The premiere of the opera
Cavalleria rusticana in 1890 in Rome is one of the most surprising and
greatest triumphs in the history of opera. The composer Mascagni had to step
in front of the curtain sixty times and the duration of the
ovation roughly corresponded to the performance time of the one-act opera. This work established the musical verismo. Verismo combined realistic
theater with raw, emotional music. The plot of Cavalleria rusticana, which takes
place in a Sicilian village, has i
t all: Lola has betrayed her husband Alfio, with the wine merchant Turiddu Turiddu has dishonored Santuzza by
sleeping with her without marrying her, and has thus made her a lawless woman. Santuzza denounces Turiddu to
Alfio, which has evil consequences, and Alfio kills Turiddu in revenge. All of them became guilty. To reflect the violent stories of verismo, music had to express violent
passions and intense feelings. The genre is based on literary verismo, which, with its pessimistic worldvie
w, cast an unflattering spotlight
on the lower social classes. There is no formal definition of musical verismo, but in the second major
work of verismo, Pagliaccio, the composer Leoncavallo has Tonio say
a characteristic phrase in the prologue: The people on stage are "of
flesh and blood" - the text of the prologue became the program of verismo. With verismo, the foundation of bel canto
vocal technique was partially abandoned. Emotional outbursts and violence
demanded a new style of singi
ng. Passages like Pagliaccio's sobbing (Vesti la
giubba) became the iconic gesture of verismo. Rarely has the heat of the "Vicino
a te" been achieved in a duet, where the two lovers await their
execution in the face of the scaffold. Umberto Giordano wrote 140 bars of fervent
music interspersed with ecstatic high notes. Puccini: Puccini was the last romantic
in the history of opera and became the creator of
great emotions in the form of unforgettable female characters
such as Butterfly, Mi
mi or Tosca. He drew his life energy and his professional work to a large extent from the
great feelings of passion, which he sought in his real
life in the many affairs he had. Puccini's music cannot be easily
classified in terms of music history. He gave each opera its own signature,
and he constantly developed his style. While he was never closer to his idol
Richard Wagner as in Manon Lescaut ... ... he was never more colorful and
late romantic than in La Bohème. If one compares "Tosca"
with its
predecessor "La Bohème" then one is amazed: In Tosca there is nothing left of
the playful sweetness of "Bohème". Tosca was the opera closest to verismo: It stands out with hard chords, dramatic
duets and a permanently tense atmosphere. With the famous "Te Deum" Puccini offers us one
of the most gripping mass scenes in opera history. Like Verdi, Puccini always
remained committed to melody, and he wrote an astonishing
number of immortal hits. Puccini maintained his creative
energy
until the end of his life. In his last opera Turandot
he wrote 4 immortal arias. Among them is perhaps the most
famous aria in the history of opera. Thus Puccini became, together with Mozart and
Verdi, the most performed opera composer in history.
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