Ruggiero Leoncavallo: biography, musical style, best compositions

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Ruggiero Leoncavallo is a famous Italian composer who laid the foundation for the verismo genre in music. He was one of the first to make ordinary people the heroes of his works. Known to the general public mainly as the author of the opera Pagliacci.

Composer's biography

Leoncavallo was born on April 23, 1857 in Naples, Italy. His father headed the local Tribunal, and his mother came from an artistic family. At the age of eight, the boy entered the Conservatory of San Pietro a Maiela, from which he graduated at sixteen. Eminent musicians such as Serrao, Rossi and Chesi were his teachers.

Seriously carried away by philology, the future composer received a doctorate in literature from the University of Bologna. Later, this knowledge was very useful to him when composing the libretto, which he preferred to write himself.

Ruggiero Leoncavallo taught singing in Italy and abroad. He received great public recognition as a pianist-accompanist. Audio recordings of his performances with the great tenor Enrico Caruso have survived to this day. Together they traveled all over Europe with concerts. In 1877 the composer metwith Wagner and inspired by this acquaintance, he conceived his first opera.

In the biography of Ruggiero Leoncavallo there were both dizzying success and crushing failures. He served as a musician at the Egyptian court, but after the English occupation he had to flee to France disguised as an Arab. In Marseille, the musician was forced to work odd jobs: he played in a cafe, wrote songs for a cabaret and gave singing lessons.

But after a while, Leoncavallo nevertheless returned to his homeland. And there he was waiting for real success on the opera stage.

Creativity before "Clowns"

Under the strong influence of Wagner, Leoncavallo writes the opera Chatterton, which was not successful. And then he takes on the large-scale epic poem "Twilight" in three parts. In this work, the composer refers to the Renaissance with its titans of thought, heroic dramas and passions. But the publisher did not accept his manuscript.

After this failure, Ruggiero Leoncavallo tries his hand at a new musical style for him - verismo. Just at the time when the composer returns from France to Italy, Mascagni's opera Rural Honor is being performed with incredible success in the theater. It tells about ordinary people and their violent passions. The composer was deeply shocked by what he saw on stage and conceived an opera, which became his best creation.

Verism in music

Verism (from Italian - truthful, true) - a direction in art that arose in the 90s of the XIX century. The authors took stories from the life of contemporaries,ordinary people, and revealed them with great sincerity and simplicity. Operas in this style were written small in size and deliberately theatrical, with an opening just before a catastrophe and a bloody finale.

Verists' music was also simple and accessible. It is characterized by small ariosos with a bright, memorable melody. Verdi's operas and Bizet's Carmen were written in this style. The Pagliacci by Ruggiero Leoncavallo also belong to him.

The history of the creation of "Clowns"

The plot is based on a tragic story that happened when Ruggiero was still a child. Many years ago, in the court where his father worked, the case of a traveling theater artist was considered. He, in a fit of jealousy, killed his wife on stage during the performance.

This story touched Ruggero Leoncavallo deeply, and he brought it to life with the drama and brevity of verismo. It took only five months to create the music and the libretto. The premiere was held in Milan with a resounding success, and the opera immediately gained worldwide fame. Leoncavallo went on tour as a conductor of Pagliacci in Europe and America.

Musical and dramatic features

In Leoncavallo's opera, the tragedy of life and death unfolds rapidly and dynamically - within one day. The composer uses the technique of "scene on stage": simultaneously with the drama of the characters, there is a performance of a wandering booth, the contrast with which makes it especially sharpmain narrative.

Leoncavallo endows all the characters with bright and memorable musical themes that reveal their character traits. The solos and duets are emotionally rich and sincere, which makes the dramatic scenes especially believable.

The orchestra plays a supporting role. But the composer masterfully used his expressive means to convey the atmosphere of a peaceful Italian village and a cheerful peasant fair.

Following creativity

Ruggero Leoncavallo's opera "Pagliacci" became the pinnacle of the composer's career. Success and popular recognition inspired him, but subsequent works did not find such a stormy response from the public.

Among the rest of the operas, one can single out "La Bohème", describing the life of the Latin Quarter, and "Zasa", which the author himself loved very much. Leoncavallo created the opera "Gypsies", inspired by the poem by A. Pushkin.

At the end of his life, the composer was inspired by the idea of writing a national drama, harsh and tragic, which would be based on folk music. But from the conceived opera "The Tempest" only sketches have come down to us. The composer died on August 9, 1919.