Composers Mascagni and Leoncavallo Biography

Cavalleria Rusticana Composer Biography: Pietro Mascagni Mascagni was an Italian composer born in Livorno on December 7, 1863. His father was a baker and dreamed of a career as a lawyer for his son, but following the good reception obtained by Mascagni’s first compositions was persuaded to allow him to study music at the Milan Conservatoire, where his teachers included Amilcare Ponchielli and Michele Saladino, and where he shared a furnished room with his fellow-student Giacomo Puccini. His first compositions won him financial support to study at the Milan Conservatory. He was of a rebellious nature and intolerant of discipline, and in 1885 he left the Conservatoire to join a modest operetta company as conductor. He became part of the Compagnia Maresca and, together with his future wife, Lina Carbognani, settled in Cerignola (Apulia) in 1886, where he formed a symphony orchestra. Here Mascagni composed at a single stroke, in only two months, the one-act opera Cavalleria rusticana, based on the short story by Verga, which was to win him the first prize in the Second Sonzogno Competition for new operas. The innovative strength of the opera and the resounding worldwide success which followed its first performance (1890, Teatro Costanzi, Rome) marked the beginning of an artistic life rich in achievements and satisfactions, both as composer and as conductor. He became increasingly prominent as a conductor and in 1892 conducted his opera I Rantzau around Europe. Further successes included Amica (1905) and Isabeau (1911), alongside such failures as Le maschere (1901). In 1915 he experimented with writing for cinema in Rapsodia satanicawith Nino Oxilia. After the verismo Il piccolo Marat in 1921 he largely withdrew from public life. His final opera Nerone had its premiere in 1935. Though Mascagni never equalled the success of Cavalleria rusticana, his later works often share that opera’s melodic vitality and vivid handling of drama. As a highly talented conductor with a much wider repertoire than is commonly believed, Mascagni was among the first to restore popularity in the Twentieth Century to operas by Mozart (Don Giovanni) and Rossini (Mosé, Semiramide), and to make known in Italy the music of Tchaikovsky and Dvorák. Admired by such musicians as Verdi and Mahler and an authentic “star” of his time, of which he was recognised as one of the major protagonists, Mascagni died at the age of 82 in a room of the Hotel Plaza in Rome, where he had spent the last years of his life. Sources: www.roh.org.uk, www.fabermusic.com PAGLIACCI Composer Biography: Ruggero Leoncavallo Italian composer and librettist Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857–1919) is best known today for his one- act verismo masterpiece Pagliacci, for which he also wrote the libretto. Leoncavallo was born in Naples and began studying at the conservatory there in 1866. In the late 1870s he wrote both music and libretto for his first opera Chatterton (first performed 1896). Around that time he moved to Egypt, but on the outbreak of the Anglo-Egyptian War in 1882 he moved to Marseilles and then to Paris, where he worked as a pianist in café-concerts. He found some success with the symphonic poem La Nuit de mai, and was also commissioned by Ricordi to write a planned trilogy Crepusculum (of which only the first part, I Medici, was completed). After the success of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana he was inspired to write Pagliacci, which was a triumph on its 1892 premiere and led to stagings of Chatterton and I Medici. His La bohème in 1897 was overshadowed by the success of Puccini’s version the previous year. His last major success was Zazà in 1900. Around this time he was increasingly popular in Germany, leading to 1904’s Der Roland von Berlin. He was an early supporter of recording, and that year composed the song Mattinata for Enrico Caruso and the G&T Company. Towards the end of his life he turned increasingly towards operetta, starting with La Jeunesse de Figaro (1906, New York). His later operas included Goffredo Mameli (1916) and the incomplete Edipo re (1920). Pagliacci was paired with Mascagni’s Cavallaria rusticana soon after its premiere and together they are probably the most enduringly popular operas of the verismo movement. Source: www.roh.org.uk .

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