Composer
Ruggero Leoncavallo
The composer of Pagliacci and the clown who laughs through his tears.
Ruggero Leoncavallo is remembered above all for one opera, Pagliacci ("The Clowns"), and for one aria, "Vesti la giubba," in which a heartbroken clown must put on his costume and make the audience laugh. It is one of the most famous moments in all of opera, and a defining work of Italian verismo.
Life in brief
Leoncavallo was born in Naples in 1857, the son of a magistrate. He studied at the Naples conservatory and then literature at the University of Bologna, and spent years struggling to make a career, giving piano lessons and playing in cafés in Paris and elsewhere. He also wrote poetry and librettos, and he worked on the libretto of Puccini's Manon Lescaut.
Inspired by the triumph of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana in 1890, he wrote both words and music for Pagliacci, the tragedy of a troupe of traveling players in which onstage comedy turns into real murder. He claimed it was based on a crime his father had judged. Premiered in Milan in 1892 under the young Arturo Toscanini, it was an immediate, international success.
His later operas never matched it. His own La bohème (1897), on the same story as Puccini's, appeared a year after Puccini's version and was soon overshadowed by it, sparking a bitter rivalry. He also wrote operettas and songs, and died in Montecatini, in Tuscany, in 1919.
Music and style
Pagliacci is compact, intensely dramatic, and full of vivid contrasts between the cheerful commedia dell'arte play-within-a-play and the real passions of the actors. Leoncavallo's melodies are big-hearted and memorable, and his writing for the voice, especially the tenor, is thrillingly emotional. The opera's opening Prologue, sung in front of the curtain, declares the verismo ideal: that actors are real people with real feelings.
Key works
- Pagliacci (1892) - his masterpiece, usually performed together with Cavalleria rusticana as "Cav and Pag." See opera.
- "Vesti la giubba" ("Put on the costume") - Canio's anguished aria at the end of Act 1. The tenor Enrico Caruso's recording of it became one of the best-selling records of the early 20th century.
- "Mattinata" (1904) - a sunny song written for Caruso and the new gramophone. See art song.
- La bohème (1897) - his version of the story of young artists in Paris.
- Zazà (1900) - an opera about a music-hall singer, once popular.
Legacy
Pagliacci has never left the repertoire, and the image of the weeping clown has passed into popular culture. See also the Late Romantic era and our glossary of opera terms.
Where to start listening: "Vesti la giubba," then the Prologue to Pagliacci and "Mattinata."