Pagliacci

Around 1890, when Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana premiered, Leoncavallo was a little-known composer. After seeing Mascagni's success, he decided to write an opera in response: one act composed in the verismo style.

Leoncavallo wrote that he based the story of Pagliacci on an incident from his childhood:[2] a murder in 1865, the victim of which was a Leoncavallo family servant, Gaetano Scavello. The murderer was Gaetano D'Alessandro, whose brother Luigi was his accomplice. The incident resulted from a series of perceived romantic entanglements involving Scavello, Luigi D'Alessandro, and a village girl with whom both men were infatuated.[3] Leoncavallo's father, a judge, was the presiding magistrate over the criminal investigation.[4]

Upon learning of the plot of Leoncavallo's libretto in an 1894 French translation, the French author Catulle Mendès thought it resembled his 1887 play La Femme de Tabarin, with its play-within-the-play and the clown murdering his wife. Mendès sued Leoncavallo for plagiarism. The composer pleaded ignorance of Mendès's play.[2] Later there were counter-accusations that Mendès's play resembled Don Manuel Tamayo y Baus's Un Drama Nuevo (1867). Mendès dropped his lawsuit. However, the scholar Matteo Sansone has suggested that, as Leoncavallo was a notable student of French culture, and lived in Paris from 1882 to 1888, he had ample opportunity to be exposed to new French art and musical works. These would potentially have included Mendès's play, another version of La femme de Tabarin by Paul Ferrier, and Tabarin, an opera composed by Émile Pessard that was based on Ferrier's play. Sansone has elaborated on the many parallels among the Mendès, Ferrier, and Pessard versions of the Tabarin story and Pagliacci, noting that Leoncavallo deliberately minimised any sort of connection between his opera and these earlier French works.[5]

Leoncavallo originally titled his story Il pagliaccio (The Clown). The baritone Victor Maurel, who was cast as the first Tonio, requested that Leoncavallo change the title from the singular Il pagliaccio to the plural Pagliacci, to broaden dramatic interest from Canio alone to include Tonio (his own role).[6]

Pagliacci received mixed critical reviews upon its world premiere, but was instantly successful with the public[7] and has remained so ever since. The UK premiere of Pagliacci took place at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London on 19 May 1893. The US premiere followed a month later at the Grand Opera House in New York on 15 June, with American tenor Agostino Montegriffo as Canio.[8] The Metropolitan Opera first staged the work on 11 December as a double-bill with Orfeo ed Euridice, with Nellie Melba in the role of Nedda.[9]

The Met again staged Pagliacci as a double-bill, this time followed by Cavalleria rusticana on 22 December 1893.[10][11] The two operas have since been frequently performed as a double-bill, a pairing referred to in the operatic world colloquially as "Cav and Pag". Pagliacci was produced alone in Washington National Opera's November 1997 production by Franco Zeffirelli.[12] The re-organised New York City Opera presented Pagliacci in 2016 on a double bill with Rachmaninoff's Aleko.[13]

Place: Calabria, near Montalto, on the Feast of the Assumption

Time: between 1865 and 1870

Act 1

At three o'clock in the afternoon, the commedia troupe enters the village to the cheering of the villagers. Canio describes the night's performance: the troubles of Pagliaccio. He says the play will begin at ventitré ore, an agricultural method of time-keeping that means the play will begin an hour before sunset.[lower-alpha 3] As Nedda steps down from the cart, Tonio offers his hand, but Canio pushes him aside and helps her down himself.

The villagers suggest drinking at the tavern. Canio and Beppe accept, but Tonio stays behind. The villagers tease Canio that Tonio is planning an affair with Nedda. Canio warns everyone that while he may act the foolish husband in the play, in real life he will not tolerate other men making advances to Nedda. Shocked, a villager asks if Canio really suspects her. He says no, and sweetly kisses her on the forehead. As the church bells ring vespers, he and Beppe leave for the tavern, leaving Nedda alone.

Nedda is frightened by Canio's vehemence ("Qual fiamma avea nel guardo"), but the birdsong comforts her ("Stridono lassù"). Tonio returns and confesses his love for her, but she laughs. Enraged, Tonio grabs Nedda, but she takes a whip, strikes him and drives him off. Silvio, who is Nedda's lover, comes from the tavern, where he has left Canio and Beppe drinking. He asks Nedda to elope with him after the performance and, though she is afraid, she agrees. Tonio, who has been eavesdropping, leaves to inform Canio so that he might catch Silvio and Nedda together. Canio and Tonio return and, as Silvio escapes, Nedda calls after him, "I will always be yours!"

Enrico Caruso as Canio in Pagliacci, one of his signature roles

Canio chases Silvio, but does not catch him and does not see his face. He demands that Nedda tell him the name of her lover, but she refuses. He threatens her with a knife, but Beppe disarms him. Beppe insists that they prepare for the performance. Tonio tells Canio that her lover will give himself away at the play. A heartbroken Canio is left alone to put on his costume and prepare to laugh ("Vesti la giubba" – "Put on the costume").

In the original manuscript, Tonio sang the opera's final line, "La Commedia è finita!", paralleling the prologue, also sung by Tonio. The appropriation of this final line by Canio dates back to 1895. John Wright has analysed the dramaturgy of the opera in the context of assignment of the final line, and concluded that the original assignment of the final line to Tonio is the most consistent and appropriate assignment. Wright says that Tonio shows more deliberate control in his manipulation of the other characters in order to obtain his revenge upon Nedda, after she has rejected him, and is more aware of the demarcation between life and art. By contrast, Canio is unaware of the behind-the-scenes manipulations and surrenders control of his perception of the difference between life and art as the opera proceeds.[16]

In the present day, the assignment of the final line to Canio has continued to be standard. Several exceptions, where Tonio delivers the final line, include:

• The December 1959 production at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, directed by Franco Zeffirelli[17]
• A 1968 RAI-TV production directed by Herbert von Karajan[16]
• The HMV recording conducted by Riccardo Muti (EMI CMS7 63650-2)[18]
• The Philips recording conducted by Muti (Philips 0289 434 1312), in conjunction with live performances in Philadelphia in February 1992[19]
• The 1998 English-language recording on Chandos (CHAN 3003)[lower-alpha 4]
• The 2007 Teatro Real production directed by Giancarlo del Monaco, in which Tonio's prologue is inserted into the double-bill before the overture to Cavalleria rusticana, the finale of which segues directly into the first act of Pagliacci (Opus Arte OA0983D)[20]
• The 2008 Seattle Opera production[21]
• The 2010 Opera Grand Rapids production[22]
• The 2014 San Diego Opera production[23]
• The 2015 Metropolitan Opera production[24]

The orchestra consists of 2 flutes, 1 piccolo, 2 oboes, 1 cor anglais, 2 clarinets, 1 bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 tuba, 2 harps, timpani, tubular bells, percussion (triangle, cymbals, bass drum, glockenspiel) and strings. Additionally, there is an onstage violin, oboe, trumpet, and bass drum.[25] Also included in the final pages of the score is a part in the percussion section marked "T.T." (not assigned in the instrumentation page at the beginning.) Performers have taken this to be a tam-tam (partly because Mascagni used one, although to much greater effect, on the final moments of Cavalleria rusticana). It is given three strokes right after the announcement that "The comedy is over".[26]

In 1907, Pagliacci became the first opera to be recorded in its entirety, with the Puerto Rican tenor Antonio Paoli as Canio and under Leoncavallo's personal supervision. In 1931, it became the first complete opera to be filmed with sound, in a now-obscure version starring the tenor Fernando Bertini as Canio, in his only film, with the San Carlo Opera Company. Franco Zeffirelli directed his 1981 La Scala production with Plácido Domingo and Teresa Stratas for a 1982 television airing,[27] which has since been released on DVD. The movie's soundtrack received a Grammy nomination for Best Opera Recording. Pagliacci was also recorded in English in 1997, and released commercially in 1998, for the Chandos "Opera in English" label with Dennis O'Neill as Canio, Alan Opie as Tonio, and Rosa Mannion as Nedda.[28]

• Anon. (n.d.). "ventiquattro". Vocabolario online (in Italian) – via Treccani.
• Anon. (1970). "ventitrè". Enciclopedia Dantesca (in Italian) – via Treccani.
• Dryden, Konrad (2007). Leoncavallo: Life and Works. Plymouth, UK: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-5880-0.
• Phillips-Matz, Mary Jane (2006). Washington National Opera 1956–2006. Washington, D.C.: Washington National Opera. ISBN 0-9777037-0-3.
• Sims, Michael. "Cavalleria rusticana and I Pagliacci (sic) – Crimes of Passion", Concert Opera Boston, programme notes (accessed 8 February 2020)
• Swan, Howard (1892). Travellers' Colloquial Italian: A Handbook for English-speaking Travellers and Students. Idiomatic Italian Phrases with an Exact Pronunciation Represented on a New System Based Upon a Scientific Analysis of Italian Sounds, with Other General Information Useful to Travellers in Italy. London: David Nutt. Retrieved 26 April 2015.

• Haggin, Bernard H., Conversations with Toscanini, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1959 ISBN 9780818012198
• Weaver, William (1987). Opera's irrestistible twins. Decca Record Company.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pagliacci.

Look up pagliacci in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Pagliacci: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
• Libretto in Italian
• Libretto in English
• The Durbeck Archive, page on 1931 film of Pagliacci
• List of Pagliacci recordings on operadis-opera-discography.org, as of 2009