated in his article for Roux: 'In cinque mesi scrissi le parole e la musica dei Pagliacci, opera che fu acquistata dal Sonzogno, dopo ch'egli ebbe soltanto letto il libretto, e che Maurel ammir6 tanto che insistette per rappresentarla . . .' See Onorato Roux, Illustri italiani contemporanei, Florence, 1908, ii. 299. 8 The Monthly Musical Record, xxiii (1893), 278. 9 See Julian Budden, 'Wagnerian Tendencies in ', Music and Theatre: Essays in Honour of Win- ton Dean, ed. Nigel Fortune, Cambridge, 1987, pp. 319-20 & Ex. 8. ' See ibid., esp. pp. 316 ff.

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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 It is customary to trace the source of the story back to an incident which occurred in the 1860s at Montalto in , where Leoncavallo lived for a few years because his father Vincenzo was posted there as a judge. A good starting-point for an analysis of the libretto is, therefore, an examination of the documentary evidence on the incident and Leoncavallo's own account of the facts he claimed to have transposed on to the stage. In the state archives of Cosenza, the district town of Montalto, there is a file on the legal proceedings against two brothers who killed a 22-year-old man in Mon- talto: 'Procedimento contro Luigi e Giovanni D'Alessandro fu Domenico imputati di assassinio premeditato e con agguato commesso con armi insidiose la sera del 5 marzo 1865 in persona di Gaetano Scavello di Carmine di detto luogo'. Scavello was in the service of the Leoncavallos as a child-minder for young Ruggero and his brother Leone. The reason for the murder was the jealousy of Luigi D'Alessandro over a local woman he was in love with. Scavello had interfered and publicly in- sulted the two brothers. On the night of 5 March 1865, as he came out of a theatre at the end of a show, he was ambushed and knifed by them. He died hours later after naming them as his killers. At the trial, presided over by Vincenzo Leon- cavallo, the woman's identity was not disclosed. Because Ruggero knew Scavello, and his father handled the trial, the murder made a deep impression on him. Some 25 years later, the incident was turned into what Camille Bellaigue called the 'fait-divers sanglant' ('news item of a violent nature') of Pagliacci. But, if those are the facts, most of the opera's plot is pure fic- tion, which should either be attributed to Leoncavallo's imagination or traced back to other sources. One more reason for further investigation is the considerable discrepancy between Leoncavallo's two versions of the Montalto killing and the actual record of the events. In 1966 the Italian journal L'Opera published an excerpt from an autobio- graphical fragment covering Leoncavallo's early years to 1893. 11 Explaining how he first conceived the idea of Pagliaccz, he stated that Scavello was murdered before his very eyes:

Ripensai allora alla tragedia che aveva solcato di sangue i ricordi della mia infanzia lon- tana, e al povero servitore assassinato sotto i miei occhi, e in nemmeno venti giorni di lavoro febbrile buttai giu il libretto dei Paglzacci.

He also claimed that the murderer was a clown who had just killed his wife after find- ing a note from Scavello hidden in her clothes. The time of the double murder was indicated as mid-August, on the popular festival of the Madonna della Serra. In 1894, when a French edition of Pagliacci appeared, 12 the Parnassian poet and playwright Catulle Mendes accused Leoncavallo of plagiarism, claiming that the plot of the opera had been taken from his play La Femme de Tabarin (1887). In a much publicized letter to his publisher, Sonzogno, Leoncavallo insisted on his childhood recollections as the one authentic source of Pagliacci:

In my childhood, while my father was judge at Montalto . . . a jealous player killed his wife after the performance. This event made a deep and lasting impression on my childish mind, the more since my father was the judge at the criminal's trial ... I left the frame of

" Ruggero Leoncavallo, 'Come nacquero i PagliaccF, ed. Mario Morini, L'Opera (January-March 1966), 40-44. 12 Paillasse, trans. Eugene Crosti, Paris, 1894.

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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 piece as I saw it, and it can be seen now at the Festival of Madonna della Serra, at Montalto. '3

He also reciprocated the charge of plagiarism by arguing that the plot of La Femme de Tabarin was very similar to that of an earlier play, by the Spanish playwright Manuel Tamayo y Baus, Un drama nuevo (1867). Mendes was satisfied with these explanations and withdrew his charges. But the fact remains that, for some reason, Leoncavallo was anxious that his operatic fiction and the Montalto facts should tally; and he was at pains to update his recollections before divulging them. No one could possibly blame an author for altering facts and external circumstances in the process of shaping them into a work of art. For example, changing the date of the murder from 5 March to 15 August-that is, from an ordinary day to a religious festival-made it possible for the composer to justify the presence of festive villagers (after the example of Cavallerza rusticana, set on Easter Sunday), bagpipe players and church bells. On the other hand, the insertion of the commedia dell'arte play within the opera was a totally new contrivance, which had to be explained either as a personal choice or as an undisclosed borrowing. That is why Leoncavallo was trying to mix fact and fiction and eliminate any problem of attribution. As he basked in the growing popularity of Pagliacci, he was obviously annoyed by the international echo of Mendes's allegations. In London, for example, the Musical Times dutifully reported:

Signor Leoncavallo and M. Catulle Mendes are having a pretty quarrel. The French author has charged the Italian composer with having borrowed the plot of the successful opera I Pagliacci from his play La Femme de Tabarin whereas Signor Leoncavallo, in a letter to his publisher, Sonzogno, assures ...

A similar paragraph appeared in the Monthly Musical Record.'4 By 1900, when Leoncavallo wrote his autobiographical contribution for Roux's Illustri italiani contemporanei, the dust had settled over the controversy with Mendes. The case was now presented in terms that give us a new lead in the search for sources:

Quando fu tradotto [Pagliaccu, il Mendes, vedendo che aveva qualche somiglianza con la sua Femme de Tabarin, onestamente credette ch'io avessi da questa tolto il mio sog- getto, e fece i passi necessari per una citazione, che poi lealmente ritir'o ... quando ebbe trovato che c'erano altri Tabarins scritti prima del suo. Il vero e ch'io ignoravo affatto l'opera di quello scrittore che ammiro, ed avevo tolto il mio soggetto da un caso che awenne in Calabria ... .'5

That is, first, Leoncavallo had no knowledge of La Femme de Tabarin before he wrote Pagliacci; second, Mendes dropped his charges when he found out that there were earlier Tabarins, no longer because of the Spanish play Un drama nuevo. Both statements are questionable. There had, indeed, been other works based on Tabarin, but it is not true that Mendes did not find out about them until after Pagliacci; the same applies to Leoncavallo, who, at long last, mentioned them in connection with his opera.

'3 Letter dated 3 September 1894 from Lugano, quoted in H. E. Krehbiel, A Book of Operas: their Histories, their Plots and their Music, New York, 1920, p. 110. Krehbiel devotes several pages to Leoncavallo's alleged bor- rowing from La Femme de Tabarin. i4The Musical Times, xxxv (1894), 752; The Monthly Musical Record, xxiv (1894), 258. i Roux, op. cit., ii. 299.

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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 fame of Tabarin, the seventeenth-century 'illustre farceur de la Place Dauphine' in Paris, had been revived in the 1850s with the publication of his com- plete works."6 In his introduction, the editor, Gustave Aventin, explains how this , possibly from Lorraine, adopted the name of a previous commedia dell'arte actor called TIabarin or Tabar(r)ino, from 'tabarro' (cloak), the main part of his costume. The French Tabarin had a wife, Francisquine. Her name, too, came from an Italian, Franceschina, introduced into by a comedienne of the Gelosi troupe, Silvia Roncagli. Aventin writes: 'Cette Francisquine figuroit dans les jouees sur le theatre de Tabarin, et, si l'on en croit certaines traditions, douteuses peut-etre, elle ne se piquoit pas de fidelite' conjugale'. The venue of Tabarin's lazzi and farces was a little stand in the Place Dauphine where he performed to large crowds until about 1625. He died a few years later, presumably in 1633. Various operas and plays on the antics of this popular clown were written in the second half of the nineteenth century, all of them in Paris: Tabarin, an opera com- ique in two acts by Georges Bousquet (The'atre-Lyrique, 22 December 1852); Tabarin duelliste, an in one act by L. Pillaut (Bouffes-Parisiens, 22 April 1866); Tabarin, a in two acts in verse by Paul Ferrier (Thealtre-Francais, 15 June 1874); Tabarin, an opera in two acts by Emile Pessard on Ferrier's text (Ope'ra, 12 January 1885); and La Femme de Tabarin, tragi-parade in one act by Catulle Mendes with stage music apparently by Chabrier. This last play was dedicated to Andre Antoine, the actor-manager of the Theatre Libre, who first staged it at the Theatre Montparnasse on 11 November 1887. La Femme de Tabarin, paired with Leon Hennique's Esther Brand'es, inaugurated the new Montparnasse premises and the second season of Antoine's avant-garde theatre. It was a major cultural event, which was 'supported by a large contingent of poets', as Antoine noted in his Souvenirs. 7 Not surprisingly, Ferrier soon accused Mendes of having plagiarized his own Tabarin. In return, Mendes reminded him that La Femme de Tabarin had first been published 'sous forme de nouvelle dia- loguee, avec tous les details de mise en scene' in the issue of the journal La Semaine parisienne dated 28 May 1874, nearly three weeks before Ferrier's play was premiered. It is most unlikely that Leoncavallo-who lived in Paris from 1882 to 1888 and was a friend of musicians and literati (some of them involved with the Theatre Libre), as well as attending the Op6ra assiduously-knew nothing about the two Tabaran pieces, particularly the opera. Its composer, Emile Pessard (1843-1917), was from 1881 professor of harmony at the Conservatoire and, like Leoncavallo, wrote over 50 songs. Pessard's opera and Mends's play both feature Tabarin's open-air theatre. The time of the action is 1622 in the former, 1629 in the latter. Both works deal with the unfaithfulness of Francisquine and the sudden shift from the commedia dell'arte to real-life tragedy on the small stage of Tabarin's theatre, in front of an au- dience responding with loud comments to the unusually impressive acting. How- ever, substantial differences between the two pieces can be seen in the denouement and in the socio-linguistic approach to the same subject. Mendes's play is set in the Place Dauphine. Francisquine's lover is 'Un Garde du Cardinal'. During the parade, Tabarin kills her and then cries his heart out. In the

6 Oeuvres completes de Tabarin, ed. Gustave Aventin, Paris, 1858. " Andre Antoine, Memories of the Thedtre-Libre, trans. Marvin A. Carlson, Coral Gables, Florida, 1964, p. 52. In the first season at , the Th6etre Libre produced, among others, works by Zola and the Gon- courts. See Francis Pruner, Les Luttes dAntoine, Paris, 1964, i. 131-6.

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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 audience there is a group of 'pre'cieux et precieuses' who make their comments in an affected language in character with a seventeenth-century elite. In the following ex- cerpt we see the shift from the farce of the jealous husband to the discovery of Fran- cisquine flirting with her garde, the comment of a precieuse and Tabarin's threat to kill the two lovers: 8

(Tabarzn, continuant la parade, souleve en effet le rzdeau et tout a coup pousse un grand crz, car le pauvre homme vient de vozr sa femme asszse, et riant, sur les genoux du Garde. Tabarzn laisse retomber la tenture et demeure sur le triteau, immobile et bleme.) TABARIN. Mis6ricorde! Ce n'est plus un jeu! Francisquine! Je l'ai vue! La, chez moi, sur la chaise . . . et cet homme qui l'embrassait . . . Ah! mes bonnes dames! mes bons messieurs! I1 n'y a plus de farce, il n'y a plus de Tabarin! Je suis un pauvre homme ... Je l'aimais tant ... Ah! ma femme! Ah! la gueuse! Ah! mon Dieu, ma Francisquine! TELAMIRE. A vrai dire, les fac6ties de ce bouffon ne sont point aussi grossieres qu'il 6tait permis de le redouter; il a eu, surtout dans la derniere partie de son monologue, des sanglots qui ne laisseraient point que de faire honneur au plus industrieux com6dien de 1'h6tel de Bourgogne. TABARIN. Mais cette femme, pour moi c'6tait tout! ... Maintenant, pendant que je suis la, histrion imb6cile, elle embrasse cet homme, et s'en fait embrasser. Oh! je les tuerai tous deux, je les tuerai.

After Francisquine is stabbed, she drags herself forward, dips her hand in the blood of her wound and smears Tabarin's lips. She dies with one last word: 'Canaille!' At the end of the parade which has taken such a gruesome turn, a precieux wants to offer a bouquet of roses to Francisquine, not realizing she is really dead. He first pays a compliment to Telamire, who has the bouquet:

ARTABAN. Ah! par les dieux immortels! on ne saurait rien voir de plus parfaitement joue. Daignez agreer, chere Telamire, que j'offre votre bouquet de roses, moins fraiches, je le confesse, que celles de votre teint, at cet admirable comedienne.

La Femme de Tabarin is, on the whole, a refined literary exercise, a stylistic pastiche offered to an audience of self-conscious intellectuals to elicit a somewhat morbid response. A detailed review byJules Lemaitre, after describing Mendes as 'le vrai decadent . . . plein de science et d'artifice', concludes:

Des fioritures sur un drame violent d'amour physique et de mort. La fin n'est qu'une pantomine horrible et sanguinolente. L'aimable exercice litteraire se termine en scene d'abattoir ou de cirque romain. L'esprit est amuse et les nerfs fortement secoues. Est-ce plaisir ou peine?'9

If Leoncavallo saw or read this play, he may have borrowed the idea of the com- media dell'arte farce as a more theatrical setting for the Calabrian murder. After all, Scavello, according to the police records, had just been to the theatre when he was ambushed by the D'Alessandro brothers. On the other hand, the artistic con- ceptions of the French Parnassian and the Italian verista are so radically different and the musical treatment of the story so unique that the alleged borrowing has very little bearing on the evaluation of the opera.20

18 Catulle Mendes, Th6dtre en prose, Paris, 1908, pp. 336-7. La Femme de Tabarin was first published by Charpentier (Paris, 1887) shortly before Antoine's production. 19 Jules Lemaitre, Impressions de thedtre, 2nd ser., Paris, 1888, p. 179. 20 See also Carlo Nardi, L'orzgine del 'Pagliaccz', , 1959; Nardi is in no doubt that Leon- cavallo did know Mends's play. His opinion about the influence of La Femme de Tabarin on Pagliacci is sup- ported in II teatro italiano, V: II libretto del melodramma dell'Ottocento, iii, ed. Cesare Dapino, Turin, 1985, p. 134. Both Nardi and Dapino ignore Pessard's opera.

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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 It is, rather, the earlier Tabarzn by Ferrier and Pessard that contains some strik- ing similarities with the story of Pagliacci, even though it has no final murder but, instead, the reconciliation of the clown with his wife. It may be useful to mention at this point that the original title of Leoncavallo's opera was Pagliacczo, and it remained in the singular in the translations into French (Paillasse), German (Der Balazzo) and English (Punchznello; the name chosen by the translator, Frederic E. Weatherly, is hardly appropriate to the -like per- sonality of Leoncavallo's clown). The emphasis was on one clown and his personal tragedy. Pagliaccio, like Tabarin, was the single protagonist of the opera. The plural form was Leoncavallo's concession to his friend and patron Victor Maurel, who used his influence on the impresario of the Teatro Dal Verme to have the opera performed there. The celebrated baritone, who first sang Tonio, was concerned about being completely overshadowed by an all-important tenor lead. The full reward for his generous sponsorship included a solo piece which took the form of a Prologue. In this way, the character interpreted by Maurel introduced the opera and concluded it with the spoken line 'La commedia e finita!', which was eventually appropriated by the tenor. We can first examine the libretto of Pagliacuc(o) starting from Act I and ignoring the Prologue. The similarities with Tabarin will thus be easier to assimilate:

ACT I

SCENE 1 Festive villagers welcome Canio (Pagliaccio) and his troupe. Someone insinuates that Tonio is courting Nedda, as happens in the 'Commedia'. Canio warns everybody that it is not a game worth playing because the stage and life are different things and he would react in a different way if he caught Nedda with a lover. After the Bell Chorus the villagers disperse.

SCENE 2 Nedda comes to the fore with her Bird Song. Tonio declares his love to her. She rejects him and, as he insists, strikes him with a whip.

SCENE 3 Silvio, a villager in love with Nedda, asks her to run away with him. She agrees to meet him after the show. They part on Nedda's line 'A stanotte e per sempre tua saro!', an- ticipating a key line of hers in the 'Commedia' (see below).

SCENE 4 Tonio has overheard part of the conversation. He alerts Canio, who chases Silvio. The lover manages to escape, and Nedda refuses to reveal his name. Canio's '' closes the act.

ACT II

SCENE 1 People gather for the performance of the 'Commedia'. Silvio is among them.

SCENE 2 The 'Commedia' begins. Arlecchino (Peppe) serenades his beloved Colombina (Nedda). Taddeo (Tonio) declares his love to her. Arlecchino interrupts him. Taddeo leaves, and the two lovers enjoy their supper. Taddeo returns to warn them that Pagliaccio is coming home in a very bad mood. Arlecchino leaps through the window, and Taddeo hides. Nedda's parting line, 'A stanotte. E per sempre io sar6 tua!', is Canio's cue to come on stage as Pagliaccio, but it is also a reminder of his wife's real adultery. He cannot restrain his true feelings of jealousy, anger and revenge. The delicate of the 'Commedia' is soon superseded by the violent clash between husband and wife. The brutal double murder ensues. 'La commedia e finita!', spoken by Canio, is a disheartened epitaph over his shattered life.

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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 Pessard's Tabarin is a lightweight opera with some pleasing tunes and a couple of decorative choruses ('Choeur des Buveurs'; 'Choeur des Bouquetieres'). Act II con- tains the play-within-the-play preceded by a '' with two dance numbers (Rigaudon and Pas de deux). There is no stylistic differentiation in the music between the commedia dell'arte farce and the rest of the opera. The following is a synopsis:

ACT I

Tabarin is a drunken, quick-handed clown and does not get on with Francisquine, although he loves her. When she receives a love sonnet from Gauthier, a young clerk, she decides to accept him as her paramour. A member of the troupe, Fritelin, has just been hanged for stealing jewels, so they need a new 'matamore' for the braggart's role in their farces. Francisquine manages to get Gauthier as a replacement. He suggests that at the end of the farce in which he is to play 'Le Capitaine Rodomont', in love with Francis- quine, she should elope with him.

ACT II

The setting is Pont-Neuf near Place Dauphine, with Tabarin's little theatre on the right. People assemble and take their seats for the performance of 'La farce des tonneaux'. The set consists of two tubs. Francisquine's first suitor arrives: 'Le Docteur Piphagne' sings in a funny mixture of Italian and French. Tabarin's song is heard off-stage, and the ter- rorized Docteur hides in one tub. Tabarin arrives and Francisquine tells him that Rodo- mont is looking for him: a new scene of comic terror, and Tabarin hides in the other tub. Then Rodomont/Gauthier arrives, brandishing a sword and darting frightening looks at the audience. He wants to challenge Tabarin; since the coward clown will not come out, Rodomont steals his wife, and the two dash away. Gauthier now drops his pretence and urges the still undecided Francisquine: 'Viens, ce n'est plus l'acteur, c'est l'amant qui t'implore'. Tabarin soon realizes that his wife has deserted him and vents his genuine despair. But the audience believe he is just showing unusually realistic acting skills and respond with loud 'Bravos!' Their attitude changes when they understand that it is no longer a farce and Tabarin's grief is real. A few people bring back the fugitive woman amid cries of 'Adultere!', 'Miserable!', 'A mort la donzelle!' Tabarin, who really cares for his wife, represses his grief and resumes his clownish role. He tries hard to laugh and convince the audience that it was all set up in advance. When Francisquine, in tears, begs for his forgiveness, he advises her to say it louder: 'Plus haut, femme, c'est la piece!' They have both to keep up the pretence if she is to be spared the public's angry reaction. The trick works, and the dichotomy between fiction and reality is re-established. While the audience are on their feet cheering loudly, Tabarin can safely say to his wife: 'Bon! je t'aime et tu m'es rendue, je ne me souvien de rien!', and they are reconciled. The following similarities are noticeable in the plots of Pagliacci(o) and Tabarin: Silvio and Gauthier are both outsiders; their first contact with the clown's troupe is as spectators; each suggests to his beloved come'dienne that they elope after the performance of a farce; the commedia dell'arte farce is situated as a play-within-a-play in Act II of both operas; the shift from fiction to reality is counterpointed by the choral response of the audience; Tabarin's final situation is identical to the one portrayed in the 'Ridi Pagliaccio' lines (I. 4): the man turns his tears and anguish into clowning, his sobs into a grimace, for the sake of the audience.

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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 A closer scrutiny of the two texts reveals analogies in the lines allocated to Canio and Tabarin in similar situations. In Pagliacci, I. 1, Canio warns everybody not to confuse the stage with real life. If he really were to catch his wife with a lover, his reaction would be totally different from Pagliaccio's farcical one on stage:2"

CANIO (sorridendo, ma con cipiglzo). I1 teatro e la vita non son la stessa cosa; no ... non son la stessa cosa! E se lassui Pagliaccio sorprende la sua sposa col bel galante in camera, fa un comico sermone, poi si calma od arrendesi ai colpi di bastone! ... Ed il pubblico applaude, ridendo allegramente. Ma se Nedda sul serio sorprendessi ... altramente finirebbe la storia ...

In Tabarin, II. 12, soon after the love duet between Francisquine and Gauthier, Tabarin arrives, and the sight of them, close together, arouses his suspicions. Fran- cisquine justifies their attitude, saying that they were rehearsing their love scene from 'La farce des tonneaux'. Tabarin warns Gauthier, 'avec ironie et fierte' (cf. Canio's 'smiling and frowning'), that 'Autre chose est la scene, autre chose est la vie!'; the motley, the powder and the paint of the actor do not destroy the dignity of the man. The warning upsets Francisquine, who comments: 'Quel eclair dans ses yeux!' In Pagliacci, I. 2, Nedda recalls Canio's warning in almost exactly the same words: 'Qual fiamma avea nel guardo!' Ex. 1 shows Pessard's unimpressive setting of Tabarin's lines. Another interesting analogy can be found at the point where, in both operas, the acting of the farce gives way to crude reality. In Pagliacci, it is marked by the shat- tering outburst 'No, Pagliaccio non son'. In Tabarin, we find the same antithesis- 'bouffon/homme'-without a stir in the music. Then the clown breaks into sobs and tears and begs his audience not to laugh any more. Towards the end of the piece, a line reminds us of 'La commedia e finita': 'La piece est jouee' (see Ex. 2). The thin music of Tabarin was written only a few years before Pagliacci, yet it is in the style of an early nineteenth-century . Its antique finish may have prompted Leoncavallo's purposeful adoption of the rococo style within the veristic treatment of his subject. The music of the 'Commedia' seems to echo the quaint sound of Tabarin. Ex. 3 reproduces the opening bars of the short Ouverture to the 'Farce des tonneaux'. Like Peppe in Pagliacci, Nicaise musters people for the show and rings a bell to obtain silence. Mendes's play and Pessard's opera on the seventeenth-century French clown must both have been in Leoncavallo's mind when he devised the plot and characters of his first veristic libretto. The 'fait-divers' of the Montalto murder is so transformed in the opera as to seem hardly more than a pretext for the Calabrian setting. It is in- tellectualized by Leoncavallo the librettist, and treated by Leoncavallo the com- poser 'con passione disperata' (as Puccini described his own approach to Manon Lescaut). The characterization of Canio/Pagliaccio is entirely focused on the contrasts appearance/reality, clown/man. Three solos, carefully graded in a crescendo of pathos and dramatic intensity, illustrate

2' All quotations from the libretto are taken from ibid., pp. 131-62.

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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 Ex. 1 TEb.rinTabarinn p mais vibrant

6*1* , I -

Au - tre chose est la sce - ne, au - tre chose est la

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~IF F .F 1FL

1' _F I I' r tI L ,.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~r .. IJ I . .. 1..1 ..I

w T J l r g | ' r r Tt iz ' g P P +> K r~~~~~~ r r vi - e! Sur la scene, u-ne femme a son epoux ra -vi - e Ce n'estqu'un ac - ci -

dent dont chacun se gaudit. Dans la

T ~~ b. -*b I _

7~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

s!~~ ~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~~ L I I IQ I L L I 11g'~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~ Afi !!! A IJ Iit .> vi $0>b d ent b~~~~~~~~~~~I do t ch e - gcivautdiuetu 1- _bA i M__5% liteg D

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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 =~~~~E A

_ ment! II est des vengeances, ii - ci _ tes Que l'on ab - sout commune

*iU fe ~ 3 -I 3 I *I

-ment: Les hail - Ions, le fard et le pla tre Ne ri-v.rlt

T~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. T~~~~~~ ~~~~ L^ 3 ^rZn 3 f$ |7? pas I'ac-teur a son in- di - gni - te Et le Ta-ba-rin du th6- A tem

llzbq ai -~~~~~~1 1 bi '

tW;~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~' y 1' 11 bx1

T C b t f 7 p 11 ? r p p p 11 ( br- r # ~~~~~~r r r |b - i tre N'est pas le Ta ba rin de la re - a- li - e

): 2Rz , | ij ,; ~~~~~~~~~~~~Rit. t

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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 Ex. 2

Tabarin .t.' b | - _ .1 9 . 1s ~ ~h __

J'e-tais un bouf -fon tout A l'heu - re J'e -tais un bouf- fon tout a

v-j - " 0) -b - -d .s" I"I

(En se comprimant le coeur) Dolce

, " -i C Z ~~~~~~r r I rf f l'heu - re Mais je suis un homme a pre - sent Mais j e suis un homme a pre_ i l(~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ l I~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~PI Suivez U A tempo

6 s en Non plsdau qel r - pa,me plu de-espi jeu

IA tep

(lA;- F U S10 R 7ilp X355

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 A tempo (I1 s'aperjoit qu'on rit encore) Rit. ~~~~~(Navrant)3 ~3 3 3

pleu - re! La pi&eeest jouee mes bons mess'ieurs r La piece est jouee ah!_ A Suivez A tempo

[ Zt1 ______t K _ K _ _ _ez Pa. ns me- I WZ=== _ = E ^s 7 - E~~~~V _} (RRS6T -F6S juwRIE PTOUF -9S

e r r F-- --t vez p

T.

Iprp-i msbnmesieurs, ne ri - ez pas 1 a i-te mes bons mes-

PP ~ ~ ~~~~~~2?..IE RIRESS)(IRSSTUF1

(Sngotn i tob ai dan les bra de .1 .S fT. IF1 lbiit - 1?hq h t1~~~~F ,1 | rlAL I Suivez l P l kdi5l~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~jijl T I I ml Zb j ,

siers ah! ah ah h!a!ah h

Rit.~~.

*Chorus en~~ter t. thi pointe + . + Q :t~~35

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 Ex. 3 (La nuit est venue peu a' peu)

Nicaise I FI 3 J

En pla _ ce! On va com. men cer, En pla

(Nicaise allume les chandelles qui forment 3 3 la rampe du petit the'atre) N j2,##" ;7 2EDRID7 ip p p - r I ce! On va commencer, Ha-tez - vous de vous pla - cer!

teatroelavitanonsonlt(Les musiciens place's sur les tr(teaux 1

(a the dihtm (c)Lthe bewensaeman's re veng and life:rr

< -- - ~~~Mf . 1R AU K7 , g S 1 1 U k

E se Alecchno tinola CLombina,~_ W.M (a) the dichotomy between stage and life: I teatro e la vita non son la stessa cosa. . . ( (b) No," the -clown's -1 Pgiaconns; predicament: s I iI&vs alld Vesti la giubba e la faccia infarina. La gente paga e rider vuole qua. E se Arlecchino t'invola Colombina, ridi, Pagliaccio . i . e ognun applaudirn! . . . (I. 4) (c) the man's revenge No, Pagliaccio non son; se il viso e pallido e di vergogna, e smania di vendetta! L'uom riprende i suoi diritti . . . (II1. 2) In the end, the jocular mask dressed in white, his face whitened with flour, is twisted into a sad, grief-stricken Pierrot. Two years after the publication of the collected farces and lazzi of Tabarin, another work revived the Parisian interest in the commedia dell'arte masks: Maurice Sand's Masques et bouffons (Paris, 1860). In the chapter dedicated to Pierrot, Sand also deals with Pagliaccio, illustrating his origin, character and costume, and link- ing the two masks:

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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 In Italian pantomines, Pagliaccio fills the place occupied by Pierrot in France; he no longer wears a mask, his face being merely covered with flour. He is the rival of Harle- quin, and the lackey of Pantaloon. He is in love with Columbine, but -like the French Pierrot -he is never successful in carrying her off from Florindo, the lover who is always dressed in the latest fashion of his time and place.22 Leoncavallo's stay in Paris in the 1 880s coincided with a revival of literary interest in pantomines centred on Pierrot. The mask was given increasingly violent, sadistic traits in line with the spreading decadent taste of thefin de siecle. One of the first such pantomines was Paul Margueritte's Pierrot assassin de sa femme (1881), in which Pierrot kills his wife by tickling the soles of her feet. An entry for 6 February 1887 in Edmond de Goncourt'sJournal records an evening at Alphonse Daudet's where Margueritte performed his Pierrot accompanied by the young composer Paul Vidal. In 1883, at the Trocadero, Sarah Bernhardt put on the white costume of the male mask to perform Pierrot assassin, a pantomine by Jean Richepin. Music, usually in the form of piano accompaniment, was a necessary ingredient of such shows, the number and variety of which have been discussed by Robert Storey. 'Pier- rots of a disturbing nervoszsme', he writes, 'began to invade the salons, the music- halls, and circus.'23 Leoncavallo was well aware of the latest fashions in the arts. In Paris he absorbed much more than he produced at the time. A few years later, when he chose to follow Mascagni's example and wrote a veristic opera, his Parisian recollections were culturally more influential than his childhood memories. The explicit violence of the double murder committed by the white-faced clown in front of his audience does not belong to the verismo of Cavalleria rusticana. There, violence is kept off- stage and dignified by the chivalrous challenge. Pagliacci is at the same time more sophisticated and more sensational than Cavalleria. Various ingredients are cleverly combined to make up the tranche de tie that is too good to be true: the device of the play-within-a-play, a village murder, the Pierrot pantomine, the veristic style of Mascagni's Cavalleria. We should also add the vanity of a singer, Maurel, to account for the unnecessary Prologue. Far from being a statement of Leoncavallo's aesthetic convictions, the Prologue tries to reconcile the clown's story with the 'fait-divers' dug out from the composer's childhood. On behalf of the author, Tonio argues that, although he is presenting 'le antiche maschere', he is in fact trying to depict 'uno squarcio di vita'. We are in- formed that the story is true, it is fact, not fiction: 'Ed al vero ispiravasi'; and its source is 'un nido di memorie'. In Frederic Weatherly's translation,

A song of tender memories deep in his listening heart One day was ringing; with trembling heart, he wrote it, And marked the time with sighs and tears.

Leoncavallo's 'sighs and tears' are the equivalent of Puccini's 'passione disperata'; they describe the musico-dramatic treatment of a subject we have traced back to various sources other than the 'tender memories'. As we turn to an examination of the language of Pagliacci, we realize that the tex- ture of the libretto betrays an opportunistic concern with providing a veristic veneer for the dialogues while allowing Leoncavallo's eclectic tastes a free play in the linguistic characterization of the story. For example, in two short acts (not counting

22 I quote from the English translation: Maurice Sand, The History of the Harlequinade, London, 1915, i. 194. 23 Robert F. Storey, Pierrot: a Critical History of a Mask, Princeton, 1978, p. 118.

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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 'Commedia' in Act II) we find a large number of oaths and insults allocated to all the characters:

CANIO. 'Pel Padre Eterno!'; 'Per la Madonna!'; 'Nome di Dio!'; 'Per Dio'. '0 turpe donna'; 'o meretrice abbietta'; 'o svergognata'. TONIO. 'Per la croce di Dio!'; 'Per la Vergin pia di mezz'agosto'. 'Sgualdrina!' NEDDA. 'Per Dio!' 'Miserabile!'; 'Mi fai schifo e ribrezzo'; 'lurido!'. SILVIO. 'Per Dio!'; 'Santo diavolo!' (a frequent oath in Verga's veristic works).

By comparison, Cavalleria rusticana shows considerable restraint. The only oath is Turiddu's 'Ah, perdio!' in the long duet with Santuzza. It is the same with insults. Santuzza refers to Lola as 'quella cattiva femmina', which is very mild when com- pared with the four heavy (yet literary) epithets Canio and Tonio lavish on Nedda. 'Cattiva femmina' is in fact a polished version of Verga's truly veristic 'mala fem- mina' (slut). In contrast with this outspokenness, we can detect more literary references. The opening onomatopoeia, 'Hui! Hui!', of Nedda's Ballatella echoes the frequent imita- tions of bird-song in the poems of Giovanni Pascoli's MVyricae (published in July 1891). Instead of sparrows ('scilp', 'dib', 'bilp'), Scops owls ('chiui') and swallows ('virb'), in the libretto we find conventional 'augei';

Hui! stridono lassiu, liberamente lanciati a vol come frecce, gli augei . . . (I. 2)

At the end of the song, the 'augelli' are called 'i boemi del cielo'. They are moved by an 'arcano poter', which Weatherly, more explicitly, translates as 'fate'. It is a Leopardian reminiscence, even in the way it is versified, an enjambment, and rounds off very nicely the most poetical passage in the libretto:

Ma i boemi del cielo seguono l'arcano poter che li sospinge . . . e van . . . e van!24

Most of the love duet between Nedda and Silvio (I. 3) adopts cliches from thefin de siecle sensualism of drawing-room songs: for example 'Spasmi ardenti di volutta (Silvio); 'A te mi dono; su me solo impera. / Ed io ti prendo e m'abbandono intera' (Nedda). The word 'spasmo' ('spasmi', 'spasimi') actually recurs six times in the libretto. Consistently, the composer-librettist shifts to the drawing-room song style when he sets this kind of line. In the love duet, over 'murmuring' semiquavers, Silvio, the illiterate villager, sings an elegant melody 'sempre a mezza voce, volut- tuosamente', complaining that Nedda has 'bewitched' him. In the 'Commedia' Leoncavallo inserts a Dantesque reference disguised as a grotesque reversal. Tonio, the wicked hunchback, courting Nedda as Taddeo, has 'soli noi siamo e senza alcun sospetto!' With a change of tense, this is Francesca's line 'soli eravamo e senza alcun sospetto' (Inferno, v. 129) describing the circumstances in which she fell in love with her handsome brother-in-law Paolo Malatesta. The weakest lines of the libretto occur in the Bell Chorus. As with the pseudo- veristic choruses of villagers in Cavalleria rusticana, this is the only unnecessary embellishment to be found in Pagliacci. Leoncavallo has really nothing to say here, either poetically or musically. The 'Don, din, don' of the first line is followed by a

24 See Giacomo Leopardi, 'A se stesso': '. . . brutto / Poter che, ascoso. . .'; and the fragment 'Ad Arimane': ar- cana / Malvagita, sommo potere . . .' Leopardi uses 'arcano' in enjambments in 'Sopra il ritratto di una bella donna' ('arcano / Erra lo spirito umano') and in 'Le ricordanze' ('arcani mondi, arcana / Felicita . . .').

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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 series of platitudes-'tutto irradiasi di luce e d'amor!', for example. In the void of musical ideas, the composer's memory assists him with what seems a pleasant echo of Chabrier's Espania (see Ex. 4).

Ex. 4 tempo

S. r- W l [ - , Din Don gia suo - na ve spe-ro e tutto ir -

A _ T~~~~~~~~~~~~ T. i6_Ii wy v II , lfK . Y~~~~~ 5 -:1 , -_gFL4^^fi^|J ,, .g I Ah gia tutto ir - ra - dia-si di lu-ce e a - mor!

B. ,s 1'r. ]azvr, sr r , |^I r . , . I . A . k I.. At - - - ten - ti at - ten- ti com - pa - ri le

Reminiscences from Bizet and other French are easily predictable in a veristic opera, and Paggliacgci is no exception. A more interesting case is the motif for 'Ridi Pagliaccio' in 'Vesti la giubba', because it seems possible to detect the sub- conscious working of the composer's inspiration. It is a reminiscence from Verdi's Otello, III. 7, a climactic moment in that opera: in the presence of all the dignitaries of the Venetian Republic, Otello humiliates Desdemona, pushing her down on her knees and almost shouting: 'A terra . . . e piangi!' (Ex. 5a). Canio is himself a victim of his own jealousy, but he has to turn grief into mirth (Ex. 5b). These two bars become a sort of musical correlative of the image of the unfaithful woman. They recur at another climactic moment, when Canio interrupts the 'Coin- media' and demands the name of Nedda's lover: 'Vo' il nome dell'amante tuo . .. o turpe donna!' (Ex. 5c). Pagliacci marked the artistic rise and fall of Leoncavallo. Its appeal was, from the very first night, direct and unfailing. Critics were often divided, and sometimes pre- judiced, in their response. Eduard Hanslick and Camille Bellaigue for once disagreed with each other. Hanslick reviewed the first production of Pagliacci in , at the International Exhibition of Music and Theatre in September 1892 (with Cavalleria and Giordano's XVIala vita), and a revival at the Opera in 1893. On both occasions his evaluation was generally favourable. In the second review he wrote:

Leoncavallo's music reveals a strong, hot-blooded talent, a thoughtful mind and a skilled hand. His melodic invention can scarcely be praised for its richness and originality. In each of Mascagni's operas there shoot forth individual, surprising sparks of genius such as are not present in I Pagizacci. On the other hand, the style of this work is more unified than Cavalleria and compared with and L 'amico Fritz makes a more satisfying

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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 Ex. 5 (a) (a Desdemona)

Otello

A ter- ra!... e pian gi!

(b) a piena voce, straziante (c)

Canio C V I- 7 r I I - v LZ~~~~4 r 4i * Ri - di Pa - gliac-cio, o tur - pe don- na!

t molto rit. i t

overall impression. Mascagni seems to me to be the more original talent, Leoncavallo the better musician. He has decidedly more sense of the form and a feeling for rounding off the individual parts of a piece of music and for their harmonious relationship to each other. His music is less fragmented and disjointed.

Hanslick particularly praised the second act. He found that 'the musical treatment of the pantomine is full of and grace' and that the transition from the 'Com- media' to tragic reality was managed 'with the greatest artistry'.25 On the contrary, Bellaigue simply loathed the opera. Reviewing a production at the Opera in December 1902, he started by saying that he had gone to hear Pag- liacci 'avec repugnance'. For him Cavalleria was better also because it managed to convey a regional-Sicilian or Italian-characterization. 'Dans Paillasse', he continued, 'rien, sauf peut-etre une jolie serenade au second acte, ne rappelle ni le peuple, ni le pays italien.' That may well be true, but it should be seen as a positive aspect of Pagliacci, the only veristic opera which keeps clear of drinking-songs and tarantellas. Bellaigue's slashing criticism concentrated on the music:

Les elemens ou les formes de cette musique sont d'une trivialite qui n'a d'egale que leui misere. On doute si la violence est ici plus vulgaire, ou plus banale et plus veule la douceur. La plupart des motifs pourraient etre proposes-ou de'fendus-comme des modeles de grossierete, et la mediocrite de i'harmonie repond ah l'indigence de l'.26

25 Eduard Hanslick, 'Der Bajazzo (Pagliacci)', FiinfJahre Musik (1891-1895), , 1896, pp. 96-104, at p. 99 (the translation is mine). 26 Camille Bellaigue, 'Th6etre de l'Opera: Paillaise (Pagliacci)', des deux mondes (15 January 1903), 448-9.

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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 London premi?ere of Pagliacci (Covent Garden, 19 May 1893) received a long and favourable review in The Times. Writing in 1894, Bernard Shaw also praised the opera and the composer: 'the advance [on Donizetti] in serious workmanship, in elaboration of detail, in variety of interest, and in capital expenditure on the or- chestra and the stage, is enormous'.27 Many years later, in a London theatre, the opera would suffer the worst damage to its artistic integrity at the hands of none other than Leoncavallo himself. After the modest success of La boheme and Zaza, the composer had to rely mainly on the royalties from Pagliacci to make his living. But that would not be enough. In his late years, Leoncavallo embarked on adventurous tours of Europe and North America, producing and conducting his own works in all sorts of muddled arrangements.28 In September 1911 he was in London, at the Hippodrome, with a contract for the musical direction of Pagliaccz in a music-hall version. The daily announcements in The Times (11-30 September) seem to have turned the 54-year-old musician into a circus attraction:

TWICE DAILY at 2 and 8

THE SENSATION OF THE CENTURY

Signor Leoncavallo's appearance in person to conduct his own condensed version of his own I Pagliacci, and bringing his own company with him, is an event of a unique character in the history of variety theatres.

The announcement of 13 September also gave an accurate description of what was left of the opera after the drastic pruning. There is almost a sense of regret for the shambles:

One must emphasize the fact that the condensed version played at the Hippodrome is prepared by the composer himself; because while much of the beauty of the original re- mains, a good deal is necessarily sacrificed. All the chorus is gone-but that injures very little the form of the opera. It is the omission of the scene between Tonio and Nedda and the sudden transition from the discovery of Nedda with Silvio to 'Vesti la giubba' which destroy the correspondence between the 'real life' act and the 'stage life' act, besides rob- bing us of some delightful music. Still, what is left is the cream of the opera; and it makes its half-hour seem too short.

The second most famous veristic opera was thus deflated by its own composer and reshaped into a sort of Pierrot pantomine focused on the expressionistic picture of the murderous clown. The French sources seemed, at last, to have been vindicated.

27 Bernard Shaw, Music in London 1890-94, iii (reprinted London, 1950), 219. 28 See George Hall, 'Leoncavallo in America', Opera, xxxvi (1985), 153-61.

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