THE MAN BEHIND THE OPERA
Although Pagliacci was written over 120 years ago in Italy, you will likely recognize the music today. Not only is it still one of the most performed operas around the world, but the music is often used in movies, commercials and even cartoons! Italian composer Ruggero Leoncavallo tapped into a long tradition of theater arts, bringing to life the old improvisational drama — commedia dell’arte — in a way that would be both brand new and timeless for audiences.
Leoncavallo on a 1910 postcard
PLAGERISM? It is quite common for artists to be inspired by existing works of literature or artwork. Often a story is reimagined and retold over and over like Cinderella, or Romeo and Juliet. Yet, Leoncavallo took his plot for Pagliacci from real-life events that he had remembered from his childhood. However, two years after its premiere, a French playwright sued him for plagiarism, claiming that Leoncavallo had stolen the plot of his play La Femme de Tabarin that premiered five years before Pagliacci. Later, a Spanish playwright accused the French playwright of stealing his play, which premiered 20 years before that! All lawsuits were dropped.
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THE MAN BEHIND THE OPERA
Leoncavallo was born in Naples, Italy in 1857, the son of a distinguished local judge. He studied music composition and literature. His uncle, who worked for the Foreign Ministry, gave him the opportunity to be widely traveled by the time he was in his early 20s, and he even had the opportunity to work as a pianist and music teacher in Cairo, Egypt for a time. Leoncavallo also lived for a few years in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris — where many artists from all over Europe congregated — and where he met his wife. After they married, the couple returned to Italy with a commission from a music publisher to compose an opera and to work on a libretto for another opera that was being composed by Giacomo Puccini (La bohème). Before he finished either of these commissions however, Leoncavallo saw Pietro Mascagni’s oneact opera Cavalleria Rusticana and was inspired to write a response to it. He composed and wrote the original libretto for Pagliacci in only five months! The story was inspired by a murder trial that his father had presided over when Leoncavallo was a child. When Pagliacci premiered in May of 1892, it was an instant hit, and has remained one of the most beloved operas to this day. The opera established
