I am grateful to John Dickie, Andreas Giger, Beth Levy, Nelson Moe, Roger Moseley, Roger Parker, Mary Ann Smart and Holly Watkins for their comments and support during the writing of this article. Thanks also to Tommaso Esposito at the Museo di Pulcinella, del Folklore e della Civiltà Contadina, Acerra; and to Jack Smith and all at the Interlibrary Loan Office of the California State University, Sacramento. Translations are my own unless otherwise stated.Google Scholar

1 See Grey, Thomas, ‘Opera and Music Drama’, The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge, 2002), 371–423 (pp. 413ff.); also Donald Grout and Hermine Weigel Williams, A Short History of Opera (New York, 2003), 489. Italian opera scholar Matteo Sansone describes Pagliacci as ‘the second most famous veristic opera’. See his article ‘Verismo’, Grove Music Online, ed. Laura Macy (<http://www.grovemusic.com>, accessed 24 August 2006).,+accessed+24+August+2006).>Google Scholar

2 ‘I thought back to the tragedy that had streaked with blood the memories of my far-off youth,’ Leoncavallo wrote, ‘and to the poor servant murdered before my very eyes, and in fewer than twenty days of feverish work I dashed off the libretto of Pagliacci.’ Ruggero Leoncavallo, ‘Come nacquero I Pagliacci’, L'opera, 2 (1966), 40–2 (p. 41). In 1894 the composer reiterated the tale (with substantial modifications): ‘In my childhood, when 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.’ Quoted in Henry Edward Krehbiel, A Book of Operas: Their Histories, their Plots and their Music (New York, 1920), 110. On the opera's genesis, see also Teresa Lerario, ‘Ruggero Leoncavallo e il soggetto dei Pagliacci’, Chigiana, 26–7 (1969–70), 115–22; Daniele Rubboli, Ridi Pagliaccio: Ruggero Leoncavallo, un musicista raccontato per la prima volta (Lucca, 1985), 70ff.; and Luisa Longobucco, I ‘Pagliacci’ di Leoncavallo (Soveria Mannelli, 2003). Longobucco tries to reconstruct the real murder in Montalto from documents housed at the Archivio di Stato di Cosenza, Tribunale Civile e Penale; she concludes (p. 32): ‘Why did Leoncavallo choose a theatre as the scene for the deed itself? Because in reality it happened at the entrance to a theatre, at the end of a performance.’ On the derivation of Pagliacci's ‘verismo’, see also Michele Girardi, ‘Il verismo musicale alla ricerca dei suoi tutori: Alcuni modelli di Pagliacci nel teatro musicale Fin de siècle’, Letteratura, musica e teatro al tempo di Ruggero Leoncavallo: Atti del 2° convegno internazionale ‘Ruggero Leoncavallo nel suo tempo’, Locarno, Biblioteca Cantonale, 7–8–9 ottobre 1993, ed. Lorenza Guiot and Jürgen Maehder (Milan, 1995), 61–70. For alternative interpretations of operatic verismo, see Adriana Guarnieri Corazzol (trans. Roger Parker), ‘Opera and Verismo: Regressive Points of View and the Artifice of Alienation’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 5 (1993), 39–53, and Andreas Giger, ‘Verismo: Origin, Corruption, and Redemption of an Operatic Term’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 60 (2007), 271–316.Google Scholar

3 Il teatro illustrato e la musica popolare, 138 (June 1892), 82.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., 84. An anonymous writer the following month comments: ‘Tonio (baritone) pokes his head through a gap in the curtain and asks twice: “May I?”; then he comes forward and explains, in the old-fashioned way [“all'antica spiega”] …'. Il teatro illustrato e la musica popolare, 139 (July 1892), 100. For a discussion of contrasting styles in the Prologue, see Dalmonte, Rossana, ‘Il “Prologo” di “I Pagliacci”: Nota sul verismo in musica’, Musica/Realtà, 8 (1982), 105–14.Google Scholar

5 This alternation of antique musical references with verismo anguish has already been played out at earlier moments of the opera, when first Canio and then the other characters anticipate what might happen at that night's performance (Part 1, rehearsal cue 20 followed by the shift at 21; rehearsal cue 52 followed by the shift at 53).Google Scholar

6 Some light has been shed on Leoncavallo's selection of the commedia by Matteo Sansone, who has argued that Leoncavallo was probably familiar with a series of French plays and operas depicting the seventeenth-century clown Tabarin (including Catulle Mendès's 1887 play La femme de Tabarin, whose plot the composer was later accused of stealing). What is more, Emile Pessard's 1885 opera Tabarin, on a text from Paul Ferrier's 1874 comedy, featured the same plot structure as Pagliacci and even contained identical lines. See Sansone, Matteo, ‘The “Verismo” of Ruggero Leoncavallo: A Source Study of I Pagliacci’, Music and letters, 70 (1989), 342–62, esp. pp. 346ff.Google Scholar

7 See Budden, Julian, ‘A Problem of Identity’, The Operas of Verdi, 3 vols. (London, 1973–81), iii, 261–92; also my ‘Verdi and Sacred Revivalism in Post-Unification Italy’, 19th-Century Music, 28 (2004–5), 133–59.Google Scholar

8 The literature on Pierrot in France is vast. For a comprehensive summary, see David J. George's introduction to his The History of the Commedia dell'Arte in Modern Hispanic Literature with Special Attention to the Work of García Lorca (Lewiston, NY, 1995). On the transformation of Pedrolino into Pierrot, see John D. Anderson, ‘Pierrot: Dramatic and Literary Mask’, Fools and Jesters in Literature, Art, and History: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook (Westport, CT, 1998), 336–42; also Norman Tolliver Dill, ‘The Development and Metamorphoses of Pierrot in Nineteenth-Century France’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1975), and Robert Storey, Pierrots on the Stage of Desire: Nineteenth-Century French Literary Artists and the Comic Pantomime (Princeton, NJ, 1985). On Laforgue, see Martin Green and John Swan, The Triumph of Pierrot: The Commedia dell'Arte and the Modern Imagination (New York, 1986), 26ff.; also Margaret Michèle Cook, ‘Le masque du Pierrot de Jules Laforgue’, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 23 (1994–5), 451–68. For Pierrot and the fin de siècle, see Lehmann, Andrew George, ‘Pierrot and the Fin de siècle’, Romantic Mythologies, ed. Ian Fletcher (New York, 1967), 209–23.Google Scholar

9 Leoncavallo, as Sansone has pointed out, would undoubtedly have known Parisian Pierrots of various stripes, since he had become a resident of Montmartre in 1882 and stayed in Paris for five years before returning to Milan. During his Paris years Leoncavallo explored a variety of musical milieux, starting off as a composer and arranger of café-concert songs for venues such as the Eldorado on the Boulevard de Strasbourg, and working his way into more elite circles as an orchestrator for Massenet; by the end of his career he was a respected vocal coach for star singers such as Gemma Bellincioni, Emma Calvé and Victor Maurel. See Rubboli, Ridi Pagliaccio, 36ff. See also Danièle Pistone, ‘Ruggero Leoncavallo e gli ambienti artistici parigini’, Ruggero Leoncavallo nel suo tempo: Atti del 1° convegno internazionale di studi su Ruggero Leoncavallo, Locamo, Biblioteca Cantonale 3–4–5 ottobre 1991, ed. Jürgen Maehder and Lorenza Guiot (Milan, 1993), 41–7. On Pierrot and Pagliaccio, see Piccardi, Carlo, ‘Pierrot – Pagliaccio: La maschera tra naturalismo e simbolismo’, ibid., 201–45.Google Scholar

10 See Richards, Laura, ‘“Un Pulcinella antico e moderno”: Antonio Petito and the Traditions of the Commedia dell'Arte in Nineteenth-Century Naples’, The Commedia dell'Arte from the Renaissance to Dario Fo, ed. Christopher Cairns (Lewiston, NY, 1989), 277–95; also Anton Giulio Bragaglia, Pulcinella (Florence, 1982); and Enzo Grano, Pulcinella e Sciosciammocca: Storia di un teatro chiamato Napoli (Naples, 1974). On Pulcinella's appearances in opera buffa, see Sebastien Werr (trans. Mary Hunter), ‘Neapolitan Elements and Comedy in Nineteenth-Century Opera Buffa’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 14 (2002), 297–311.Google Scholar

11 We hear an overlap between fiction and reality reported by travellers such as Goethe, who reports: ‘A chief joke of this humble comic character consisted in suddenly appearing to forget his role as actor while on stage. He acted as though he were back home, spoke familiarly with his family, talked about the piece he was playing in and of another he was going to play in; further, he was not shy about letting the little necessities of nature take their course in unhindered freedom. “But, dear husband,” his wife then called to him, “you have forgotten yourself; think of the esteemed gathering you are in front of!” “It's true, it's true!” replied Pulcinella, coming to himself, and returning to the previous play to great applause from the audience.‘ See Eckermann, Johann Peter, Gespräche mit Goethe (Leipzig, 1884), 207–8; thanks to Holly Watkins for the translation. The prologue to the main performance and the play-within-a-play mechanism have a long heritage in original commedia dell'arte scenarios. See Oreglia, Giacomo, The Commedia dell'Arte, trans. from the Italian by Lovett Edwards with an introduction by Evert Sprinchorn (London, 1968), 3–12 and 20; also Allardyce Nicholl, The World of Harlequin (Cambridge, 1963), esp. pp. 10ffGoogle Scholar

12 See Arcoleo, Giorgio, ‘Un filosofo in maschera’, Saggi e discorsi (Catania, 1909), 151–72 (pp. 159–60). The essay was originally published with a preface by De Sanctis in Nuova antologia, August 1872; its reproductions include that by Aniello Costagliola in his Napoli che se ne va (Naples, 1918), 28–9.Google Scholar

13 Francesco de Sanctis echoed Arcoleo's vision, writing that ‘Pulcinella represents a stupid and lazy people.’ See Dal ‘Libro della Scuola’ di Francesco de Sanctis, 1872 (Rome, 1885), 25–9. We can compare Carlo del Balzo's Napoli e i Napoletani, written in 1884: ‘Pulcinella is alive because he is the most complete caricature of the prejudices, vices and habits of the commoner; because deep down underneath his white blouse we see a man tortured by the lot of everyday life.’ Napoli e i Napoletani con note di Domenico Capecelatro Gaudioso, with an introduction by Max Vajro (Rome, 1972), 113. Vincenzo Cimaglia had reported 60 years earlier that ‘in whatever manner Pulcinella is played […] he cannot but inform his audience of the immoral and cunning aspect of Pulcinella, similar to the general character of the base Neapolitan people.’ See his Saggi di diverse rappresentazioni teatrali (Naples, 1810), iii, 8–9 and 15–16, cited in Michele Scherillo, La commedia dell'arte in Italia: Studi e profili, del dottore Michele Scherillo (Turin, 1884), 1–2. For Pulcinella's reputation as ‘a symbol of a collectivity not so much Neapolitan as meridionale’, see Viviani, Vittorio, Storia del teatro napoletano (Naples, 1969), 386ff.Google Scholar

14 See for example Pasquale Villari, Le lettere meridionali ed altri scritti sulla questione sociale in Italia (Florence, 1878), and Leopoldo Franchetti and Sidney Sonnino, La Sicilia nel 1876 (Florence, 1877). For recent considerations of the history of the ‘Southern Question’, see Moe, Nelson, ‘The Emergence of the Southern Question in Villari, Franchetti, and Sonnino’, Italy's ‘Southern Question’: Orientalism in One Country, ed. Jane Schneider (New York, 1998), 51–76; also The New History of the Italian South: The Mezzogiorno Revisited, ed. Robert Lumley and Jonathan Morris (Exeter, 1997), and Francesco Barbagallo's introduction to Pasquale Villari, Le lettere meridionali ed altri scritti sulla questione sociale in Italia (Naples, 1979), 5–19.Google Scholar

15 Leopoldo Franchetti, Condizioni economiche e amministrative delle provincie napoletane: Appunti di viaggio – Diario di viaggio, ed. Antonio Jannazzo (Rome and Bari, 1985), 18.Google Scholar

16 It is worth noting that the Pulcinella plays of Antonio Petito demonstrate an active engagement with the social issues of the day. The work of a writer as well as an actor, Petito's last three plays present and satirize the problems of the Southern Question. So'mastro Rafaele e non et'ncarrica, first performed in 1869, exposes political corruption and electoral compromise; ‘A palummella, four years later, tracks the fortunes of an unsuccessful Neapolitan immigrant to America and his unjust treatment by Italians from the North; and Ciccuzza (1875) stages protests and strike actions by servants against their masters. Historian Laura Richards concludes: ‘Petito is […], in short, a representative of the post-Unification Southern syndrome.’ See her ‘“Un Pulcinella antico e moderno”’, 288. See also Vittorio Viviani, Storia del teatro napoletano, 545–603, esp. pp. 586ff.Google Scholar

17 Illustrazione italiana, Illustrazione universale, Emporio pittorico and Nuova illustrazione universale all captured and defined perceptions of life, including that in the South, from the 1860s onwards. See Dickie, John, Darkest Italy: The Nation and Stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno, 1860–1900 (New York, 1999), esp. pp. 83–119, and his ‘Stereotypes of the Italian South 1860–1900’, The New History of the Italian South, ed. Lumley and Morris, 114–47. See also Nelson Moe's The View from Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question (Berkeley, CA, 2002), especially ‘Representing the South in Postunification Italy, c. 1870–1885’, 187–296. Moe considers Verga ‘a prime manifestation of the keen interest in the south that emerged in Italian bourgeois culture during the second half of the 1870s. Verga's Sicilian stories and novel, I Malavoglia, helped to create one of the great imaginative geographies in modern Italian literature’ (p. 250).Google Scholar

18 The ‘Otherness’ of the South was at times given specific physiological depiction, with people depicted as Africans or Arabs – a move that enacts what historian Jane Schneider has called ‘Orientalism in one country’. See her Italy's ‘Southern Question’. For examples of such representations, see Dickie, Darkest Italy, 100ff.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., 95.Google Scholar

20 See Locke, Ralph, ‘Constructing the Oriental “Other”: Saint-Saëns's Samson et Dalila‘, The Work of Opera: Genre, Nationhood and Difference, ed. Richard Dellamora and Daniel T. Fischlin (New York, 1997), 161–84.Google Scholar

21 See Shefer, Elaine, ‘The “Bird in the Cage” in the History of Sexuality: Sir John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 1 (1991), 446–80. On Lakmé's music, see Abbate, Carolyn, Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ, 1991), 3–10.Google Scholar

22 The connection of Pagliacci to this journalistic world is not merely one of similarity. Pagliacci was staged and published by the firm of Eduardo Sonzogno, a recent entrant into the world of opera entrepreneurship but a well-established publisher of print products for broader audiences. Sonzogno had cashed in on the new vogue for illustrated magazines with his Illustrazione universale and Emporio pittorico during the 1860s; by the early 1880s, Il teatro illustrato and La musica popolare had joined his list. These two merged in 1886 to form Il teatro illustrato e la musica popolare, and when this magazine awarded its 1888 prize for a one-act opera to Mascagani's Cavalleria rusticana (premiered in 1890), the choice should have been no surprise to Sonzogno's broader readership, schooled as it was in the southern imagery found in his non-musical products. On Sonzogno, see Antolini, Bianca Maria, ‘Sonzogno’, Grove Music Online, ed. Macy (accessed 24 August 2006); also Marco Capra, ‘La Casa Editrice Sonzogno tra giornalismo e impresario’, Casa musicale Sonzogno: Cronologie, saggi, testimonianze, ed. Mario Morini and Nandi Ostali (Milan, 1995), 243–90.Google Scholar

23 See Tobia, Bruno, Una patria per gli Italiani: Spazi, itinerari, monumenti nell'Italia unita (1870–1900) (Rome, 1991), and Umberto Levra, Fare gli Italiani: Memoria e celebrazione del Risorgimento (Turin, 1992); also my ‘Verdi and Sacred Revivalism in Post-Unification Italy’.Google Scholar

24 Alessandro Parisotti, for example, wrote in his 1885 preface to Ricordi's Piccolo album di musica antica (1885 and 1891) that ‘the principal character that informed the composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was neatness [“schietezza”] and simplicity of form, great affect and the sense of suave serenity at every turn. Today's music, by contrast, is neurotic, full of shudders and violent contrasts.’ See also Carlo Piccardi, ‘Ossessione dell'italianità: Il primato perduto tra nostalgia classicistica e riscatto nazionale’, Nazionalismo e cosmopolitanismo nell'opera fra ‘800 e ‘900: Atti del 3° convegno internazionale ‘Ruggero Leoncavallo nel suo tempo’, locamo, Biblioteca Cantonale, 6–7 ottobre 1995, ed. Lorenza Guiot and Jürgen Maehder (Milan, 1998), 25–57. On the eighteenth-century references in Pagliacci, see also Johannes Streicher, ‘Del settecento riscritto: Intorno al metateatro dei Pagliacci’, Letteratura, musica e teatro al tempo di Ruggero Leoncavallo, ed. Guiot and Maehder, 89–102.Google Scholar

25 See for example Celio Benvenuto Coronaro, Gavotta per quintetto d'archi, ridotta per pianoforte (Milan, 1889); Alfredo Soffredini, Minuetto in La per quartetto d'archi (Milan, 1889); Marco Enrico Bossi, Le bal du grand père: Gavotte poudrée pour piano (Milan, c.1890); also the gavottes and minuets by Ugo Bassani, Giulio Ricordi and others in Scuola pratica di lettura a prima vista: 120 pezzi facili, dilettevoli e progressivi per pianoforte a 4 mani accuratamente diteggiati (Milan, 1889).Google Scholar

26 See Grimaudi, Gabriella, ‘Images of the South’, Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction, ed. David Forgacs and Robert Lumley (Oxford, 1998), 72–87 (p. 73).Google Scholar

27 Moe, The View from Vesuvius, 239.Google Scholar

28 Cited in Bragaglia, Pulcinella, 284.Google Scholar

29 See Morris, Jonathan, ‘Challenging Meridionalismo: Constructing a New History for Southern Italy’, The New History of the Italian South, ed. Lumley and Morris, 1–19 (p. 15). On regionalism, see Italian Regionalism: History, Identity, and Politics, ed. Carl Levy (New York, 1996).Google Scholar

30 A regional focus may help explain why certain operas were successes or failures, and why some were handed down in the repertory when others were not; a classic example in the verismo sphere is Giordano's Mala vita, which failed horribly in Naples. The regional context explains clearly why Mala vita could never succeed there: it presented the worst possible depiction of that city's cultures through the northern bias we have examined here. The work's reception was very different in the North. See Sansone, Matteo, ‘Giordano's Mala Vita: A ‘Verismo“ Opera Too True to be Good’, Music and Letters, 75 (1994), 381–400. Thinking regionally may also provide alternative narratives for significant influences on late nineteenth-century opera. Whereas young Italian composers are usually seen to have turned for inspiration outside Italy, reconsidering ‘Italy’ itself may also allow us to see how composers engaged with different perspectives from within the peninsula.CrossRefGoogle Scholar