Ruggiero Leoncavallo was born in Naples, Italy, on March 8, 1858. He was
graduated from the Bologna Conservatory, then spent several years
traveling. He finally came to Paris where he earned his living playing
the piano, singing, and writing music-hall songs. The powerful Italian
publisher, Ricordi, commissioned him to write a trilogy of operas set in
the Renaissance. Leoncavallo completed the first of these operas, _I
Medici_, but it proved too expensive to mount and was shelved. This
experience convinced him that he ought to write an opera of slighter
dimensions, one which would not cost too much to produce, and which
would be in the realistic style (“_Verismo_”) just made so popular by
Mascagni’s _Cavalleria Rusticana_. In four months’ time, Leoncavallo
completed _Pagliacci_, the opera through which his name survives. It
received a triumphant première in Milan in 1892, with Toscanini
conducting. Though Leoncavallo wrote many operas after that he never
wrote one as good or as popular as the one that made him world famous.
Only one of these later operas has retained interest, _Zaza_, introduced
in 1900. A third opera, _La Bohème_, was well received when introduced
in Venice in 1897, but was soon thrown into complete obscurity by a
rival opera on the same subject, that of Puccini. In 1906 Leoncavallo
toured the United States in performances of _Pagliacci_. The failures of
his last operas made him a bitter, broken man in the last years of his
life. He died in Montecatini, Italy, on August 9, 1919.
The composer prepared his own libretto for _Pagliacci_, a play within a
play. A troupe of strolling players headed by Canio arrives for
performances in a Calabrian village. Canio’s wife, Nedda, falls in love
with Silvio, one of the villagers, and she in turn is being pursued by
the pathetic clown of the troupe, Tonio. Through Tonio, Canio discovers
his wife has been unfaithful to him, but fails to learn the identity of
his rival. At the troupe’s evening performance—and in a play that
closely resembles the actual happenings within the company—Canio kills
Nedda when she fails to tell him who her lover is. But Silvio, in the
audience, reveals himself by rushing on the stage to help Nedda. There
Canio kills him.
Many of the selections from this opera are famous, but the most famous
of all is the tenor aria, in which Canio speaks his immense grief on
discovering that his wife has a lover, “_Vesti la giubba_.”
The other familiar excerpts include the baritone prologue, “_Si può_,”
in which Tonio explains to his audience that the incidents in the play
about to be presented are true to life and that the players are not
performers but human beings; Nedda’s delightful ballatella, “The Bird
Song” (“_Stridono lassù_”) where she tries to forget about Tonio’s
initial response of jealousy by watching and describing the casual and
carefree flight of birds overhead; the “Harlequin’s Serenade” in the
play within the play sequence in the second act, “_O Columbina!_”; and a
melodious orchestral Intermezzo which separates the first and second
acts, music which hints darkly at impending tragedy through a poignant
recall of Tonio’s prologue.