The 'Verismo' of Ruggero Leoncavallo: A Source Study of 'Pagliacci'

Author(s): Matteo Sansone

Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Aug., 1989), pp. 342-362
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/735470
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 THE 'VERISMO' OF RUGGERO LEONCAVALLO:
A SOURCE STUDY OF 'PAGLIACCI'

BY MATTEO SANSONE

A MUSICIAN AND MAN OF LETTERS

WHEN R. A. Streatfeild decided to include Leoncavallo in his Masters of Italian
Music, in the company of Verdi, Boito, Mascagni and Puccini, he felt it would be
'an anomaly' and gave two reasons to justify his choice: 'firstly, his Pagliacci is one of
the most successful operas of the last few years; and secondly . . . Leoncavallo, like
Boito, is not only a musician but a man of letters as well'.' More recently, John
Klein, in a profile of Leoncavallo, was sympathetic but hardly accurate when he
wrote that 'Leoncavallo was undoubtedly the intellectual superior of his two more
popular contemporaries, Puccini and Mascagni, for he possessed genuine culture
and exceptionally wide interests'. Like Streatfeild, Klein also pointed out that Leon-
cavallo was 'a poet-musician in certain respects not altogether unlike Arrigo Boito'. 2
Generally considered as a minor representative of a minor genre (operatic
verismo), Leoncavallo owes his reputation to three operas, Pagliacci (1892), La
boheme (1897) and Zaza (1900), for all of which he also wrote the librettos. His
single-handed, earnest efforts to achieve success in the fiercely competitive world of
late nineteenth-century Italian opera deserve full recognition, though his output of
songs and operettas is of less interest. Leoncavallo could shape a libretto and then
versify the text according to his own musical requirements -an ability that none of
his colleagues possessed. He was able to research on a chosen subject, be it Medicean
Florence or Murger's Bohemians, and insert authentic material, such as songs,
poems and historical details, into his librettos. However, the best one can say about
his artistic achievement is that, as a composer, he was no more than an ingenious
craftsman and that, as a man of letters, he was just a deft manipulator of literary
sources and a perceptive observer of current trends. In this respect, any comparison
with Boito seems entirely out of place: as a genuine intellectual, an unorthodox poet
and a skilful librettist, Boito made an original contribution to Italian culture in the
second half of the nineteenth century.
That is certainly not the case with Leoncavallo. Yet, both through his limitations
as a musician and through his talent as a librettist, Leoncavallo is the one member
of the Young Italian School whose operas can fully exemplify the hybrid character
of operatic verismo. Pagliacci, La boheme and Zaza, in different ways, are veristic
by virtue of the handling of their subjects and of the musico-dramatic treatment.
Their documentary value transcends their artistic merits. If we analyse the com-
poser's criteria for selecting and arranging his material, we gain an insight into the
evolution (or rather the dissolution) of operatic verismo in the ten years between
Cavalleria rusticana and Tosca.

' R. A. Streatfeild, Masters of Italian Music, London, 1895, pp. 215-16.

2 John W. Klein, 'Ruggiero Leoncavallo', Opera, ix (1958), 158, 236.

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 The first odd thing emerging from a survey of the limited literature on Leon-
cavallo is the confusion until very recently about his date of birth: 23 April 1857.
Most articles in reference works or musical journals have given it as 8 March 1858.3
The second oddity is that such contradictory data cannot be blamed on careless
compilers and music historians but simply on the composer himself, who apparently
lied about his age from the very moment he achieved sudden popularity with
Pagliacci.
The first opportunity to rejuvenate himself came to Leoncavallo in July 1892
when Sonzogno's periodical II teatro illustrato chose for its cover story the good-
natured, thick-moustached musician who, the feature article reported, 'sorti i natali
in Napoli 1'8 marzo. 1858'. In 1900 Leoncavallo was asked by Onorato Roux to con-
tribute an autobiographical article to his seven-volume work Illustri italiani contem-
poranel, Vol. 2 of which was to deal with the major artists in Italy; writing in the
first person, he stated that he had been born in March 1858. These are the two
sources from which most early writers drew their basic information about him. The
only biography of Leoncavallo includes among the illustrations the original birth
certificate which belonged to the composer himself.4 Was it, then, just a naive con-
cession to his vanity that led Leoncavallo to lie? It has even been suggested that he
did so to reduce the gap between himself and Puccini (born on 22 December 1858).
How reliable is the information that Leoncavallo provides about various cir-
cumstances in his life? For example, in the article he wrote for Roux he claimed that
at Bologna University, where he spent a couple of years and attended the lectures of
Giosue Carducci, he took a 'diploma di dottore in lettere, a venti anni', that is, in
1877. Apparently there is no record of that graduation in the university archives.5
Rubboli is rather evasive and does not mention any degree in 'lettere' in his
biography.
Leoncavallo's stay in Bologna was, however, most fruitful for his literary and
musical education. That ancient seat of learning (and the Wagnerian citadel in
Verdi's Italy) welcomed the promising musician and accomplished pianist from
Naples. Carducci stirred up his enthusiasm for the great literature of the Renais-
sance. The young poet Giovanni Pascoli became his friend and wrote lines for him
to set. In December 1876 Wagner arrived to attend the production of Rienzi at the
Teatro Comunale. The overexcited Leoncavallo met the illustrious guest and told
him about his ambitious project of a trilogy on the Italian Renaissance which he
wanted to call Crepusculum in emulation of Gotterddmmerung. Wagner had kind
and generous words of encouragement for his young admirer. While Leoncavallo
read voraciously about Lorenzo de' Medici, Poliziano, Savonarola and the Borgias,
Alfred de Vigny's play Chatterton fired his imagination, and he put aside the
Wagnerian project to concentrate on a more youthful, romantic subject. Thus, in a
few months he wrote the libretto and music of his first opera. An aristocratic friend

3 The date 8 March 1858 appears in obituaries in the Musical Times, lx (1919), 476, and the Monthly Musical
Record, xlix (1919), 193, in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart ('corrected' to 25 April 1857 in Supplement
(Vol. 15)) and in several other dictionaries and encyclopaedias up to at least 1976; Streatfeild and Klein (opp. cit.)
also give the wrong date. In 1958 the Teatro S. Carlo at Naples (Leoncavallo's birthplace) celebrated the 'first
centenary' of his birth with a revival of La boheme. The correct date is given by Baker's Biographical Dictionary of
Musicians, 9th edn., rev. Nicolas Slonimsky, Oxford, 1984; Eric Blom, The New Everyman Dictionary of Music,
ed. David Cummings, London & Melbourne, 1988; and The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, ed. Stanley Sadie,
London & Basingstoke, 1988 (The New Grove had given the date as 8 March 1857, as does the New Oxford Com-
panion to Music, ed. Denis Arnold, Oxford, 1983).
See Daniele Rubboli, Ridi Pagliaccio, Lucca, 1985, P1. 4.
See Teresa Lerario, 'Ruggero Leoncavallo e il soggetto dei "Pagliacci" ', Chigiana, xxvi-xxvii (1969-70),
115-22.

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offered enough money to have it performed in a Bolognese theatre, but the im-
presario was a crook and vanished with the funds. It was 1878, and the broken-
hearted Leoncavallo left Bologna for good. Chatterton, a dramma lirico in three
acts, would be first performed in Rome in 1896.
After a short period in Egypt with an influential uncle, Leoncavallo was to be
found in Paris from 1882, making a living as a songwriter and accompanist of cafe
singers. The hard-working young man lived his personal boheme until he landed at
the Eldorado music-hall, met important people and started a more rewarding job as
a singing teacher, repetiteur, and accompanist of distinguished opera singers. He
coached Emma Calve and Sybil Sanderson; another young singer, Berthe Ram-
baud, who studied with him, eventually married him and abandoned her own
career. Leoncavallo was now among the habitues of the Opera and Opera-
Comique, and he knew Massenet, Thomas and Gounod. His many acquaintances
included Alexandre Dumasfils, Zola, Alphonse Daudet, the publisher Charpentier,
the actor Ernest Coquelin and the baritone Victor Maurel (the first lago, at La
Scala in 1887).
Such a stimulating environment and his contacts with the French naturalists did
not immediately affect Leoncavallo's cultural inclinations. His ambitions as an
opera composer were still firmly tied to the projected Wagnerian Crepusculum. As
soon as his improved position eased the financial pressure on him, Leoncavallo
resumed work on it and wrote the libretto of I Medici; it should have been followed
by Gerolamo Savonarola and Cesare Borgia. The work was subtitled 'Azione storica
in quattro atti' and was set in Florence between 1471 and 1478. It opens with the
idyll between Giuliano de' Medici and Simonetta Cattaneo, and closes with the
murder of Giuliano by Francesco de' Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini in the church of
S. Reparata. Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano, Archbishop Salviati and Giambat-
tista da Montesecco (who was to have killed Lorenzo) are among the characters. The
libretto is meticulously annotated with references to Guicciardini, Machiavelli,
William Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo and Carducci's writings on Lorenzo and Poliziano,
whose poetical works are often quoted. In Act II, for example, a chorus of young
men and women sing and dance Poliziano's canzone a ballo 'Ben venga maggio'.
The versification relies heavily on archaisms, to be consistent with the frequent
quotations from Renaissance poetry. The overall effect of the libretto is that of a
pretentious collage of anthologized excerpts; yet it does have a certain charm and
dramatic interest.
In 1887 Leoncavallo showed I Medici to Maurel, who was so impressed that he of-
fered to introduce him to Giulio Ricordi. So, in 1888, his Parisian life came to an
end, and the Leoncavallos settled in Milan. In 1889 the publisher and the composer
signed a contract for the composition of I Medici; Leoncavallo received 2,400 lire in
monthly instalments and started writing the music. In the same year he was asked by
Ricordi to help with the first draft of the libretto of Manon Lescaut for Puccini. No
fewer than four other people shared the responsibility of that toilsome task -Marco
Praga, Domenico Oliva, Ricordi and Illica, not to mention Puccini himself-and it
is still unclear who exactly did what, as Eugenio Gara has pointed out.6
The composition of I Medici was soon completed, and the restless composer faced
a long wait to have the opera performed. In October 1891 something seemed to hap-
pen at last: Ricordi negotiated the production of the opera with a Milanese

6 Eugenio Gara, Carteggi pucciniani, Milan, 1958, pp. 42-45.

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impresario; but at the last minute he changed his mind and made a deal for the re-
vival of Puccini's Edgar in a new, shorter version (Ferrara, 28 February 1892). It was
a tremendous blow for Leoncavallo. However, frustration and despair sometimes
breed new and daring ideas. He took a good look round: Mascagni's Cavalleria
rusticana was the craze of the moment. Should he not try a veristic subject? Accord-
ing to Leoncavallo, in five months (November 1891-March 1892) he wrote both
words and music of Pagliacci. He first offered the libretto to Ricordi (he was bound
to do so by the Medici contract). When Ricordi declined to commit himself, Leon-
cavallo rushed to his rival, Edoardo Sonzogno, who showed excellent judgement in
securing the property of what was to be one of the two best veristic operas.7 On 21
May 1892, at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan, the 35-year-old composer could taste
success to an extent he would never again experience in his life.
At this point, the history of I Medici is very similar to that of Mascagni's
Guglielmo Ratcliff. It was not until his first veristic opera established his reputation
that the huge, four-act melodrama could be performed. But it would do very little
to improve that reputation. Sonzogno managed to buy I Medici from Ricordi, and
Leoncavallo recruited the best Italian tenor for the role of Giuliano: Francesco
Tamagno, the first interpreter of Otello. The opera was premiered at the Teatro
Dal Verme on 9 November 1893. In spite of all the philological fussiness of the
libretto, the music showed an unashamed dependence on Wagnerian motifs.
Because of the composer's popularity the premiere attracted the attention of foreign
reviewers no less than the Italian critics. One London reviewer commented: 'Unfor-
tunately, he seems to have borrowed from Wagner not only the notion of being his
own librettist, but a good number of musical ideas and phrases, so that, with all his
skill in treatment, the opera is far too much a patchwork of reminiscences'.8 One
example will suffice. Act I is partly taken from Poliziano's Stanze per la giostra di
Giuliano -where the meeting between the handsome and gallant Giuliano and the
dreamy, Botticellian Simonetta is transfigured into one between a god and a nymph
or the chaste Diana. In the Andante cantabile of the love duet, Leoncavallo ap-
propriately recalls Briinnhilde's motif 'Ewig war ich, ewig bin ich' from Act III scene
3 of Siegfried.9 Plagiarism and the banalization of Wagnerian motifs could well be
detected in other operas of the period, 10 but in I Medici one mostly resents the gran-
diloquence and hopeless lack of originality. It was only by breaking with stifling
erudition and over-ambitious projects that Leoncavallo could strike a personal note
and score the one genuine success of his career.

PAGLIA CCI, AN OPERATIC TRANCHE DE VIE

The libretto of Pagliacci is generally regarded as a highly effective, dramatically
tight work, skilfully blending a veristic story with the well-tried device of the play-
within-a-play. The clown as a symbol of the antithesis appearance/reality-the
Pirandellian 'Maschera nuda'- comes to life in the opera house thanks to the clever
differentiation in the musical treatment of the main story and the inset 'Commedia'.

' Leoncavallo stated in his article for Roux: 'In cinque mesi scrissi le parole e la musica dei Pagliacci, opera che
fu acquistata dal Sonzogno, dopo ch'egli ebbe soltanto letto il libretto, e che Maurel ammir6 tanto che insistette per
rappresentarla . . .' See Onorato Roux, Illustri italiani contemporanei, Florence, 1908, ii. 299.
8 The Monthly Musical Record, xxiii (1893), 278.
9 See Julian Budden, 'Wagnerian Tendencies in Italian Opera', Music and Theatre: Essays in Honour of Win-
ton Dean, ed. Nigel Fortune, Cambridge, 1987, pp. 319-20 & Ex. 8.
' See ibid., esp. pp. 316 ff.

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 It is customary to trace the source of the story back to an incident which occurred
in the 1860s at Montalto in Calabria, where Leoncavallo lived for a few years
because his father Vincenzo was posted there as a judge. A good starting-point for
an analysis of the libretto is, therefore, an examination of the documentary evidence
on the incident and Leoncavallo's own account of the facts he claimed to have
transposed on to the stage.
In the state archives of Cosenza, the district town of Montalto, there is a file on
the legal proceedings against two brothers who killed a 22-year-old man in Mon-
talto: 'Procedimento contro Luigi e Giovanni D'Alessandro fu Domenico imputati
di assassinio premeditato e con agguato commesso con armi insidiose la sera del 5
marzo 1865 in persona di Gaetano Scavello di Carmine di detto luogo'. Scavello was
in the service of the Leoncavallos as a child-minder for young Ruggero and his
brother Leone. The reason for the murder was the jealousy of Luigi D'Alessandro
over a local woman he was in love with. Scavello had interfered and publicly in-
sulted the two brothers. On the night of 5 March 1865, as he came out of a theatre
at the end of a show, he was ambushed and knifed by them. He died hours later
after naming them as his killers. At the trial, presided over by Vincenzo Leon-
cavallo, the woman's identity was not disclosed.
Because Ruggero knew Scavello, and his father handled the trial, the murder
made a deep impression on him. Some 25 years later, the incident was turned into
what Camille Bellaigue called the 'fait-divers sanglant' ('news item of a violent
nature') of Pagliacci. But, if those are the facts, most of the opera's plot is pure fic-
tion, which should either be attributed to Leoncavallo's imagination or traced back
to other sources. One more reason for further investigation is the considerable
discrepancy between Leoncavallo's two versions of the Montalto killing and the
actual record of the events.
In 1966 the Italian journal L'Opera published an excerpt from an autobio-
graphical fragment covering Leoncavallo's early years to 1893. 11 Explaining how he
first conceived the idea of Pagliaccz, he stated that Scavello was murdered before his
very eyes:

Ripensai allora alla tragedia che aveva solcato di sangue i ricordi della mia infanzia lon-
tana, e al povero servitore assassinato sotto i miei occhi, e in nemmeno venti giorni di
lavoro febbrile buttai giu il libretto dei Paglzacci.

He also claimed that the murderer was a clown who had just killed his wife after find-
ing a note from Scavello hidden in her clothes. The time of the double murder was
indicated as mid-August, on the popular festival of the Madonna della Serra.
In 1894, when a French edition of Pagliacci appeared, 12 the Parnassian poet and
playwright Catulle Mendes accused Leoncavallo of plagiarism, claiming that the
plot of the opera had been taken from his play La Femme de Tabarin (1887). In a
much publicized letter to his publisher, Sonzogno, Leoncavallo insisted on his
childhood recollections as the one authentic source of Pagliacci:

In my childhood, while my father was judge at Montalto . . . a jealous player killed his
wife after the performance. This event made a deep and lasting impression on my childish
mind, the more since my father was the judge at the criminal's trial ... I left the frame of

" Ruggero Leoncavallo, 'Come nacquero i PagliaccF, ed. Mario Morini, L'Opera (January-March 1966),
40-44.
12 Paillasse, trans. Eugene Crosti, Paris, 1894.

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 the piece as I saw it, and it can be seen now at the Festival of Madonna della Serra, at
Montalto. '3

He also reciprocated the charge of plagiarism by arguing that the plot of La Femme
de Tabarin was very similar to that of an earlier play, by the Spanish playwright
Manuel Tamayo y Baus, Un drama nuevo (1867). Mendes was satisfied with these
explanations and withdrew his charges.
But the fact remains that, for some reason, Leoncavallo was anxious that his
operatic fiction and the Montalto facts should tally; and he was at pains to update
his recollections before divulging them. No one could possibly blame an author for
altering facts and external circumstances in the process of shaping them into a work
of art. For example, changing the date of the murder from 5 March to 15
August-that is, from an ordinary day to a religious festival-made it possible for
the composer to justify the presence of festive villagers (after the example of
Cavallerza rusticana, set on Easter Sunday), bagpipe players and church bells. On
the other hand, the insertion of the commedia dell'arte play within the opera was
a totally new contrivance, which had to be explained either as a personal choice or
as an undisclosed borrowing. That is why Leoncavallo was trying to mix fact and
fiction and eliminate any problem of attribution. As he basked in the growing
popularity of Pagliacci, he was obviously annoyed by the international echo of
Mendes's allegations. In London, for example, the Musical Times dutifully
reported:

Signor Leoncavallo and M. Catulle Mendes are having a pretty quarrel. The French
author has charged the Italian composer with having borrowed the plot of the successful
opera I Pagliacci from his play La Femme de Tabarin whereas Signor Leoncavallo, in a
letter to his publisher, Sonzogno, assures ...

A similar paragraph appeared in the Monthly Musical Record.'4

By 1900, when Leoncavallo wrote his autobiographical contribution for Roux's
Illustri italiani contemporanei, the dust had settled over the controversy with
Mendes. The case was now presented in terms that give us a new lead in the search
for sources:

Quando fu tradotto [Pagliaccu, il Mendes, vedendo che aveva qualche somiglianza con
la sua Femme de Tabarin, onestamente credette ch'io avessi da questa tolto il mio sog-
getto, e fece i passi necessari per una citazione, che poi lealmente ritir'o ... quando ebbe
trovato che c'erano altri Tabarins scritti prima del suo. Il vero e ch'io ignoravo affatto
l'opera di quello scrittore che ammiro, ed avevo tolto il mio soggetto da un caso che
awenne in Calabria ... .'5

That is, first, Leoncavallo had no knowledge of La Femme de Tabarin before he

wrote Pagliacci; second, Mendes dropped his charges when he found out that there
were earlier Tabarins, no longer because of the Spanish play Un drama nuevo. Both
statements are questionable. There had, indeed, been other works based on
Tabarin, but it is not true that Mendes did not find out about them until after
Pagliacci; the same applies to Leoncavallo, who, at long last, mentioned them in
connection with his opera.

'3 Letter dated 3 September 1894 from Lugano, quoted in H. E. Krehbiel, A Book of Operas: their Histories
their Plots and their Music, New York, 1920, p. 110. Krehbiel devotes several pages to Leoncavallo's alleged b
rowing from La Femme de Tabarin.
i4The Musical Times, xxxv (1894), 752; The Monthly Musical Record, xxiv (1894), 258.
i Roux, op. cit., ii. 299.

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 The fame of Tabarin, the seventeenth-century 'illustre farceur de la Place
Dauphine' in Paris, had been revived in the 1850s with the publication of his com-
plete works."6 In his introduction, the editor, Gustave Aventin, explains how this
comedian, possibly from Lorraine, adopted the name of a previous commedia
dell'arte actor called TIabarin or Tabar(r)ino, from 'tabarro' (cloak), the main part
of his costume. The French Tabarin had a wife, Francisquine. Her name, too, came
from an Italian, Franceschina, introduced into France by a comedienne of the Gelosi
troupe, Silvia Roncagli. Aventin writes: 'Cette Francisquine figuroit dans les farces
jouees sur le theatre de Tabarin, et, si l'on en croit certaines traditions, douteuses
peut-etre, elle ne se piquoit pas de fidelite' conjugale'. The venue of Tabarin's lazzi
and farces was a little stand in the Place Dauphine where he performed to large
crowds until about 1625. He died a few years later, presumably in 1633.
Various operas and plays on the antics of this popular clown were written in the
second half of the nineteenth century, all of them in Paris: Tabarin, an opera com-
ique in two acts by Georges Bousquet (The'atre-Lyrique, 22 December 1852);
Tabarin duelliste, an operetta in one act by L. Pillaut (Bouffes-Parisiens, 22 April
1866); Tabarin, a comedy in two acts in verse by Paul Ferrier (Thealtre-Francais, 15
June 1874); Tabarin, an opera in two acts by Emile Pessard on Ferrier's text (Ope'ra,
12 January 1885); and La Femme de Tabarin, tragi-parade in one act by Catulle
Mendes with stage music apparently by Chabrier. This last play was dedicated to
Andre Antoine, the actor-manager of the Theatre Libre, who first staged it at the
Theatre Montparnasse on 11 November 1887.
La Femme de Tabarin, paired with Leon Hennique's Esther Brand'es, inaugurated
the new Montparnasse premises and the second season of Antoine's avant-garde
theatre. It was a major cultural event, which was 'supported by a large contingent of
poets', as Antoine noted in his Souvenirs. 7 Not surprisingly, Ferrier soon accused
Mendes of having plagiarized his own Tabarin. In return, Mendes reminded him
that La Femme de Tabarin had first been published 'sous forme de nouvelle dia-
loguee, avec tous les details de mise en scene' in the issue of the journal La Semaine
parisienne dated 28 May 1874, nearly three weeks before Ferrier's play was
premiered. It is most unlikely that Leoncavallo-who lived in Paris from 1882 to
1888 and was a friend of musicians and literati (some of them involved with the
Theatre Libre), as well as attending the Op6ra assiduously-knew nothing about
the two Tabaran pieces, particularly the opera. Its composer, Emile Pessard
(1843-1917), was from 1881 professor of harmony at the Conservatoire and, like
Leoncavallo, wrote over 50 songs.
Pessard's opera and Mends's play both feature Tabarin's open-air theatre. The
time of the action is 1622 in the former, 1629 in the latter. Both works deal with the
unfaithfulness of Francisquine and the sudden shift from the commedia dell'arte
farce to real-life tragedy on the small stage of Tabarin's theatre, in front of an au-
dience responding with loud comments to the unusually impressive acting. How-
ever, substantial differences between the two pieces can be seen in the denouement
and in the socio-linguistic approach to the same subject.
Mendes's play is set in the Place Dauphine. Francisquine's lover is 'Un Garde du
Cardinal'. During the parade, Tabarin kills her and then cries his heart out. In the

6 Oeuvres completes de Tabarin, ed. Gustave Aventin, Paris, 1858.

" Andre Antoine, Memories of the Thedtre-Libre, trans. Marvin A. Carlson, Coral Gables, Florida, 1964,
p. 52. In the first season at Montmartre, the Th6etre Libre produced, among others, works by Zola and the Gon-
courts. See Francis Pruner, Les Luttes dAntoine, Paris, 1964, i. 131-6.

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audience there is a group of 'pre'cieux et precieuses' who make their comments in an
affected language in character with a seventeenth-century elite. In the following ex-
cerpt we see the shift from the farce of the jealous husband to the discovery of Fran-
cisquine flirting with her garde, the comment of a precieuse and Tabarin's threat to
kill the two lovers: 8

(Tabarzn, continuant la parade, souleve en effet le rzdeau et tout a coup pousse un grand
crz, car le pauvre homme vient de vozr sa femme asszse, et riant, sur les genoux du
Garde. Tabarzn laisse retomber la tenture et demeure sur le triteau, immobile et
bleme.)
TABARIN. Mis6ricorde! Ce n'est plus un jeu! Francisquine! Je l'ai vue! La, chez moi, sur la
chaise . . . et cet homme qui l'embrassait . . . Ah! mes bonnes dames! mes bons
messieurs! I1 n'y a plus de farce, il n'y a plus de Tabarin! Je suis un pauvre homme ...
Je l'aimais tant ... Ah! ma femme! Ah! la gueuse! Ah! mon Dieu, ma Francisquine!
TELAMIRE. A vrai dire, les fac6ties de ce bouffon ne sont point aussi grossieres qu'il 6tait
permis de le redouter; il a eu, surtout dans la derniere partie de son monologue, des
sanglots qui ne laisseraient point que de faire honneur au plus industrieux com6dien de
1'h6tel de Bourgogne.
TABARIN. Mais cette femme, pour moi c'6tait tout! ... Maintenant, pendant que je suis la,
histrion imb6cile, elle embrasse cet homme, et s'en fait embrasser. Oh! je les tuerai tous
deux, je les tuerai.

After Francisquine is stabbed, she drags herself forward, dips her hand in the blood
of her wound and smears Tabarin's lips. She dies with one last word: 'Canaille!' At
the end of the parade which has taken such a gruesome turn, a precieux wants to
offer a bouquet of roses to Francisquine, not realizing she is really dead. He first
pays a compliment to Telamire, who has the bouquet:

ARTABAN. Ah! par les dieux immortels! on ne saurait rien voir de plus parfaitement joue.
Daignez agreer, chere Telamire, que j'offre votre bouquet de roses, moins fraiches, je
le confesse, que celles de votre teint, at cet admirable comedienne.

La Femme de Tabarin is, on the whole, a refined literary exercise, a stylistic

pastiche offered to an audience of self-conscious intellectuals to elicit a somewhat
morbid response. A detailed review byJules Lemaitre, after describing Mendes as 'le
vrai decadent . . . plein de science et d'artifice', concludes:

Des fioritures sur un drame violent d'amour physique et de mort. La fin n'est qu'une
pantomine horrible et sanguinolente. L'aimable exercice litteraire se termine en scene
d'abattoir ou de cirque romain. L'esprit est amuse et les nerfs fortement secoues. Est-ce
plaisir ou peine?'9

If Leoncavallo saw or read this play, he may have borrowed the idea of the com-
media dell'arte farce as a more theatrical setting for the Calabrian murder. After
all, Scavello, according to the police records, had just been to the theatre when he
was ambushed by the D'Alessandro brothers. On the other hand, the artistic con-
ceptions of the French Parnassian and the Italian verista are so radically different
and the musical treatment of the story so unique that the alleged borrowing has very
little bearing on the evaluation of the opera.20

18 Catulle Mendes, Th6dtre en prose, Paris, 1908, pp. 336-7. La Femme de Tabarin was first published by
Charpentier (Paris, 1887) shortly before Antoine's production.
19 Jules Lemaitre, Impressions de thedtre, 2nd ser., Paris, 1888, p. 179.
20 See also Carlo Nardi, L'orzgine del melodramma 'Pagliaccz', Genoa, 1959; Nardi is in no doubt that Leon-
cavallo did know Mends's play. His opinion about the influence of La Femme de Tabarin on Pagliacci is sup-
ported in II teatro italiano, V: II libretto del melodramma dell'Ottocento, iii, ed. Cesare Dapino, Turin, 1985,
p. 134. Both Nardi and Dapino ignore Pessard's opera.

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 It is, rather, the earlier Tabarzn by Ferrier and Pessard that contains some strik-
ing similarities with the story of Pagliacci, even though it has no final murder but,
instead, the reconciliation of the clown with his wife.
It may be useful to mention at this point that the original title of Leoncavallo's
opera was Pagliacczo, and it remained in the singular in the translations into French
(Paillasse), German (Der Balazzo) and English (Punchznello; the name chosen by
the translator, Frederic E. Weatherly, is hardly appropriate to the Pierrot-like per-
sonality of Leoncavallo's clown). The emphasis was on one clown and his personal
tragedy. Pagliaccio, like Tabarin, was the single protagonist of the opera. The
plural form was Leoncavallo's concession to his friend and patron Victor Maurel,
who used his influence on the impresario of the Teatro Dal Verme to have the opera
performed there. The celebrated baritone, who first sang Tonio, was concerned
about being completely overshadowed by an all-important tenor lead. The full
reward for his generous sponsorship included a solo piece which took the form of a
Prologue. In this way, the character interpreted by Maurel introduced the opera
and concluded it with the spoken line 'La commedia e finita!', which was eventually
appropriated by the tenor.
We can first examine the libretto of Pagliacuc(o) starting from Act I and ignoring
the Prologue. The similarities with Tabarin will thus be easier to assimilate:

ACT I

SCENE 1
Festive villagers welcome Canio (Pagliaccio) and his troupe. Someone insinuates that
Tonio is courting Nedda, as happens in the 'Commedia'. Canio warns everybody that it is
not a game worth playing because the stage and life are different things and he would
react in a different way if he caught Nedda with a lover. After the Bell Chorus the
villagers disperse.
SCENE 2
Nedda comes to the fore with her Bird Song. Tonio declares his love to her. She rejects
him and, as he insists, strikes him with a whip.
SCENE 3
Silvio, a villager in love with Nedda, asks her to run away with him. She agrees to meet
him after the show. They part on Nedda's line 'A stanotte e per sempre tua saro!', an-
ticipating a key line of hers in the 'Commedia' (see below).
SCENE 4
Tonio has overheard part of the conversation. He alerts Canio, who chases Silvio. The
lover manages to escape, and Nedda refuses to reveal his name. Canio's 'Vesti la giubba'
closes the act.

ACT II

SCENE 1
People gather for the performance of the 'Commedia'. Silvio is among them.
SCENE 2
The 'Commedia' begins. Arlecchino (Peppe) serenades his beloved Colombina (Nedda).
Taddeo (Tonio) declares his love to her. Arlecchino interrupts him. Taddeo leaves, and
the two lovers enjoy their supper. Taddeo returns to warn them that Pagliaccio is coming
home in a very bad mood. Arlecchino leaps through the window, and Taddeo hides.
Nedda's parting line, 'A stanotte. E per sempre io sar6 tua!', is Canio's cue to come on
stage as Pagliaccio, but it is also a reminder of his wife's real adultery. He cannot restrain
his true feelings of jealousy, anger and revenge. The delicate humour of the 'Commedia'
is soon superseded by the violent clash between husband and wife. The brutal double
murder ensues. 'La commedia e finita!', spoken by Canio, is a disheartened epitaph over
his shattered life.

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 Pessard's Tabarin is a lightweight opera with some pleasing tunes and a couple of
decorative choruses ('Choeur des Buveurs'; 'Choeur des Bouquetieres'). Act II con-
tains the play-within-the-play preceded by a 'Divertissement' with two dance
numbers (Rigaudon and Pas de deux). There is no stylistic differentiation in the
music between the commedia dell'arte farce and the rest of the opera. The following
is a synopsis:

ACT I

Tabarin is a drunken, quick-handed clown and does not get on with Francisquine,
although he loves her. When she receives a love sonnet from Gauthier, a young clerk, she
decides to accept him as her paramour. A member of the troupe, Fritelin, has just been
hanged for stealing jewels, so they need a new 'matamore' for the braggart's role in their
farces. Francisquine manages to get Gauthier as a replacement. He suggests that at the
end of the farce in which he is to play 'Le Capitaine Rodomont', in love with Francis-
quine, she should elope with him.

ACT II

The setting is Pont-Neuf near Place Dauphine, with Tabarin's little theatre on th
People assemble and take their seats for the performance of 'La farce des tonneau
set consists of two tubs. Francisquine's first suitor arrives: 'Le Docteur Piphagne
a funny mixture of Italian and French. Tabarin's song is heard off-stage, and th
rorized Docteur hides in one tub. Tabarin arrives and Francisquine tells him tha
mont is looking for him: a new scene of comic terror, and Tabarin hides in the
Then Rodomont/Gauthier arrives, brandishing a sword and darting frightening
the audience. He wants to challenge Tabarin; since the coward clown will not com
Rodomont steals his wife, and the two dash away. Gauthier now drops his prete
urges the still undecided Francisquine: 'Viens, ce n'est plus l'acteur, c'est l'amant qui
t'implore'.
Tabarin soon realizes that his wife has deserted him and vents his genuine despair. But
the audience believe he is just showing unusually realistic acting skills and respond with
loud 'Bravos!' Their attitude changes when they understand that it is no longer a farce
and Tabarin's grief is real. A few people bring back the fugitive woman amid cries of
'Adultere!', 'Miserable!', 'A mort la donzelle!' Tabarin, who really cares for his wife,
represses his grief and resumes his clownish role. He tries hard to laugh and convince the
audience that it was all set up in advance. When Francisquine, in tears, begs for his
forgiveness, he advises her to say it louder: 'Plus haut, femme, c'est la piece!' They
have both to keep up the pretence if she is to be spared the public's angry reaction. The
trick works, and the dichotomy between fiction and reality is re-established. While the
audience are on their feet cheering loudly, Tabarin can safely say to his wife: 'Bon! je
t'aime et tu m'es rendue, je ne me souvien de rien!', and they are reconciled.

The following similarities are noticeable in the plots of Pagliacci(o) and Tabarin:
Silvio and Gauthier are both outsiders; their first contact with the clown's troupe
is as spectators;
each suggests to his beloved come'dienne that they elope after the performance of
a farce;
the commedia dell'arte farce is situated as a play-within-a-play in Act II of both
operas;
the shift from fiction to reality is counterpointed by the choral response of th
audience;
Tabarin's final situation is identical to the one portrayed in the 'Ridi Paglia
lines (I. 4): the man turns his tears and anguish into clowning, his sobs into a
grimace, for the sake of the audience.

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 A closer scrutiny of the two texts reveals analogies in the lines allocated to Canio
and Tabarin in similar situations. In Pagliacci, I. 1, Canio warns everybody not to
confuse the stage with real life. If he really were to catch his wife with a lover, his
reaction would be totally different from Pagliaccio's farcical one on stage:2"

CANIO (sorridendo, ma con cipiglzo).

I1 teatro e la vita non son la stessa cosa;
no ... non son la stessa cosa!
E se lassui Pagliaccio sorprende la sua sposa
col bel galante in camera, fa un comico sermone,
poi si calma od arrendesi ai colpi di bastone! ...
Ed il pubblico applaude, ridendo allegramente.
Ma se Nedda sul serio sorprendessi ... altramente
finirebbe la storia ...

In Tabarin, II. 12, soon after the love duet between Francisquine and Gauthier,
Tabarin arrives, and the sight of them, close together, arouses his suspicions. Fran-
cisquine justifies their attitude, saying that they were rehearsing their love scene
from 'La farce des tonneaux'. Tabarin warns Gauthier, 'avec ironie et fierte' (cf.
Canio's 'smiling and frowning'), that 'Autre chose est la scene, autre chose est la
vie!'; the motley, the powder and the paint of the actor do not destroy the dignity of
the man. The warning upsets Francisquine, who comments: 'Quel eclair dans ses
yeux!' In Pagliacci, I. 2, Nedda recalls Canio's warning in almost exactly the same
words: 'Qual fiamma avea nel guardo!' Ex. 1 shows Pessard's unimpressive setting of
Tabarin's lines.
Another interesting analogy can be found at the point where, in both operas, t
acting of the farce gives way to crude reality. In Pagliacci, it is marked by the s
tering outburst 'No, Pagliaccio non son'. In Tabarin, we find the same antithesis-
'bouffon/homme'-without a stir in the music. Then the clown breaks into sobs and
tears and begs his audience not to laugh any more. Towards the end of the piece, a
line reminds us of 'La commedia e finita': 'La piece est jouee' (see Ex. 2).
The thin music of Tabarin was written only a few years before Pagliacci, yet it is
in the style of an early nineteenth-century number opera. Its antique finish may
have prompted Leoncavallo's purposeful adoption of the rococo style within the
veristic treatment of his subject. The music of the 'Commedia' seems to echo the
quaint sound of Tabarin. Ex. 3 reproduces the opening bars of the short Ouverture
to the 'Farce des tonneaux'. Like Peppe in Pagliacci, Nicaise musters people for the
show and rings a bell to obtain silence.
Mendes's play and Pessard's opera on the seventeenth-century French clown must
both have been in Leoncavallo's mind when he devised the plot and characters of his
first veristic libretto. The 'fait-divers' of the Montalto murder is so transformed in
the opera as to seem hardly more than a pretext for the Calabrian setting. It is in-
tellectualized by Leoncavallo the librettist, and treated by Leoncavallo the com-
poser 'con passione disperata' (as Puccini described his own approach to Manon
Lescaut).
The characterization of Canio/Pagliaccio is entirely focused on the contrasts
appearance/reality, clown/man. Three solos, carefully graded in a crescendo of
pathos and dramatic intensity, illustrate

2' All quotations from the libretto are taken from ibid., pp. 131-62.

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Ex. 1
TEb.rin p mais vibrant
Tabarinn
6*1* , I -

Au - tre chose est la sce - ne, au - tre chose est la

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~IF F .F 1FL

1' _F I I' r tI L

,.~~~~~~~~~
w T J l r g | ' r r Tt iz ' g P P +> K r~~~~~~ r r
vi - e! Sur la scene, u-ne femme a son epoux ra -vi - e Ce n'estqu'un ac - ci -

dent dont chacun se gaudit. Dans la

T ~~ b. -*b I _

7~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

$0>b b~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I 1- _bA i M__5%

s!~~ ~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~~ L I I IQ I L L I
11g'~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~ Afi !!! A IJ Iit .>
vi d ent do t ch e - gcivautdiuetu liteg D

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 =~~~~E A

_ ment! II est des vengeances, ii - ci _ tes Que l'on ab - sout commune

*iU fe ~ 3 -I 3 I *I

-ment: Les hail - Ions, le fard et le pla tre Ne ri-v.rlt

<L~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~- - -d

T~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.

T~~~~~~ ~~~~ L^ 3 ^rZn 3 f$ |7?

pas I'ac-teur a son in- di - gni - te Et le Ta-ba-rin du th6-
A tem

llzbq ai -~~~~~~1 1 bi '

tW;~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~' y 1' 11 bx1

T C b t f 7 p 11 ? r p p p 11 ( br- r # ~~~~~~r r r |b
- i tre N'est pas le Ta ba rin de la re - a- li - e

): 2Rz , | ij ,; ~~~~~~~~~~~~Rit. t

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Ex. 2

Tabarin .t.' b
| - _ .1 9 . 1s ~ ~h __

J'e-tais un bouf -fon tout A l'heu - re J'e -tais un bouf- fon tout a

v-j - "

0) -b - -d .s" I"I

(En se comprimant le coeur) Dolce

, " -i C Z ~~~~~~r r I rf f
l'heu - re Mais je suis un homme a pre - sent Mais j e suis un homme a pre_

A tempo
(~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ U
i l l I~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~PI Suivez

6 s en Non plsdau qel r - pa,me plu de-espi jeu

IA tep

(lA;- F U S10 R 7ilp X355

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 A tempo (I1 s'aperjoit qu'on rit encore)
Rit. ~~~~~(Navrant)3
~3 3 3

pleu - re! La
A Suivez A tempo

[ Zt1 __ _ __ _ t K _ K _ _ _ez Pa. ns me-

I WZ=== _ = E ^s 7 - E~~~~V _} (RRS6T -F6S juwRIE PTOUF -9S

e r r F-- --t vez p

T.

Iprp-i msbnmesieurs, ne ri - ez pas 1 a i-te mes bons mes-

PP ~ ~ ~~~~~~2?..IE RIRESS)(IRSSTUF1

(Sngotn i tob ai dan les bra de .1 .S

fT. IF1 lbiit - 1?hq h
,1 | rlAL I Suivez l P lkdi5
t1~~~~F l~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~jijl
T I I ml Zb j ,
siers ah! ah ah h!a!ah h

Rit.~~.

*Chorus en~~ter t. thi pointe

+ . + Q :t~~35

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Ex. 3
(La nuit est venue peu a' peu)

Nicaise I FI 3 J
En pla _ ce! On va com. men cer, En pla

(Nicaise allume les chandelles

3 3 la rampe du petit the'atre)

N j2,##" ;7 2E
ce! On va commencer, Ha-tez - vous de vous pla - cer!

teatroelavitanonsonlt(Les musiciens place's sur les tr(teaux 1

(a the dihtm bewensae and life:rr

(c)Lthe man's re veng

< -- - ~~~Mf . 1R
AU K7 , g S 1 1 U k

E se Alecchno tinola CLombina,~_ W.M

(a) the dichotomy between stage and life:
I teatro e la vita non son la stessa cosa. . . (
No,"
(b) the -clown's
-1 Pgiaconns; s I iI&vs alld
predicament:
Vesti la giubba e la faccia infarina.
La gente paga e rider vuole qua.
E se Arlecchino t'invola Colombina,
ridi, Pagliaccio . i . e ognun applaudirn! . . . (I. 4)
(c) the man's revenge
No, Pagliaccio non son; se il viso e pallido
e di vergogna, e smania di vendetta!
L'uom riprende i suoi diritti . . . (II1. 2)
In the end, the jocular mask dressed in white, his face whitened with flour, is twisted
into a sad, grief-stricken Pierrot.
Two years after the publication of the collected farces and lazzi of Tabarin,
another work revived the Parisian interest in the commedia dell'arte masks: Maurice
Sand's Masques et bouffons (Paris, 1860). In the chapter dedicated to Pierrot, Sand
also deals with Pagliaccio, illustrating his origin, character and costume, and link-
ing the two masks:

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 In Italian pantomines, Pagliaccio fills the place occupied by Pierrot in France; he no
longer wears a mask, his face being merely covered with flour. He is the rival of Harle-
quin, and the lackey of Pantaloon. He is in love with Columbine, but -like the French
Pierrot -he is never successful in carrying her off from Florindo, the lover who is always
dressed in the latest fashion of his time and place.22
Leoncavallo's stay in Paris in the 1 880s coincided with a revival of literary interest
in pantomines centred on Pierrot. The mask was given increasingly violent, sadistic
traits in line with the spreading decadent taste of thefin de siecle. One of the first
such pantomines was Paul Margueritte's Pierrot assassin de sa femme (1881), in
which Pierrot kills his wife by tickling the soles of her feet. An entry for 6 February
1887 in Edmond de Goncourt'sJournal records an evening at Alphonse Daudet's
where Margueritte performed his Pierrot accompanied by the young composer Paul
Vidal. In 1883, at the Trocadero, Sarah Bernhardt put on the white costume of
the male mask to perform Pierrot assassin, a pantomine by Jean Richepin. Music,
usually in the form of piano accompaniment, was a necessary ingredient of such
shows, the number and variety of which have been discussed by Robert Storey. 'Pier-
rots of a disturbing nervoszsme', he writes, 'began to invade the salons, the music-
halls, and circus.'23
Leoncavallo was well aware of the latest fashions in the arts. In Paris he absorbed
much more than he produced at the time. A few years later, when he chose to follow
Mascagni's example and wrote a veristic opera, his Parisian recollections were
culturally more influential than his childhood memories. The explicit violence of
the double murder committed by the white-faced clown in front of his audience
does not belong to the verismo of Cavalleria rusticana. There, violence is kept off-
stage and dignified by the chivalrous challenge. Pagliacci is at the same time more
sophisticated and more sensational than Cavalleria. Various ingredients are cleverly
combined to make up the tranche de tie that is too good to be true: the device of the
play-within-a-play, a village murder, the Pierrot pantomine, the veristic style of
Mascagni's Cavalleria. We should also add the vanity of a singer, Maurel, to account
for the unnecessary Prologue.
Far from being a statement of Leoncavallo's aesthetic convictions, the Prologue
tries to reconcile the clown's story with the 'fait-divers' dug out from the compose
childhood. On behalf of the author, Tonio argues that, although he is presenting 'l
antiche maschere', he is in fact trying to depict 'uno squarcio di vita'. We are in-
formed that the story is true, it is fact, not fiction: 'Ed al vero ispiravasi'; and its
source is 'un nido di memorie'. In Frederic Weatherly's translation,
A song of tender memories deep in his listening heart
One day was ringing; with trembling heart, he wrote it,
And marked the time with sighs and tears.

Leoncavallo's 'sighs and tears' are the equivalent of Puccini's 'passione disperata';
they describe the musico-dramatic treatment of a subject we have traced back to
various sources other than the 'tender memories'.
As we turn to an examination of the language of Pagliacci, we realize that the tex-
ture of the libretto betrays an opportunistic concern with providing a veristic veneer
for the dialogues while allowing Leoncavallo's eclectic tastes a free play in the
linguistic characterization of the story. For example, in two short acts (not counting

22 I quote from the English translation: Maurice Sand, The History of the Harlequinade, London, 1915, i. 194.
23 Robert F. Storey, Pierrot: a Critical History of a Mask, Princeton, 1978, p. 118.

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the 'Commedia' in Act II) we find a large number of oaths and insults allocated to
all the characters:

CANIO. 'Pel Padre Eterno!'; 'Per la Madonna!'; 'Nome di Dio!'; 'Per Dio'.
'0 turpe donna'; 'o meretrice abbietta'; 'o svergognata'.
TONIO. 'Per la croce di Dio!'; 'Per la Vergin pia di mezz'agosto'.
'Sgualdrina!'
NEDDA. 'Per Dio!'
'Miserabile!'; 'Mi fai schifo e ribrezzo'; 'lurido!'.
SILVIO. 'Per Dio!'; 'Santo diavolo!' (a frequent oath in Verga's veristic works).

By comparison, Cavalleria rusticana shows considerable restraint. The only oath is

Turiddu's 'Ah, perdio!' in the long duet with Santuzza. It is the same with insults.
Santuzza refers to Lola as 'quella cattiva femmina', which is very mild when com-
pared with the four heavy (yet literary) epithets Canio and Tonio lavish on Nedda.
'Cattiva femmina' is in fact a polished version of Verga's truly veristic 'mala fem-
mina' (slut).
In contrast with this outspokenness, we can detect more literary references. The
opening onomatopoeia, 'Hui! Hui!', of Nedda's Ballatella echoes the frequent imita-
tions of bird-song in the poems of Giovanni Pascoli's MVyricae (published in July
1891). Instead of sparrows ('scilp', 'dib', 'bilp'), Scops owls ('chiui') and swallows
('virb'), in the libretto we find conventional 'augei';

Hui! stridono lassiu, liberamente

lanciati a vol come frecce, gli augei . . . (I. 2)

At the end of the song, the 'augelli' are called 'i boemi del cielo'. They are moved by
an 'arcano poter', which Weatherly, more explicitly, translates as 'fate'. It is a
Leopardian reminiscence, even in the way it is versified, an enjambment, and
rounds off very nicely the most poetical passage in the libretto:

Ma i boemi del cielo seguono l'arcano

poter che li sospinge . . . e van . . . e van!24

Most of the love duet between Nedda and Silvio (I. 3) adopts cliches from thefin
de siecle sensualism of drawing-room songs: for example 'Spasmi ardenti di volutta
(Silvio); 'A te mi dono; su me solo impera. / Ed io ti prendo e m'abbandono intera'
(Nedda). The word 'spasmo' ('spasmi', 'spasimi') actually recurs six times in the
libretto. Consistently, the composer-librettist shifts to the drawing-room song style
when he sets this kind of line. In the love duet, over 'murmuring' semiquavers,
Silvio, the illiterate villager, sings an elegant melody 'sempre a mezza voce, volut-
tuosamente', complaining that Nedda has 'bewitched' him.
In the 'Commedia' Leoncavallo inserts a Dantesque reference disguised as a
grotesque reversal. Tonio, the wicked hunchback, courting Nedda as Taddeo, has
'soli noi siamo e senza alcun sospetto!' With a change of tense, this is Francesca's lin
'soli eravamo e senza alcun sospetto' (Inferno, v. 129) describing the circumstances
in which she fell in love with her handsome brother-in-law Paolo Malatesta.
The weakest lines of the libretto occur in the Bell Chorus. As with the pseudo-
veristic choruses of villagers in Cavalleria rusticana, this is the only unnecessary
embellishment to be found in Pagliacci. Leoncavallo has really nothing to say here,
either poetically or musically. The 'Don, din, don' of the first line is followed by a
24 See Giacomo Leopardi, 'A se stesso': '. . . brutto / Poter che, ascoso. . .'; and the fragment 'Ad Arimane': ar-
cana / Malvagita, sommo potere . . .' Leopardi uses 'arcano' in enjambments in 'Sopra il ritratto di una bell
donna' ('arcano / Erra lo spirito umano') and in 'Le ricordanze' ('arcani mondi, arcana / Felicita . . .').

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series of platitudes-'tutto irradiasi di luce e d'amor!', for example. In the void of
musical ideas, the composer's memory assists him with what seems a pleasant echo
of Chabrier's Espania (see Ex. 4).

Ex. 4
tempo

S. r- W l [ - ,
Din Don gia suo - na ve spe-ro e tutto ir -

T. i6_Ii
wy v II, lfK 5 -:1 L4^^fi^|J
A _

T~~~~~
. Y~~~~~ , -_gF ,, .g I
Ah gia tutto ir - ra - dia-si di lu-ce e a - mor!

B. ,
s 1'r
. ]az sr r , |^Ir
vr, . , . I
. A . k I..
At - - - ten - ti at - ten- ti com - pa - ri le

Reminiscences from Bizet and other French composers are easily predictable in a
veristic opera, and Paggliacgci is no exception. A more interesting case is the motif for
'Ridi Pagliaccio' in 'Vesti la giubba', because it seems possible to detect the sub-
conscious working of the composer's inspiration. It is a reminiscence from Verdi's
Otello, III. 7, a climactic moment in that opera: in the presence of all the
dignitaries of the Venetian Republic, Otello humiliates Desdemona, pushing her
down on her knees and almost shouting: 'A terra . . . e piangi!' (Ex. 5a). Canio is
himself a victim of his own jealousy, but he has to turn grief into mirth (Ex. 5b).
These two bars become a sort of musical correlative of the image of the unfaithful
woman. They recur at another climactic moment, when Canio interrupts the 'Coin-
media' and demands the name of Nedda's lover: 'Vo' il nome dell'amante tuo . .. o
turpe donna!' (Ex. 5c).
Pagliacci marked the artistic rise and fall of Leoncavallo. Its appeal was, from the
very first night, direct and unfailing. Critics were often divided, and sometimes pre-
judiced, in their response. Eduard Hanslick and Camille Bellaigue for once
disagreed with each other. Hanslick reviewed the first production of Pagliacci in
Vienna, at the International Exhibition of Music and Theatre in September 1892
(with Cavalleria and Giordano's XVIala vita), and a revival at the Opera in 1893. On
both occasions his evaluation was generally favourable. In the second review he
wrote:

Leoncavallo's music reveals a strong, hot-blooded talent, a thoughtful mind and a skilled
hand. His melodic invention can scarcely be praised for its richness and originality. In
each of Mascagni's operas there shoot forth individual, surprising sparks of genius such as
are not present in I Pagizacci. On the other hand, the style of this work is more unified
than Cavalleria and compared with I Rantzau and L 'amico Fritz makes a more satisfying

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 Ex. 5 (a) (a Desdemona)

Otello

A ter- ra!... e pian gi!

(b) a piena voce, straziante (c)

Canio C V I- 7
r I I - v LZ~~~~4 r 4i *
Ri - di Pa - gliac-cio, o tur - pe don- na!

t molto rit. i t

overall impression. Mascagni seems to me to be the more original talent, Leoncavallo the
better musician. He has decidedly more sense of the form and a feeling for rounding off
the individual parts of a piece of music and for their harmonious relationship to each
other. His music is less fragmented and disjointed.

Hanslick particularly praised the second act. He found that 'the musical treatment
of the pantomine is full of wit and grace' and that the transition from the 'Com-
media' to tragic reality was managed 'with the greatest artistry'.25
On the contrary, Bellaigue simply loathed the opera. Reviewing a production at
the Opera in December 1902, he started by saying that he had gone to hear Pag-
liacci 'avec repugnance'. For him Cavalleria was better also because it managed
to convey a regional-Sicilian or Italian-characterization. 'Dans Paillasse', he
continued, 'rien, sauf peut-etre une jolie serenade au second acte, ne rappelle ni le
peuple, ni le pays italien.' That may well be true, but it should be seen as a positive
aspect of Pagliacci, the only veristic opera which keeps clear of drinking-songs and
tarantellas. Bellaigue's slashing criticism concentrated on the music:

Les elemens ou les formes de cette musique sont d'une trivialite qui n'a d'egale que leui
misere. On doute si la violence est ici plus vulgaire, ou plus banale et plus veule
la douceur. La plupart des motifs pourraient etre proposes-ou de'fendus-comme
des modeles de grossierete, et la mediocrite de i'harmonie repond ah l'indigence de
l'orchestration.26

25 Eduard Hanslick, 'Der Bajazzo (Pagliacci)', FiinfJahre Musik (1891-1895), Berlin, 1896, pp. 96-104, at p
(the translation is mine).
26 Camille Bellaigue, 'Th6etre de l'Opera: Paillaise (Pagliacci)', Revue des deux mondes (15 January 1903),
448-9.

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 The London premi?ere of Pagliacci (Covent Garden, 19 May 1893) received a long
and favourable review in The Times. Writing in 1894, Bernard Shaw also praised
the opera and the composer: 'the advance [on Donizetti] in serious workmanship, in
elaboration of detail, in variety of interest, and in capital expenditure on the or-
chestra and the stage, is enormous'.27
Many years later, in a London theatre, the opera would suffer the worst damage
to its artistic integrity at the hands of none other than Leoncavallo himself. After
the modest success of La boheme and Zaza, the composer had to rely mainly on the
royalties from Pagliacci to make his living. But that would not be enough. In his late
years, Leoncavallo embarked on adventurous tours of Europe and North America,
producing and conducting his own works in all sorts of muddled arrangements.28 In
September 1911 he was in London, at the Hippodrome, with a contract for the
musical direction of Pagliaccz in a music-hall version. The daily announcements in
The Times (11-30 September) seem to have turned the 54-year-old musician into a
circus attraction:

TWICE DAILY at 2 and 8

THE SENSATION OF THE CENTURY

Signor Leoncavallo's appearance in person to conduct his own condensed version of his
own I Pagliacci, and bringing his own company with him, is an event of a unique
character in the history of variety theatres.

The announcement of 13 September also gave an accurate description of what was

left of the opera after the drastic pruning. There is almost a sense of regret for the
shambles:

One must emphasize the fact that the condensed version played at the Hippodrome is
prepared by the composer himself; because while much of the beauty of the original re-
mains, a good deal is necessarily sacrificed. All the chorus is gone-but that injures very
little the form of the opera. It is the omission of the scene between Tonio and Nedda and
the sudden transition from the discovery of Nedda with Silvio to 'Vesti la giubba' which
destroy the correspondence between the 'real life' act and the 'stage life' act, besides rob-
bing us of some delightful music. Still, what is left is the cream of the opera; and it makes
its half-hour seem too short.

The second most famous veristic opera was thus deflated by its own composer and
reshaped into a sort of Pierrot pantomine focused on the expressionistic picture of
the murderous clown. The French sources seemed, at last, to have been vindicated.

27 Bernard Shaw, Music in London 1890-94, iii (reprinted London, 1950), 219.
28 See George Hall, 'Leoncavallo in America', Opera, xxxvi (1985), 153-61.

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