Verismo
Encyclopedia
Verismo was an Italian literary movement which peaked between approximately 1875 and the early 1900s.
Giovanni Verga
and Luigi Capuana
were its main exponents and the authors of a verismo manifesto. Capuana published the novel Giacinta, generally regarded as the "manifesto" of Italian verismo. Unlike French naturalism, which was based on positivistic
ideals, Verga and Capuana rejected claims of the scientific nature and social usefulness of the movement.
Verismo is also employed by musicologists to refer to a post-Romantic operatic tradition associated with Italian composers such as Pietro Mascagni
, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, Umberto Giordano
and Giacomo Puccini
. They sought to bring the naturalism of influential late 19th-century writers such as Emile Zola
and Henrik Ibsen
into opera.
that began in 1890 with the first performance of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana
, peaked in the early 1900s, and lingered into the 1920s. The style is distinguished by realistic – sometimes sordid or violent – depictions of everyday life, especially the life of the contemporary lower classes. It by and large rejects the historical or mythical subjects associated with Romanticism
.
On the other hand, the intimate psychological encounters in realistic settings which characterize an Austro-Germanic work like Richard Strauss
's Der Rosenkavalier
(1911) are not ordinarily discussed in terms of Verismo because of the self-conscious 'period-costume' setting of Strauss' opera—and because its elite and intellectually refined atmosphere are at odds with the earthy operatic melodramas being written in Italy during the same period, which are more typically associated with Verismo opera.
The "realistic" approach of Verismo extends to music in that the score of a Verismo opera is for the most part continuous and is not divided into separate "numbers" in the score, which can be excised easily and performed in concert excerpts (as is the case with the operatic genres that preceded Verismo). This is not always true, however - Cavalleria rusticana, Pagliacci
, Tosca
, and other verismo operas have arias, duets and choruses that are constantly excerpted in recitals, and Turandot
(left incomplete at Puccini's death) marks a return to a 'numbers' style.
It is interesting to note that Bizet's Carmen
predated Cavalleria by 15 years. Carmen is essentially an archetypical Verismo opera: instead of kings and countesses the libretto features bullfighters, soldiers, factory workers and prostitutes embroiled in crime and violent passions.
's method. Indeed, Wagner's influence on Verismo is obvious. Act One of Die Walküre
and Act Three of Siegfried
contain the seeds of many future Verismo fragments and melodies.
On the other hand, it has been claimed that the use of the orchestra fundamentally differs between Wagner and Verismo, as follows: in Wagner, the orchestra needs not necessarily follow what the singers are presenting in emotion or even content (for instance, when the main character of Siegfried (Act 2) wonders who his parents are, a leitmotiv reminds us that we have already met them in the previous opera – a perception outside Siegfried's awareness which enhances our wider view of the plot). By contrast, in Verismo, Corazzol [2, p 263] claims that the orchestra merely "echoes and validates the voices" and thus the style offers "a regressive point of view": the orchestra can add nothing to the drama or to the audience's understanding, even if it can serve to deepen the music's emotionality, for example the use in Manon Lescaut
of the Tristan chord. The reference to Tristan is emotionally illustrative, but offers no new salient plot detail until the 20th century.
, for one) are classifiable as verist. And if one does not synonymize "Verismo" with "bloodshed", one could postulate that Puccini gave us the most perfect "realistic" opera in La Bohème
.
Though Bizet's Carmen
(1875) was the first gutsy slice-of-life opera, true Verismo came to the fore a decade and a half later in Italy, with the historic premiere (1890) of Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana
.
The most famous composers of Verismo opera, discounting Puccini, were Mascagni, Ruggero Leoncavallo
(whose Pagliacci
is often coupled with Cavalleria), Umberto Giordano, and Francesco Cilea
. There were, however, many other veristi: Franco Alfano
, best known however for completing Puccini's Turandot
, Alfredo Catalani
, Gustave Charpentier
(Louise
), Eugen d'Albert
(Tiefland
), Ignatz Waghalter
(Der Teufelsweg and Jugend), Alberto Franchetti
, Franco Leoni
, Jules Massenet
(La Navarraise
), Licinio Refice
, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari
, (I gioielli della Madonna
), and Riccardo Zandonai
.
The Italian verismo composers comprised a musicological group known in its day as the giovane scuola
("Young School").
), a symbolist work set in Japan (Iris
), and a couple of medieval romances (Isabeau
and Parisina
). These works are far from typical Verismo subject matter, yet they are written in the same general musical style as his more quintessential veristic subjects. Thus context is extremely important in understanding the intended meaning of "verismo", as it is used both as a description of the gritty, passionate, working-class dramas that the term was coined to describe, and also as the musical movement in which the giovane scuola were participants.
in the process. The most extreme exponents of Verismo vocalism sang habitually in a vociferous fashion, often forfeiting legato
to focus on the passionate aspect of the music. They would 'beef up' the timbre of their voices, use excessive amounts of vocal fold mass on their top notes, and often employ a conspicuous vibrato
in order to accentuate the emotionalism of their ardent interpretations. The results could be exciting in the theatre but such a strenuous mode of singing was not a recipe for vocal longevity. Some prominent practitioners of full-throttle Verismo singing during the movement's Italian lifespan (circa 1890 to circa 1930) include the sopranos Eugenia Burzio
, Rosina Storchio
and Adelaide Saraceni, the tenors Aureliano Pertile
, Cesar Vezzani
and Amadeo Bassi, and the baritones Mario Sammarco
and Eugenio Giraldoni
. Their method of singing can be sampled on numerous 78-rpm gramophone
recordings. See Michael Scott's two-volume survey The Record of Singing
, published in London by Duckworth in 1977/79, for an evaluation of most of these singers, and others of their Ilk, and a discussion of the adverse impact that Verismo music had on singing standards in Italy.
Such great early-20th century international operatic stars as Enrico Caruso, Rosa Ponselle
and Titta Ruffo
developed vocal techniques which harmoniously managed to combine fundamental bel canto precepts with a more 'modern', straightforward mode of ripe-toned singing when delivering Verismo music, and their example has influenced operatic performers down to this day (see Scott).
" group of painters, who were forerunners of the French Impressionists.
In literature, Giovanni Verga
mirrored the style of the Verismo painters. This famous, Sicilian-born writer of realist fiction lived in Florence
during the same period as them—1865–1867—and his best known book, Cavalleria rusticana, contains certain verbal parallels to the effects achieved on canvas by the Tuscan
landscape school of this era. "Espousing an approach that later put him in the camp of verismo (verism), his particular sentence structure and rhythm have some of the qualities of the macchia. Like the Macchiaioli, he was fascinated by topographical exactitude set in a nationalist framework"— to quote from Albert Boime
's work, The Art of the Macchia and the Risorgimento.
Giovanni Verga
Giovanni Verga
Giovanni Carmelo Verga was an Italian realist writer, best known for his depictions of life in Sicily, and especially for the short story "Cavalleria Rusticana" and the novel I Malavoglia .-Life and career:The first son of Giovanni Battista Catalano Verga and Caterina Di Mauro,...
and Luigi Capuana
Luigi Capuana
Luigi Capuana was an Italian author and journalist and one of the most important members of the Verist movement. He was a contemporary of Giovanni Verga, both having been born in the province of Catania within a year of each other. He was also one of the first authors influenced by the works of...
were its main exponents and the authors of a verismo manifesto. Capuana published the novel Giacinta, generally regarded as the "manifesto" of Italian verismo. Unlike French naturalism, which was based on positivistic
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
ideals, Verga and Capuana rejected claims of the scientific nature and social usefulness of the movement.
Verismo is also employed by musicologists to refer to a post-Romantic operatic tradition associated with Italian composers such as Pietro Mascagni
Pietro Mascagni
Pietro Antonio Stefano Mascagni was an Italian composer most noted for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece Cavalleria rusticana caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music...
, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, Umberto Giordano
Umberto Giordano
Umberto Menotti Maria Giordano was an Italian composer, mainly of operas.He was born in Foggia in Puglia, southern Italy, and studied under Paolo Serrao at the Conservatoire of Naples...
and Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
. They sought to bring the naturalism of influential late 19th-century writers such as Emile Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
and Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
into opera.
Verismo as an opera style
Internationally, the term is more widely understood to refer to a style of Italian operaOpera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
that began in 1890 with the first performance of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga based on his short story. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on May 17, 1890 at the Teatro...
, peaked in the early 1900s, and lingered into the 1920s. The style is distinguished by realistic – sometimes sordid or violent – depictions of everyday life, especially the life of the contemporary lower classes. It by and large rejects the historical or mythical subjects associated with Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
.
On the other hand, the intimate psychological encounters in realistic settings which characterize an Austro-Germanic work like Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
's Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from the novel Les amours du chevalier de Faublas by Louvet de Couvrai and Molière’s comedy Monsieur de Pourceaugnac...
(1911) are not ordinarily discussed in terms of Verismo because of the self-conscious 'period-costume' setting of Strauss' opera—and because its elite and intellectually refined atmosphere are at odds with the earthy operatic melodramas being written in Italy during the same period, which are more typically associated with Verismo opera.
The "realistic" approach of Verismo extends to music in that the score of a Verismo opera is for the most part continuous and is not divided into separate "numbers" in the score, which can be excised easily and performed in concert excerpts (as is the case with the operatic genres that preceded Verismo). This is not always true, however - Cavalleria rusticana, Pagliacci
Pagliacci
Pagliacci , sometimes incorrectly rendered with a definite article as I Pagliacci, is an opera consisting of a prologue and two acts written and composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo. It recounts the tragedy of a jealous husband in a commedia dell'arte troupe...
, Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...
, and other verismo operas have arias, duets and choruses that are constantly excerpted in recitals, and Turandot
Turandot
Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot...
(left incomplete at Puccini's death) marks a return to a 'numbers' style.
It is interesting to note that Bizet's Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
predated Cavalleria by 15 years. Carmen is essentially an archetypical Verismo opera: instead of kings and countesses the libretto features bullfighters, soldiers, factory workers and prostitutes embroiled in crime and violent passions.
Relationship with the music of Wagner
The purpose of each bar of a Verismo score is to convey or reflect scenery, action, or a character's feelings. In this approach, Verismo composers may appear to have followed Richard WagnerRichard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's method. Indeed, Wagner's influence on Verismo is obvious. Act One of Die Walküre
Die Walküre
Die Walküre , WWV 86B, is the second of the four operas that form the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner...
and Act Three of Siegfried
Siegfried (opera)
Siegfried is the third of the four operas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner. It received its premiere at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 16 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of The Ring...
contain the seeds of many future Verismo fragments and melodies.
On the other hand, it has been claimed that the use of the orchestra fundamentally differs between Wagner and Verismo, as follows: in Wagner, the orchestra needs not necessarily follow what the singers are presenting in emotion or even content (for instance, when the main character of Siegfried (Act 2) wonders who his parents are, a leitmotiv reminds us that we have already met them in the previous opera – a perception outside Siegfried's awareness which enhances our wider view of the plot). By contrast, in Verismo, Corazzol [2, p 263] claims that the orchestra merely "echoes and validates the voices" and thus the style offers "a regressive point of view": the orchestra can add nothing to the drama or to the audience's understanding, even if it can serve to deepen the music's emotionality, for example the use in Manon Lescaut
Manon Lescaut (Puccini)
Manon Lescaut is an opera in four acts by Giacomo Puccini. The story is based on the 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost....
of the Tristan chord. The reference to Tristan is emotionally illustrative, but offers no new salient plot detail until the 20th century.
Exponents of the Verismo style of composition
Although worldwide Giacomo Puccini is generally accepted as the greatest Verismo composer, this claim is disputed by certain musical commentators in Italy who place him outside the Verismo school. Other critics consider Puccini to have had merely a partial Verismo involvement. The most accepted modern-day view is that at least a few of his operas (ToscaTosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...
, for one) are classifiable as verist. And if one does not synonymize "Verismo" with "bloodshed", one could postulate that Puccini gave us the most perfect "realistic" opera in La Bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
.
Though Bizet's Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
(1875) was the first gutsy slice-of-life opera, true Verismo came to the fore a decade and a half later in Italy, with the historic premiere (1890) of Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga based on his short story. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on May 17, 1890 at the Teatro...
.
The most famous composers of Verismo opera, discounting Puccini, were Mascagni, Ruggero Leoncavallo
Ruggero Leoncavallo
Ruggero Leoncavallo was an Italian opera composer. His two-act work Pagliacci remains one of the most popular works in the repertory, appearing as number 20 on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide.-Biography:...
(whose Pagliacci
Pagliacci
Pagliacci , sometimes incorrectly rendered with a definite article as I Pagliacci, is an opera consisting of a prologue and two acts written and composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo. It recounts the tragedy of a jealous husband in a commedia dell'arte troupe...
is often coupled with Cavalleria), Umberto Giordano, and Francesco Cilea
Francesco Cilea
Francesco Cilea was an Italian composer. Today he is particularly known for his operas L'arlesiana and Adriana Lecouvreur.-Biography:...
. There were, however, many other veristi: Franco Alfano
Franco Alfano
Franco Alfano was an Italian composer and pianist. Best known today for his opera Risurrezione and above all for having completed Puccini's opera Turandot in 1926. He had considerable success with several of his own works during his lifetime.- Biography :He was born in Posillipo, Naples...
, best known however for completing Puccini's Turandot
Turandot
Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot...
, Alfredo Catalani
Alfredo Catalani
Alfredo Catalani was an Italian operatic composer. He is best remembered for his operas Loreley and La Wally...
, Gustave Charpentier
Gustave Charpentier
Gustave Charpentier, , born in Dieuze, Moselle on 25 June 1860, died Paris, 18 February 1956) was a French composer, best known for his opera Louise.-Life and career:...
(Louise
Louise (opera)
Louise is an opera in four acts by Gustave Charpentier to an original French libretto by the composer, with some contributions by Saint-Pol-Roux, a symbolist poet and inspiration of the surrealists....
), Eugen d'Albert
Eugen d'Albert
Eugen Francis Charles d'Albert was a Scottish-born German pianist and composer.Educated in Britain, d'Albert showed early musical talent and, at the age of seventeen, he won a scholarship to study in Austria...
(Tiefland
Tiefland (opera)
Tiefland is an opera in a prologue and three acts by Eugen d'Albert, to a libretto in German by Rudolph Lothar. Based on the 1896 Catalan play Terra baixa by Àngel Guimerà, Tiefland was d'Albert's seventh opera, and is the one which is now the best known.-Performance history:Tiefland was first...
), Ignatz Waghalter
Ignatz Waghalter
Ignatz Waghalter was a Polish-German composer and conductor.-Early years:Waghalter was born into a poor but musically-accomplished Jewish family in Warsaw. His eldest brother, Henryk Waghalter , became a renowned cellist at the Warsaw Conservatory. Wladyslaw , the youngest Waghalter brother,...
(Der Teufelsweg and Jugend), Alberto Franchetti
Alberto Franchetti
Alberto Franchetti was an Italian opera composer.-Biography:Alberto Franchetti was born in Turin, a Jewish nobleman of independent means. He studied first in Venice, then in Dresden under Felix Draeseke, and finally at the Munich Conservatory under Josef Rheinberger. His first major success...
, Franco Leoni
Franco Leoni
Franco Leoni was an Italian opera composer. After training in Milan, he made most of his career in England, composing for Covent Garden and West End theatres. He is best known for the opera L'Oracolo, written for Covent Garden but taken up successfully by the Metropolitan Opera in New York...
, Jules Massenet
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas...
(La Navarraise
La Navarraise
La Navarraise is an opera in one act by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Jules Claretie and Henri Cain, based on Claretie's novel La Cigarette...
), Licinio Refice
Licinio Refice
Licinio Refice was an Italian composer and priest. With Monsignor Lorenzo Perosi, he represented the new direction taken by Italian church music in the twentieth century....
, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari was an Italian composer and teacher. He is best known for his comic operas such as Il segreto di Susanna...
, (I gioielli della Madonna
I gioielli della Madonna
I gioielli della Madonna is an opera in three acts by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari to an Italian libretto by Carlo Zangarini and Enrico Golisciani, based on news accounts of a real event....
), and Riccardo Zandonai
Riccardo Zandonai
Riccardo Zandonai was an Italian composer.-Biography:Zandonai was born in Borgo Sacco, Rovereto, then part of Austria–Hungary....
.
The Italian verismo composers comprised a musicological group known in its day as the giovane scuola
Giovane Scuola
The giovane scuola refers to a group of Italian composers who succeeded Verdi and flourished in the late 19th and early 20th century...
("Young School").
Other musical usages
The term "Verismo" is also sometimes used to describe the highly recognizable musical style that was prevalent among Italian composers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For most of the veristi, traditionally veristic subjects accounted for only some of their operas. Mascagni himself wrote a pastoral comedy (L'amico FritzL'amico Fritz
L'amico Fritz is an opera in three acts by Pietro Mascagni, premiered in 1891 from a libretto by P. Suardon , based on the French novel L'ami Fritz by Émile Erckmann and Pierre-Alexandre Chatrian.While the opera enjoyed some success in its day and is probably Mascagni's most famous work after...
), a symbolist work set in Japan (Iris
Iris (opera)
Iris is an opera in three acts by Pietro Mascagni to an original Italian libretto by Luigi Illica. Its first performance was at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 22 November 1898.The opera is through-composed and set in Japan during legendary times...
), and a couple of medieval romances (Isabeau
Isabeau
Isabeau is a leggenda drammatica or opera in three parts by Pietro Mascagni, 1911, from an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica. Mascagni conducted its first performance on June 2, 1911 at the Teatro Coliseo, Buenos Aires....
and Parisina
Parisina (Mascagni)
Parisina is a tragedia lirica, or opera, in four acts by Pietro Mascagni. Gabriele D'Annunzio wrote the Italian libretto after Byron's poem Parisina .It was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on December 15, 1913....
). These works are far from typical Verismo subject matter, yet they are written in the same general musical style as his more quintessential veristic subjects. Thus context is extremely important in understanding the intended meaning of "verismo", as it is used both as a description of the gritty, passionate, working-class dramas that the term was coined to describe, and also as the musical movement in which the giovane scuola were participants.
Verismo singers
In Italy, many opera singers became Verismo acolytes—rejecting the traditional tenets of elegant, 19th century bel cantoBel canto
Bel canto , along with a number of similar constructions , is an Italian opera term...
in the process. The most extreme exponents of Verismo vocalism sang habitually in a vociferous fashion, often forfeiting legato
Legato
In musical notation the Italian word legato indicates that musical notes are played or sung smoothly and connected. That is, in transitioning from note to note, there should be no intervening silence...
to focus on the passionate aspect of the music. They would 'beef up' the timbre of their voices, use excessive amounts of vocal fold mass on their top notes, and often employ a conspicuous vibrato
Vibrato
Vibrato is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms of two factors: the amount of pitch variation and the speed with which the pitch is varied .-Vibrato and...
in order to accentuate the emotionalism of their ardent interpretations. The results could be exciting in the theatre but such a strenuous mode of singing was not a recipe for vocal longevity. Some prominent practitioners of full-throttle Verismo singing during the movement's Italian lifespan (circa 1890 to circa 1930) include the sopranos Eugenia Burzio
Eugenia Burzio
Eugenia Burzio was an Italian operatic soprano known for her vibrant voice and passionate style of singing.She was particularly prominent in the verismo repertoire, creating the role of Delia Terzaghi in Ruggero Leoncavallo's Goffredo Mameli as well as singing Minnie in the Italian premiere of...
, Rosina Storchio
Rosina Storchio
Rosina Storchio was an important Italian lyric soprano who starred in the world premieres of operas by Puccini, Leoncavallo, Mascagni and Giordano...
and Adelaide Saraceni, the tenors Aureliano Pertile
Aureliano Pertile
Aureliano Pertile was an Italian lyric-dramatic tenor. He is considered to have been one of the most exciting operatic artists of the inter-war period, and one of the most important tenors of the entire 20th century.- Life and career :Pertile was born in Montagnana, Northern Italy, 18 days after...
, Cesar Vezzani
César Vezzani
César Vezzani was a French/Corsican operatic tenor who became a leading exponent of French grand opera through several decades. -Career:...
and Amadeo Bassi, and the baritones Mario Sammarco
Mario Sammarco
Mario Sammarco was an Italian operatic baritone noted for his histrionic ability.-Biography:...
and Eugenio Giraldoni
Eugenio Giraldoni
Eugenio Giraldoni was an Italian operatic baritone who enjoyed a substantial international career. In 1900, he created the role of Baron Scarpia....
. Their method of singing can be sampled on numerous 78-rpm gramophone
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
recordings. See Michael Scott's two-volume survey The Record of Singing
The Record of Singing
The Record of Singing is a compilation of classical-music singing from the first half of the 20th century, the era of the 78-rpm record.It was issued on LP by EMI, successor to the British company His Master's Voice — perhaps the leading organization in the early history of audio recording.The...
, published in London by Duckworth in 1977/79, for an evaluation of most of these singers, and others of their Ilk, and a discussion of the adverse impact that Verismo music had on singing standards in Italy.
Such great early-20th century international operatic stars as Enrico Caruso, Rosa Ponselle
Rosa Ponselle
Rosa Ponselle , was an American operatic soprano with a large, opulent voice. She sang mainly at the New York Metropolitan Opera and is generally considered by music critics to have been one of the greatest sopranos of the past 100 years.-Early life:She was born Rosa Ponzillo on January 22, 1897,...
and Titta Ruffo
Titta Ruffo
Titta Ruffo , born as Ruffo Titta Cafiero, was an Italian opera star who had a major international singing career. Known as the "Voce del leone" , he was greatly admired, even by rival baritones, such as Giuseppe De Luca, who said of Ruffo: "His was not a voice, it was a miracle" Titta Ruffo (9...
developed vocal techniques which harmoniously managed to combine fundamental bel canto precepts with a more 'modern', straightforward mode of ripe-toned singing when delivering Verismo music, and their example has influenced operatic performers down to this day (see Scott).
Painting & literature
"Verismo" also refers to a 19th century Italian painting style. This style was practised most characteristically by the "I MacchiaioliMacchiaioli
The Macchiaioli were a group of Italian painters active in Tuscany in the second half of the nineteenth century, who, breaking with the antiquated conventions taught by the Italian academies of art, did much of their painting outdoors in order to capture natural light, shade, and colour...
" group of painters, who were forerunners of the French Impressionists.
In literature, Giovanni Verga
Giovanni Verga
Giovanni Carmelo Verga was an Italian realist writer, best known for his depictions of life in Sicily, and especially for the short story "Cavalleria Rusticana" and the novel I Malavoglia .-Life and career:The first son of Giovanni Battista Catalano Verga and Caterina Di Mauro,...
mirrored the style of the Verismo painters. This famous, Sicilian-born writer of realist fiction lived in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
during the same period as them—1865–1867—and his best known book, Cavalleria rusticana, contains certain verbal parallels to the effects achieved on canvas by the Tuscan
Tuscan
-Linguistic phenomena:* Tuscan dialect, the ancestor of the modern Italian language* Tuscan gorgia, a sound-Creative works:* Under the Tuscan Sun * Under the Tuscan Sun -Sports cars:...
landscape school of this era. "Espousing an approach that later put him in the camp of verismo (verism), his particular sentence structure and rhythm have some of the qualities of the macchia. Like the Macchiaioli, he was fascinated by topographical exactitude set in a nationalist framework"— to quote from Albert Boime
Albert Boime
Albert Boime was a scholar and author on art history who was a professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles for three decades, until his death.-Early life:...
's work, The Art of the Macchia and the Risorgimento.