Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana & Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci

Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, with its extremely popular intermezzo, and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci were premièred in the early 1890s. Both are in the realistic (verismo) style, displaying the earthy, violent aspects of contemporary life. At this high voltage, an audience can only bear one act operas.

Caruso, Callas, Tito Gobbi, Tito Schipa, Giglia and Domingo have starred in these, and Zeffirelli produced a movie of both.

Against the background of Easter Mass, Mascagni mixes religion, raw sex and violence. A Sicilian peasant has been jilted by her lover who has returned to an earlier girlfriend who is now married. She betrays him to her husband who kills the lover.

Nedda, the wife of Canio, the leader of Leoncavallo’s travelling Commedia dell’Arte troupe, intends to elope with a villager. Canio suspects that she is unfaithful but, in performance, he will have to laugh along with his audience. The stage audience applauds their comedy about marital infidelity, thinking it is fiction, but we know that it is ‘for real’

Canio stabs Nedda, and knifes her lover when she calls to him for help. In a famous last line, the clown declares that La commedia è finita! (‘The comedy is over’).

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