Opera and Verismo: Regressive Points of View and the Artifice of Alienation

Author(s): Adriana Guarnieri Corazzol and Roger Parker

Source: Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Mar., 1993), pp. 39-53
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/823749
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Cambridge Opera Journal, 5, 1, 39-53

Opera and verismo: Regressive points of view

and the artifice of alienation

ADRIANA GUARNIERI CORAZZOL

Although the term 'verismo' emerged in both literature and opera

the same period (in novels and spoken theatre around the 1870s, in
the 1890s), the modern tendency has been to regard this as a coin
consequence.1 However, it is perhaps worth returning to the q
of recent studies in literary verismo, some of which offer new p
even contribute to a re-definition of operatic verismo. I shall star
the hypothesis that a new comparison between these two types of
lead to a common definition.
As a parallel to the prose writings of the three greatest veristi -
and De Roberto - and to those of their lesser contemporaries,
to consider the total output of the creators of operatic verism
the so-called giovane scuola, a group that should include the e
born in the 1860s - not only Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Puccini, Giord
but also Smareglia and Franchetti2 - all of whom were involv
exclusively, with rustic or in some way 'brutal' subjects. What
identify characteristics shared between musical theatre and prose of
Egon Voss has rejected any important similarity, basing his argument primari
letter/preface to 'L'amante di Gramigna'; see his 'Verismo in der Oper', Die Musi
31 (1978), 303-13. Voss points out the prevalence of historical and exotic subje
of social criticism, the elevated language of the libretti, the lack of psychologic
and the theatricality - all in his opinion important non-veristic elements of so-
opera. See also Luigi Baldacci, 'Il libretto di Cavalleria rusticana', in Pietro and
eds., Cavalleria rusticana 1890-1990: Cento anni di un capolavoro (Milan, 1990)
Manfred Kelkel, Naturalisme, ve'risme et realisme dans l'ope'ra de 1890 a 1930 (Pa
235-51.
2 The term giovane scuola is contemporary to the period; but it refers to all composers of
that generation. In charting the history of the verismo movement in this broad sense, some
studies deal with problems of definition. See, for example, Mario Rinaldi, Musica e verismo
(Rome, 1932); Gianandrea Gavazzeni, I nemici della musica (Milan, 1965); L'opera, 11/2
(January-March, 1966: a number dedicated to verismo); Giovanni Ugolini, 'Umberto
Giordano e il problema dell'opera verista', in Mario Morini, ed., Umberto Giordano (Milan,
1968), 17-87; Renato Mariani, Verismo in musica e altri studi (Florence, 1976); Carlo
Parmentola, 'La giovane scuola', in Alberto Basso, ed., Storia dell'opera (Turin, 1977), 1/2,
499-587; Claudio Casini, 'II verismo musicale italiano', in Mascagni (Milan, 1984), 9-29; Marco
Vallora, 'La storia di "Cavalleria" e lo spettro del verismo' and 'Plagi, sipari, pagliacci', in
Gae Aulenti and Marco Valora, eds., Quartetto della maledizione. Materialiper Rigoletto,
'Cavalleria'e 'Pagliacci, 'Fanciulla' (Milan, 1985), 37-92. For a more narrowly defined study
of verismo, but one viewed within a broader European context, see Kelkel, Naturalisme (n.
1).

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40 Adriana Guarnieri Corazzol

that reach beyond the level of plot. We need, then, to refer to the entire verismo
period (the final thirty years of the nineteenth century for prose fiction, and
the twenty years from 1890 to 1910 for opera), and to note that the regional
or lower-class urban setting is only one of many shared aspects. Verga, the most
distinguished exponent of literary verismo, came to Vita dei campi (1878) and
I Malavoglia (1880) by way of 'worldly' novels about high society, although one
can see traces of his later themes in early work, especially 'Nedda (Bozzetto sici-
liano)' (1874). He was undergoing a period of crisis, and imagined such 'native',
socially low subject matter as merely the first stage in a projected human comedy
(a cycle about the 'vanquished') that would progress through various ambiences
from the humblest to the most exalted; his programme is set forth in the Preface
to I Malavoglia, which acts as a kind of formal introduction to the new style.
I Malavoglia was quickly acknowledged as a masterpiece, which in a certain sense
locked its author into verismo, or at least into regional and 'low-life' realism.3
La duchessa di Leyra, the third and most ambitious novel in the series, was still
incomplete after thirty years, while the fourth and fifth volumes, L'onorevole
Scipione and L'uomo di lusso, remained mere sketches; but the latter were to have
been examples of a more 'elevated' style, with Mastro-don Gesualdo (1889) as an
intermediate stage. As for the second of our 'famous' veristi, Capuana wrote
regional stories and a great deal of dialect theatre, but primarily concentrated
on bourgeois subjects, especially impersonal illustrations of feminine pathologies
(Profili di donne, Giacinta, Ribrezzo, Profumo). His style is most appropriately
labelled naturalism in the French tradition, and only occasionally verismo in the
strict sense. Our final author, De Roberto, was fond of rustic subjects in his
youth, but his great mature novels take place in aristocratic, political settings
(I vicere, L'imperio).
In opera we might also isolate a strand of traditionally veristic subjects within
a much broader social canvas. Although recent historians have tended to restrict
their definition of musical verismo to 'repugnant', rustic dramas or those of urban
low life,4 the recurrent features of opera during this period - especially as regards
vocal style and musico-dramatic structure - are also fully evident in settings of
aristocratic and bourgeois subjects, whether contemporary or historical. These
features include a marked musical characterisation of the geographic or social
milieu, simple, well-constructed plots, vocal writing exploiting the high register
of each voice type; irregular rhythms and phrases, spoken or shouted utterances,
heavily charged melodies; 'physiological' rhythmic ideas, breathless harmonic
rhythm, overall tonal stability; a dynamic progress through climaxes of tension,
orchestral build-ups and loud, excited vocal climaxes; and recurring themes, mostly

3 On the background to Verga's so-called conversion, see especially Giacomo Debenedetti,

Verga e il naturalismo. Quaderni inediti, ed. Renata Debenedetti (Milan, 1976).
See, for example, Rossana Dalmonte, 'II prologo de I Pagliacci. Nota sul verismo in musica',
Musica/Realta, 8 (1982), 105-14. However, for a discussion of the idea of operatic verismo
derived from its first models (Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci), see Giovanni Morelli, 'Quelle
lor belle incognite borghesi. Sulla popolarita nazionale dell'opera lirica italiana, da Rigoletto
alla Fanciulla attraverso Cavalleria-Pagliacci', in Anna Laura Bellina and Giovanni Morelli,
eds., L'Europa musicale. Un nuovo rinascimento: La civilta dell'ascolto (Florence, 1988), 245-96.

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 Opera and verismo 41

identified with the voice. What is more, one might also identify a typical dramatic
structure: a progression from prelude to dramatic action (always a passionate con-
flict), then to symphonic intermezzo, then to a break in the action by means
of an unpitched vocal catharsis, and finally to an orchestral peroration. Puccini
handled this particular structure in an individual manner, favouring a 'descriptive'
act in two parts (the first devoted to ambience, the other to characters), a central
act or acts concerned with plot narration, and a final act that is either evocative
or explanatory, with a 'lament' for the protagonist. Other general features are
the conversational style (or rather, in Puccini, the 'singing conversations'), the
'global' nature of the stage settings, and a tendency towards characteristic closed
numbers (choruses and on-stage canzoni), some of them instrumental (for example,
pieces featuring violin solo).
Given this basically stable dramatic model on the one hand, and socially wide-
ranging plots on the other, a useful definition of verismo might be as a historically
delimited 'vogue' encompassing - as in the spoken theatre - various types of
subject (low-life dramas, historical costume dramas, bourgeois comedies). This
'vogue' is evident in almost the entire corpus of works, the sole exceptions being
musically or dramatically eccentric pieces such as Mascagni's Guglielmo Ratcliff
(1895), Smareglia's Lafalena (1897) and, of course, Verdi's Falstaff(1893). However,
to define the phenomenon in these generic, functional and exclusively historical
terms, one must see verismo opera in a purely negative light, as neither fantastic
nor visionary nor experimental.
It seems more constructive, though, to view verismo opera as intimately bound
up with a crisis in the relationship between language and subject matter. Con-
fronted with a market that for twenty or thirty years had been expanding decisively
towards the lower classes, the period saw a thorough reassessment of the idea
of socially defined 'genres'. The crisis is usually defined in terms of 'realism',
which in part means stylistic departure from a norm (for example, towards the
tragedy of humble people or the comedy of those in power), and, more basically,
an incongruity between style and subject.5 Nineteenth-century realism in art,
literature and music was in this sense a 'bill of rights' for low-life, brutal or 'vulgar'
subjects - their entrance into legitimate culture.
We have, then, a first level of convergence between opera and literature: the
variety of social milieux treated in a tragic vein, a tendency that corresponds,
on a smaller scale, to the seemingly still-Romantic idea of mixing expressive registers
(the tragic, comic, sentimental-pathetic).6
5 On this topic, see especially Carl Dahlhaus, Realism in Nineteenth-Century Music (Cambridge,
1985).
6 While planning the cycle of the 'vanquished', Verga wrote in 1878 to Salvatore Paola Verdura:
'I have in mind a work that will be beautiful and grand, a sort of phantasmagoria of the
struggle of life, and it will stretch from the rag-picker to the minister and to the artist,
and assume all the forms, from ambition to lust for profit, and lend itself to a thousand
representations of human grotesqueness ... In short, I want to collect the dramatic, the
ridiculous or the comic sides of all social types, each type with its own characteristics, each
with the efforts they make to go forward in this immense wave.' The letter is quoted in
the Introduction to Giovanni Verga, IMalavoglia - Mastro-don Gesualdo, ed. Concetta Greco
Lanza (Rome, 1984), x.

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42 Adriana Guarnieri Corazzol

However, if we restrict our comparison to opera and prose literature, with

spoken theatre holding a kind of middle ground (the 'operatic' nature of certain
of Verga's stage works being an obvious case in point), further levels of convergence
become apparent.7 On the one hand, in verismo opera narrative structure assumes
greater prominence than it had previously, and thus more attention is given, at
least in terms of the Italian tradition, to the instrumental component. Indeed,
the orchestra contributes ever more decisively towards defining scenic events;
it articulates the story through thematic structure, almost functioning as a narrator.
The novel and short story, on the other hand, tend towards the theatrical, with
a basically mute relationship between the author and the characters. Dialogue
becomes more important, and authors disappear into their tale, cancelling them-
selves out as authors.8 More than this, in verismo opera the traditional balance
between instrumental and vocal textures is reformulated: there is an exchange
of material, a sense of rapport between voice and orchestra - especially in Puccini.
In literature this is paralleled by the move from omnipotent authors ('portrait
painters' such as Balzac), to impersonal testimony (as in Flaubert) and then to
scientific - i.e., medical - observation of ambiences and temperaments (as in Zola).
Both Verga and Capuana favour the impersonal: the former with, for example,
'L'amante di Gramigna';9 and the latter beginning with Giacinta (1879), a study
of female pathology in the context of provincial social climbing. In both cases
there is what we might call a poetics, as well as a practice, of anti-subjectivity.
In the case of lower-class subjects - the strict definition of verismo - this imperso-
nality assumes a special quality. The rustic or regional short story or novel uses
'choral language': the voice of a collective narrator, which requires the emotional
and expressive participation of an anonymous narrator inside the story; or it
uses the reflexive voice of individual characters in 'free indirect' discourse (erlebte
Rede), with passages of interior monologue10 often exhibiting a kind of theatrical
emotional turbulence"1 and a preference for dialogic structures. The narration,
in short, tends towards choral action, and has the immediacy and gestures of
direct contact. A typical example would be De Roberto's novella 'Rivolta', which

7 On the melodramatic nature of Verga's theatrical works, in particular 'La lupa'

(simultaneously a libretto and a drama), see Siro Ferrone, II teatro di Verga (Rome, 1972),
191-252; for a general survey of theatrical production during the period, including opera,
see Teatro dell'Italia unita, ed. Siro Ferrone (Milan, 1980).
8 On this general topic, see in particular Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, II (Chicago, 1985).
9 In the preface to the tale, which is in the form of a letter 'To Salvatore Farina', Verga wrote
of the 'simple human fact ... collected on footpaths through the fields' and declared that
'the artist's hand is absolutely invisible'; Giovanni Verga, 'L'amante di Gramigna' (from Vita
dei campi), in Tutte le novelle, Le opere di Giovanni Verga, ed. Lina and Vito Perroni, I
(Milan, 1941), 203-10, here 203-4.
10 For definitions of the role of the narrator in the novel (point of view, focalisation; free
indirect, interior monologue; narrating voice, implied author, etc.), see Seymour Chatman,
Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, 1978); Gerard Genette,
Narrative Discourse (Ithaca, 1980); and Angelo Marchese, L 'officina del racconto. Semiotica
della narrativita (Milan, 1983).
This, for example, is the type found in Homo!, a collection of tales by Capuana (Milan,
1883); see also Carlo Alberto Madrignani, Capuana e il naturalismo (Bari, 1970), 186-96.

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 Opera and verismo 43

comes from the collection La sorte (1887):12 a violent event - the suicide of an
unknown man at an inn - leads to a story crowded with policemen, neighbours
and people at the inn, all expressed in extremely theatrical language. In this context
it is significant that Russian formalist analyses of realist novels developed a distinct-
ion between a tale tout court and a 'scenic tale'.13
However, in discussions of literary verismo the use of an anonymous narrator
- traditionally defined (by Russo and Manacorda) using musical terminology as
'cantilena' or 'chorality' - has recently been characterised as a 'regressive point
of view',14 the adoption of a popular viewpoint that is internal to those represented.
This is the impersonality Verga theorised in his Preface to I Malavoglia, where
he wrote that 'the mechanism of the passions' in the 'low spheres' is 'less compli-
cated', and that language must attempt to reflect this.15 By declaring that he
had suppressed his literary sophistication in a 'sincere and dispassionate study',
Verga in effect proposed lowering the linguistic level to match the social level
of the plot. The distinction between author and narrator was clear: the latter
must adapt to the characters emotively, while the author - enclosed within the
artifice of his writing - can dissociate himself from the narrative, taking a 'colonial
attitude' governed by strategies of simulation. Rustic verismo thus stands out
both as a special case of naturalism and as a mode of writing; as an invented
language, almost a new, 'low' style of the tragic and melodramatic. Verga emerges
as both rustic and Romantic - as theatrical in the sense of rendering psychological
passions in a reduced, 'primitive' form - in works such as 'Nedda', the short
stories 'Cavalleria rusticana' and 'La lupa', and - at least partly - in IMalavoglia.'6
If we agree that the orchestra in late nineteenth-century opera functions as a
narrator,17 then the connection between Verga's regressive point of view and
the new relationship between voice and orchestra in verismo opera becomes clear.
The orchestra increases in importance in the manner described earlier as 'free
12 Federico De Roberto, La sorte (Palermo, 1990).
13 See, for example, Boris Eikenbaum, Leskovi sovremennaja proza - Genri i teorija novelly (1925);
in particular 'on occasions [dialogues] assume a genuinely dramatic form, in the sense that
they no longer function in the development of the characters, but rather function as elements
in the plot, thus constituting the fundamental constituent of the form. The novel in this
way breaks every link with narrative form and transforms itself into a combination of scenic
dialogue and broad scene description, serving as a commentary on the stage set, the gestures,
the intonation'.
4 See Guido Baldi, L'artificio della regressione. Tecnica narrativa e ideologia nel Verga verista
(Naples, 1980).
15 Verga (see n. 6), 21-2.
16 Debenedetti (see n. 3), 244, writes of an 'operatic scene' when discussing the opening of
'Nedda'; he also refers to narrative progress through 'peaks' (single, critical events): in essence,
then, the techniques of Italian opera.
For a general discussion of verismo opera as a 'musical novel', see Dahlhaus (n. 5), 87-94;
on the opera composer as 'hidden narrator' (functioning through a system of motifs), see
Lorenzo Bianconi, 'Introduzione' to La drammaturgia musicale, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi
(Bologna, 1986), 7-51, esp. 38; on the presence of a narrator in the opera-novel, see Carl
Dahlhaus, 'Zeitstrukturen in der Oper', Die Musikforschung, 34 (1981), 2-11. For more recent
discussions of operatic narrativity, see Carolyn Abbate, Unsung Voices. Opera and Musical
Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1991); and Luca Zoppelli, 'Der Ring des
Nibelungen: Proposta per una lettura narratologica dell'epos wagneriano', Studi musicali, 20
(1991), 317-38.

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44 Adriana Guarnieri Corazzol

indirect' discourse, echoing and in some cases equalling the voices. It has a dramati-
cally active role as a discourse with marked internal focalisation; symphonic voca-
lity is at the same emotive level as that of the characters and can play host, in
a prelude for example, to an off-stage voice; it is alone 'on stage' during the sym-
phonic intermezzo, that is, at the dramatically decisive moment preceding the
catastrophe; and finally it has the gestural and elemental character of a collective
narrator.

From this perspective, the orchestra's harmonic and rhythmic gesture

opera are also regressive and simplifying, at least in comparison with
phonic styles of the period.18 The octave and unison doublings
'sviolinate'), the use of pedals and tremolos, and various ostinato
redundant or iterative techniques that 'degrade' the writing, giving it
acter, almost one of direct speech - gestural rather than abstract or
orality can be heard as artifice, a 'simulation of speech'. The so-ca
triviality of Leoncavallo, for example, may well have been a delibe
at veristic impersonality: we should recall that Leoncavallo, far from b
was in fact the most literary of the verismo composers.
One might place the melodramatic element of verismo opera at the
as this stylistic trivialisation. Note the similarity between opera and
novels and plays:19 minimal formal elaboration and an excess of
naturalistic or 'Romantic' substance, a tendency towards escapism thr
tures or exoticism; gothic novel stereotypes (the young girl pursued, t
bandit); formulas from the roman noir such as disguises and recognit
Indeed, verismo opera has much else in common with popular ninetee
fiction; it is, for example, both emotionally aggressive and sociall
nevertheless exotic in its portrayal of an historical, geographical or soc
This melodrama - a repository of emotional exhibitionism, the inaut
lime of elevated gestures in an unsophisticated context - is generally c
of the 'retarded' Romanticism of Italian opera, as a tell-tale sign of its
However, fin-de-siecle Italy saw both a naturalist movement in popul
- its social-urban themes coinciding with the expansion beyond Italy
Scapigliatura (Cavallotti, Cameroni) - and popular verismo (such as Ma
II ventre di Napoli), which emerged primarily in mass-market jou
we find works by Valera, Tronconi, Arrighi and Mastriani) that the v

18 It is from this perspective that Cavalleria rusticana has reaped its great twentieth-c
success; see in particular W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays, 3rd edn (L
1975), 481-2. Auden's appreciation derives precisely from his sense of the style: the
and 'vital' (i.e., artistic) existence of both awkward music and awkward characters.
On the melodramatic nature of verismo opera, see above all Carl Dahlhaus, Ninetee
Century Music (Berkeley, 1989), 351-9. For a definition of melodrama in historical c
from melodrame to nineteenth-century narrative, see Peter Brooks, The Melodrama
Imagination (New Haven, 1976).
20 Amongst the various models in prose fiction, perhaps the most obvious are the nov
Eugene Sue and Alexandre Dumas pere, in both of whom the dialogue tends towar
constant state of emotional excitement.

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 Opera and verismo 45

composers in part assimilated.21 In his historico-aesthetic treatise of 1900, Amin-

tore Galli, a leading figure in the group associated with the publisher Sonzogno
(who cultivated the most 'plebeian' and transgressive figures), defines 'passion'
in exaggeratedly sentimental and Romantic terms, almost as if to justify on a
theoretical level the emotive, excessive nature of Sonzogno's verismo school.22
Since we often use formal sophistication as a basis for distinguishing between
works written for entertainment/consumption and those on a 'higher level', we
need to consider the problem of authorial intention if we are to evaluate verismo's
melodramatic character, and to decide how much artifice contributes to the melo-
dramatic imagination. The use of popular literary sources - typical of operas of
this period from La Wally to Lafanciulla del West - could be interpreted as artifice,
a way in which the composer dissociates himself by 'lowering' the instrumental
narrator to the characters' level. This was the case even with composers who
were eminently capable of handling unusual dramatic creations (for example, Mas-
cagni and his experimental relationship between music and words in Guglielmo
Ratcliff) or who were in close touch with the most 'progressive' European styles,
and whose technical ability in instrumental music makes it impossible to class
them as retrogressive (Puccini). In this sense the love duet in Act I of Madama
Butterfly would be an example of writing whose alienation derives precisely from
its melodramatic tone, effected by adopting an internal or subjective point of
view in which reality emerges exclusively through the eyes of the emotional,
'uncultivated' heroine. The male protagonist seems completely 'unrecognisable'
compared to the first part of the act, where description is, on the contrary, objective-
impersonal in the sense of being naturalistic, with external focalisation.23
On the other hand, the verismo writers - particularly in the years that saw
naturalism and verismo assume the trappings of decadence, with its neo-romantic
aspects of sadism, sensuality, primitivism and exoticism - by no means shunned
the typical traits of mass literature on the level of fabula, still less the rustic,
melodramatic realism of elemental or bestial effects. De Roberto's Spasimo (1897),
for example, a psychological detective novel that begins with a true story (a murder
among nihilists), boasts among its characters a Milanese countess, a revolutionary
Russian prince, a Russian girl student and the investigator of the case. The tale
clearly borrows techniques from the suspense story, multiplying layers of suspicion

21 On these writers, and in general on the humanitarian socialism of the period, see Alberto
Asor Rosa's classic Scrittori epopolo. Ilpopulismo nella letteratura italiana contemporanea,
6th edn (Rome, 1975), 61-8.
22 Amintore Galli, Estetica della musica ossia Del Bello nella Musica Sacra, Teatrale e da Concerto,
in ordine alla sua storia (Turin, 1900), 8: 'as well as instincts, man also possesses affections
or natural tendencies, motives of the soul that the artist, creator or performer is called on
to make manifest by special means'.
23 On the problem of point of view (focalisation) and on the distance between the author and
characters in narrative, see above all Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael
Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, 1981). For an attempt to
apply this perspective to opera between Mozart and Wagner, see Richard B. Greene, Listening
to Richard Strauss Operas. TheAudience's Multiple Standpoints (New York, 1991), 18-28.

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46 Adriana Guarnieri Corazzol

chapter by chapter until the confession in the final coup de scene.24 The real-life
origin of the tale, an event that occurred in 1894, and the markedly impersonal
style might encourage reference to the 'mass' taste of contemporary opera; for
example to Illica's and Giordano's Fedora (1898, from Sardou's 1882 play), in
which the first act, fashioned in strict 'conversational style', is in effect the opening
chapter of a detective story. De Roberto's novel is concerned more with psychologi-
cal analysis than with plot, but the starting point - the discovery of the crime
- is decidedly theatrical. Passion is always to the fore: the main characters are
all emotionally intertwined during the course of the narrative; the point of view
- an internal one - is that of the investigator-narrator, who is in love with the
countess (herself perhaps guilty of the crime).

On the level of content, then, the distance between fin-de-siecle literature and
opera seems rather small; what is more, verismo writers often turned for economic
reasons to the world of opera. The theatrical version of Verga's La lupa (from
the novella of the same name) was simultaneously created as a libretto in which
De Roberto collaborated as a versifier; it became a spoken drama only after Puccini
and Mascagni had rejected it.25 Verga was unaware that operas had to realise con-
cretely the passionate climaxes (in effect, a sequence of carnal couplings), while
the novella, as verbal expression, could effect brusque and 'dramatic' cuts from
one scene to another. He would probably have received a very different response
if he had offered Puccini 'Nedda', a perfect melodramatic opportunity, with an
'ill-fated character', an opening choral scene that was virtually tailor-made, and
an action progressing by fits and starts, from crisis to crisis.26 Following the same
general trend, Verga turned to the cinema in 1912-13, producing five unsigned adapt-
ations of his own works, amongst which were La lupa and Cavalleria rusticana.
We also find obvious examples of this focus on operatic elements in Italian
naturalism, at the chronological meeting point between positivistic materialism
and spiritual decadence. This is already a feature of Capuana's final footnote to
his 1887 play Rospus;27 he went even further with the picturesque libretto Milda,
written for the American composer Paul Hastings Allen, a fable in one act whose
essential features were sorcery and a magic scenic atmosphere.28 And in 1895
came the melodrama Malia, based on a libretto that Capuana extracted from one
of his prose comedies, with music by Francesco Paolo Frontini (Bologna, Teatro
Brunetti, 30 May 1893). The opera takes place in a rustic setting (an early nineteenth-
24 In a second version (third edition, Milan, 1925), the author completely altered the
denouement.
25 Its first performance was in Turin on 26 January 1896. On De Roberto's collaboration on
the libretto (suggested to Puccini by Verga), and for further information, see Ferrone (n.
7) and Roberto Bracco, 'Introduzione', in Teatro verista, ed. Roberto Bracco (Brescia, 1975),
22. For a comparison of the three texts (novella, prose drama, libretto), see Giovanni Verga,
La lupa, ed. Sarah Zappulla Muscara (Palermo, 1991).
26 On Mascagni's refusal (motivated by the plot's lack of 'scenic presence'), see Bianconi (n.
17), 28. Significantly, however, Puccini's refusal was motivated by the preponderance of
dialogue and the absence of 'sympathetic' characters.
27 Luigi Capuana, Rospus, fiaba in un atto, in prosa o quasi (Florence, 1887).
28 Milda, fiaba in un atto di Luigi Capuana, musica di Paul Allen, vocal score (Milan, 1913).

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 Opera and verismo 47

century Sicilian village) and has marked local colour (Act I requires on-stage instru-
mentalists and a wedding celebration dance); and it is also traditionally melodrama-
tic, its transgressive, highly passionate plot revolving around a presumed evil spell.29
A later Capuana libretto, II filtro, a one-act piece again with music by
Allen, also has a rustic, Sicilian plot, the conflict revolving around a love philtre
and a peasant witch.30
Other 'operatic' topics come to mind so far as Capuana is concerned. For exam-
ple, the influence exerted by Wagner's operas (Die Walktire, Tannhduser) is explicit
in the novella 'Ribrezzo' (1885), and eventually gave rise to a plan for a Gesamt-
kunstwerk on a mythological subject - in the form of a hallucination - in the
novella 'Un melodramma inedito' (Rome, 1888).31 Equally relevant is the extensive
exoticism - interest in the 'other' - of Capuana's first complete collection of
Sicilian novellas, Le paesane: the typically decadent opposition between sacred
and profane ('La conversione di don Ilario', 1888), the grotesque and macabre
of 'Il tabbutu' (1889), magic and tribal ('II mago', also 1889), and finally the attempt
to draw ironic attention to the traditional venues of romantic opera ('Lotta sismica',
1891).32 One can also detect operatic influence in spectacular scenes of ancient
religious rites, such as the Good Friday procession in the novel Profumo33 - though
here the tale is told with a high degree of impersonality. A stage band heralds
the procession of the faithful with the funeral march from Petrella's Jone; there
follow the holy sepulchre and the flagellants, described in vivid detail at the conclu-
sion of the scene, with a significant comment by the bourgeois 'collectivity' that
observes them: 'sembravano selvaggi' (they seemed like savages). It is a sequence
loaded with both religious and social exoticism, obviously placed at a dramatically
decisive moment: the chapter closes with the discovery of the death of the protago-
nist's mother, the novel's key character.34 The same, grand-opera-influenced pictor-
ial violence and spectacle, though spread over two chapters equally strong in
decadent naturalism, characterises the Casalbordino sanctuary scene in d'Annun-
zio's Trionfo della morte (1894).35
In the two decades spanning the turn of the nineteenth century, the sharing
of sources and themes between opera and literature seems, in short, to be continual;
and mass-market prose narratives relate in some way to both. We might close
the circle by recalling a popular novel from the beginning of the twentieth century
that both imitates a famous novel and quotes from an opera derived from it:
La boheme italiana. Emilio Salgari, one of the most widely read authors of the
period, was particularly fond of exotic ambiences and adventure stories in his
most popular work (the 'della Malesia' and 'delle Americhe' cycles), and was also
29 For the libretto, see Luigi Capuana, Malta, melodramma in 3 atti ... (Milan, 1895); the
commedia in prosa (published in Rome, 1981) was collected in Le paesane (1894).
30 The libretto was published in Milan, 1911; the vocal score in Milan, 1912.
31 'Ribrezzo' and 'Un melodramma inedito' (from Le appassionate) are in Racconti, ed. Enrico
Ghidetti, I (Rome, 1973), 427-74 and 317-23. The collection was first published in Catania
(1893).
32 For all these titles, see Racconti (n. 31), II, 1-225.
33 (Palermo, 1892); it first appeared in episodes in Nuova Antologia (July-December 1890).
(Milan, 1977), 100-5.
35 Collected in Prose di romanzi, I, ed. Annamaria Andreoli (Milan, 1988), 871-906.

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48 Adriana Guarnieri Corazzol

a writer fully aware of social issues. When Salgari died, Puccini contributed to
a collection in support of his orphaned children - a gesture of some significance
considering the composer's notorious thrift. Two years before he committed sui-
cide, Salgari concocted this autobiographical novel, a vulgarisation of Scenes de
la vie de Boheme that explicitly mentions both the characters of Murger's book
and the music of a Boheme opera (presumably Puccini's).36 Notwithstanding the
minimal formal sophistication of this type of literature, we can still find the play
of mirrors - use of quotation that encourages intertextual reading.
If we turn to operatic works in the light of these shared themes and mixture
of formal levels, we might view certain verismo cliches differently. Excitement,
immediacy, a tendency towards total drama and scenic physicality of action seem
to be common features of a period that viewed social problems in terms of commu-
nication between cultural classes.37 Vocal and orchestral gestures in opera coincide
with the theatricality and orality in much verismo prose; the dialogic aspect and
the 'singing conversations' provide their own 'realism', one that works against
the traditional aristocratic and academic manner; the shouted aria and spoken
passages can be a pretence of the plebeian rather than the plebeian pure and simple.

The concept of alienation elaborated by Russian formalists in the early twentieth

century - decontextualisation of the represented object through a separation of
author and narrator in experimental prose - has recently been applied to certain
verismo prose works. An obvious case would be the mature Verga's bourgeois
or aristocratic novels, in which the writing is by definition 'elevated' (the emotions
more sophisticated); but an element of alienation has occasionally been located
even in the rustic Verga: the opening of 'Rosso Malpelo' (from Vita dei campi),38
for example, in which the ideological difference between the author and the popular
narrator is extremely clear.39 In I Malavoglia, the author on occasion takes issue
with the collective voice in the 'free indirect' discourse he creates, siding with
the boss 'Ntoni, at least on the level of direct discourse.40 In musical theatre,
this might be equivalent to forming a relationship on the vocal level with only
36 Emilio Salgari, La boheme italiana 1898-1899, repr. ed. Felice Pozzo (Bergamo, 1990). On
pp. 90 and 149 there are references to 'Murger's heroes'; on p. 166 the plan of a play whose
first act will represent a 'crossing of the Red Sea'; and on p. 161 there is an episode in
which the bohemians' 'grafofono' plays a 'piece from La boheme'.
37 Commentators have, in this respect, always found significance in composers' predilection
for subjects that had already proved their worth on the stage: original stage plays (Giordano's
Mala vita, Tasca's Santa Lucia, Spinelli's A basso porto, etc.), or stories and novels that had
already been converted into plays (L'Arlesiana, La boheme, Madama Butterfly, Risurrezione,
etc.).
38 'Malpelo got his name through having red hair; and he had red hair because he was a malicious,
wicked boy, who promised to develop into a proper scoundrel'; Verga, Tutte le novelle (see
n. 9), 187. In an alternative reading, the passage could, on the contrary, obviously be
understood as one of the author's least successful, in its lack of 'identification', or the
'dissonance' between the two 'ways of seeing' (the implied author and the collective author);
see Debenedetti (n. 3), 413-22.
39 On this topic, see especially Romano Luperini, Simbolo e costruzione allegorica in Verga
(Bologna, 1989).
40 Both on this subject, and for a broad picture of Verga's work, see Vittorio Spinazzola, Verismo
epositivismo (Milan, 1977).

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 Opera and verismo 49

one character, thus alienating the instrumental discourse: an example might be

Smareglia's Nozze istriane, in which the composer identifies with Marussa.
Ironic or satirical reversals are obviously the most frequent signals of alienation,
a particular form of impersonality in which the author, stressing his distance
from the narrator, performs an act of demystification, establishing a moral distance
between himself and the grotesque human comedy that is unfolding. Grotesque
characters or scenes are certainly present in I Malavoglia's web of 'free indirect'
discourse.41 In prose narrative, for example, there are many typically operatic
situations, not least that of a spectacular event taking place within the story:
for example, the reception at Casa Sganci in Chapter 3 of Mastro-don Gesualdo,
with its typical sense of alienation. Such situations are twice created in Capuana's
Giacinta (1879): in the opening ball scene, during which the protagonist picks
out on the piano a melody from Un ballo in maschera; and in the dance celebrating
her recovery, during which the song of a young Neapolitan becomes palpably
sensual and characteristically decadent by suggesting seduction through music.42
The use of spectacle within prose fiction also confirms the relationship between
narrative and verismo opera, in which the use of a traditionally lower-class singer
or actor as protagonist offers numerous occasions for alienation - for self-
representation, the dissociation of levels of representation, the various strategies
of simulation.43 Pagliacci, Zaza, Tosca and Adriana Lecouvreur continually gesture
towards dramatic self-representation; other operas engage the topic more
occasionally but with equal intensity. Their 'truth' consists precisely of a doubling
of the scenic and the symphonic: the 'contamination' of languages, the cry that
is both tragic and comic, both lyrical and operetta-like, is typical of verismo opera
(and of nineteenth-century realism in general), as is its highly individual 'mezzo
carattere' or mix of genres.44
Opera thus manages to make artistic capital out of stylistic conflict, dispersing
the genre's traditional sense of expressive unity. Leoncavallo's libretti, for example,
continually merge the elevated with the plebeian, each style tending to alienate
the other. The technique is similar to the one Gozzano was later to carry out
in poetry (i.e., on the level of 'high' literature): a vivid confrontation of the elevated
and the everyday, with a resulting demystification of both. Gozzano, however,
signalled his own sense of dissociation by dividing his career between 'subsistence'
41 On irony in IMalavoglia see Franco Petroni, 'II linguaggio negato. Saggio sui Malavoglia',
in Romano Luperini, ed., Lefonti dei 'Malavoglia' e la loro rielaborazione (Catania, 1984),
1-17; on the various authorial points of view in Verga, see Petroni's 'L'irrazionale negato.
Saggio sul Gesualdo', L'ombra d'Argo, 2/5 (1984), 1-23.
See Luigi Capuana, Giacinta secondo la prima edizione del 1879, ed. Marina Paglieri, intro.
Guido Davico Bonino (Milan, 1980), 62, in particular the following passage: 'The young
man never failed to turn his gaze towards Giacinta when the music became pathetic. It seemed
as though he had discovered an unusual ability to launch the music in her direction, to
make it resound around her, to place it before her, to trail it across her lips, to use it to
tickle her cheeks and her neck.'
43 A brief but effective discussion of this aspect can be found in Christopher Headington, Roy
Westbrook and Terry Barfoot, Opera: A History (London, 1988), 212-28.
44 For a definition and a demonstration - although restricted to Puccini - see Fausto Torrefranca,
Giacomo Puccini e l'opera internazionale (Turin, 1912), 107-9; given the author's anti-operatic
and powerfully idealistic stance, he obviously uses the term in a negative sense.

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50 Adriana Guarnieri Corazzol

literary activity and 'private' poetry. His popular wo

papers during the years 1903-16, for example, w
worldly, veristic, gothic-horror, fantastic or comic-r
In veristic prose, however, such irony, satirical vo
have a distinct ethical aspect: in Verga the split
moral gesture in which authorial distance affirms a
dello's 1908 essay on humour later defines the comi
tation of opposites', an 'uncoupling'; and he was of
treatise on laughter (1900) and Freud's study of
analyse the formal mechanisms of comedy and exp
what is more, each identifies a profound, 'invisi
laughter and fragments experience and appearance.4
At this point a sense of distance between verismo
writers emerges. In opera the contrast of registe
towards the negative, to satire, dissociation and the
of integration, the 'love' of opposites prevail: mu
to transmit comprehensible codes. An aesthetic of
towards disintegration of language: the human com
and shock provokes a salutary shake-up rather th
as an example the use of quotation in verismo opera:
tions, but merge into the scenic event, enriching an
texture. This mannerism, with its play of styles and
with a tension more cumulative than transgressi
dramatic forms nor to new languages. Reminisc
in Leoncavallo's I Medici, for example - become p
of divulgence and types of acculturation; parodi
Wagner in the same composer's La boheme)48 are tra
limations. Leoncavallo's La boheme, for example,
the comedy of the first two acts is recuperated in
atmosphere of Acts III and IV.
The same might be said of the social element, a
opera, especially in its fashionable denunciations
Indeed, verismo opera's gestures towards social probl

4 See Guido Gozzano, Isandali della diva. Tutte le novelle, intr

(Milan, 1983).
46 Luigi Pirandello, L'umorismo, 2nd, expanded edn (Florence,
(Paris, 1900); and Sigmund Freud, Der Witz und seine Beziehu
Leipzig, 1905). For important observations on irony as self-con
scission in the author's consciousness, and on humour as a-su
with reference to Romantic literature) see also Gyorgy Lukacs,
Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Liter
47 On this, and also on general characteristics of mass art, see A
ofArt History (London, 1959), 277-365.
48 See Jiirgen Maehder, 'Musik iiber Musik. Meyerbeer, Rossini
Ruggero Leoncavallo', in Dentro l'opera. Livelli di lingua e stile
convegno, Venice, 1989, forthcoming.

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 Opera and verismo 51

cism, not found in prose writing and other kinds of naturalism.49 The difference
between the two exoticisms resides in formal solutions to the treatment of the
'other': Verga invented a socially removed language; opera, on the other hand,
used the 'other' as an opportunity for integration, metabolising the 'foreign' linguis-
tic elements with an almost touristic gesture of appropriation.50 The fact that
opera composers (and playwrights), in contrast to prose writers, did not avoid
historical subjects (Tosca, Andrea Chenier) might furnish proof of this orientation.
The poetics of the human document, the representation of an event in the news,
automatically contains an element of dissociation in the inevitable contrast between
the experience of a contemporary occurrence and its scenic representation. Verismo
opera indulged in only a limited level of dissociation, using social distance in
small doses, almost as if to immunise itself; basically it disarmed that distance,
just as it disarmed the historical or geographical 'other'. The collision of expressive
registers became a confirmation rather than a criticism of language: empirical
emotion triumphed over intellectual passion with, as it were, a postmodern -
as opposed to a modernist, cognitive - sensibility.51 The phenomenon becomes
clear if we consider pastiche (for example, in the second act of Fedora, with its
musical episode a la Chopin): the 'other' language creates an alienating effect on
the drama, but this merely fixes the basic colour more firmly. The same occurs
in the play within the play, or the deception within deception (Pagliacci, Tosca),
where the dissociation of the two eventually confirms the 'truth' of the dramatic
enterprise.
An operatic parallel now appears in the didactic works of writers concerned
with social problems, in which violence and shock serve to instruct and inform:
consider the atrocities and sadism encapsulated within edifying heroism in the
story within a story of De Amicis's Cuore (1886).52 In light of this and other
models of mass culture dedicated to good works and grand effects, operatic 'regres-
sion' seems a modern, unpretentiously didactic style. Verismo opera is written
to please everyone: it relies on the stage picture, the plot and the confirmation
of expectations; it confronts the artifice of alienation (primitivism, satire, negative
thinking), but ultimately recuperates that artifice into a homogeneous design. It
is not, in short, anti-opera.
We can conclude that verismo opera in the broadest sense, unlike works of
literature, reached the brink of an identity crisis and then stepped back, refashioning
its contrasts into a final, synthesising gesture. The resulting difference in perspective
became even more distinct when, in the Giolitti period (the moment at which
a political programme for mass culture was proclaimed), opera also became comple-

49 See Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music (n. 19), 354.

50 On tourism as a symbolic attitude of mass culture, and on the characteristics of the 'third
culture' in general, see Edgar Morin, L'Esprit du temps (Paris, 1962).
51 See Marco de Marinis, 'Emotion et interpretation dans 1'experience du spectateur au theatre',
in Andre Helbo, ed., Approches de l'opera (Paris, 1986), 175-81.
52 Characteristic of the book (as of any veristic work) is also, more generally, 'the free and
easy [and socially progressive] striving for highly emotional effects'; see Alberto Asor Rosa,
'La cultura', in Storia d'Italia, iv/2 (Turin, 1975), 819-1311; here 932.

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52 Adriana Guarnieri Corazzol

tely referential and intellectual - but only as an obvious fake, as an alienated

restoration of genres. We then have a stylised artifice, as always free of ambiguity:
comedy as complete play-within-a-play (Mascagni's Le maschere) or tragedy as
hyper-verismo (Wolf-Ferrari's Igioielli della Madonna and Zandonai's Conchita).
In the meantime culture in general had moved towards a thorough reformulation
of the idea of style, now understood as parole, as a subjective creation in which
the intellectual moment predominated. Following more recent schemes of cultural
levels developed by sociologists of literature,53 one can trace, starting from the
end of the nineteenth century, a new hierarchy of stylistic levels in which the
relation between subject and mode of representation ceases to exist. The 'elevated'
works of the twentieth century are generally concerned with the anti-sublime,
the socially mixed, and give minute attention to their own language. The author
does not aspire towards contact with the public; he does not wish to please, but
rather to please himself. The artistic object has a 'secondary involvement' with
the spectator or reader, one that is both intellectual involvement and 'emotional
disenchantment':54 the most important element of its 'elevated' nature is its
novelty of expression, and thus its negation of the classic concept of style. The
works address an elite and attempt a predominantly self-referential form of commu-
nication. In this way one can explain the hierarchy of artistic expression outlined
by Verga in an interview from 1894, in which he declared that his theatrical
works were 'less artistic' than his novels. I Malavoglia was inevitably intended
for a small number of readers, as the author's correspondence later confirmed.55
In the context of this new value system, verismo opera in the twenty years
from 1890 to 1910 occupied a middle ground. Its modernity was above all a fashion,
its function was popular; it was, in other words, a feature of mass culture. It
employed all stylistic levels in order to reach all sectors of the market; it dealt
in direct emotion, willed the spectator to be absolutely involved in the drama.
For this reason, many cultivated contemporary listeners were hostile to verismo
opera (they were, significantly, all Wagnerians: Torchi, Thovez, d'Annunzio),
accusing it in the 1890s of 'vulgarity'. Theirs may seem the usual social condem-
nation of low-life, brutal subjects that, in the context of French naturalism for
example, had given rise to so many court cases for offences against modesty. In
reality, however, they condemned opera primarily for its appeal to the 'masses',
denouncing the existence of a second-degree culture motivated by gain and inclined
to publicity and contrasting it with an ascetic concept of music dramas composed
by those who wished to please only themselves. Basically, they branded verismo

For a general survey of the problems, see in particular Umberto Eco, Apocalittici e integrati
(Milan, 1964); for specific definitions, see Vittorio Spinazzola, 'Le coordinate del sistema
letterario', in Livelli e linguaggi letterari nella societa di massa (Trieste, 1985), 29-40; and
Ulrich Schulz-Buschhaus, 'Livelli di stile e sistema dei generi letterari nella societa di massa',
in the same volume, pp. 41-8.
5 I use these terms in the sense defined by Norbert Elias, Engagement und Distanzierung.
Arbeiten zur Wissenssoziologie, I (Frankfurt am Main, 1983).
55 See Asor Rosa (n. 52), 969-71 and nn. 1 and 2.

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 Opera and verismo 53

opera as culturally inferior. Here is how Thovez characterised the new type of
opera in 1896, a year of intense discussion on the topic:56

from that moment, art was fashioned out of stabbings and flattery, Camorra and chatter,
curses and perorations. Under the rain of success geniuses sprang forth like mushrooms
throughout the fertile ground of the country in which commonplaces abound. They
unleashed duels and celebrations at sea, bloody Christmases, Easter vendettas, all the literary
brigandage that ten years before had been seen in Italian novels. And the example proved
contagious. All the superannuated bandleaders and amateur trombone players were struck
with an incurable lust for creation; all the mazurka composers, assaulted by the frenzy
for glory, all believed themselves geniuses called forth to illuminate the world; and hoisting
their ragged hats in the air, displaying their Apollonian hair styles, and getting into orphic
poses, they wrote librettos and dispensed theories. And newspapers described the socks
of one, the polished boots of another, the white waistcoat of a third, and photographed
them indoors and outdoors, in top hat and tails, alone and together. And conical hats
and trombones came forth from the Alps and conquered the world. They conquered
the world, and much water must flow down the rough sides of the Alps and through
the gentle inclines of the Appenines before Italy will wash away the shame.57

In the end, then, we can confirm the traditional thesis: there is no identity between
verismo opera composers and verismo writers. In a certain sense, the comparison
might simply have been ignored; but it has perhaps served to demonstrate that
the points of contact between them are notable, and more numerous than is
usually stated. From this perspective, we can also revalue much of the operatic
writing of the period: the distance between opera and prose emerges as basically
hermeneutic, consisting of the diverse interpretations we give to their level of
alienation: the fact that we recognise integration or disintegration, and the historical
judgement we derive from it. The difference does not reside in the products them-
selves, but in how the authors locate themselves in relation to their texts or -
the same thing - how readers and listeners locate themselves in relation to these
products. In this sense, Puccini's close attachment to certain subjects, his character-
istic frenzy of involvement at all costs, his pretence of 'passion' for the text,
might have broader significance. We, too, are free to seek that emotional involve-
ment; or we can, of course, continue to deny it with an elitist gesture of critical
distance.

(Translation by Roger Parker)

56 See Renato Di Benedetto, 'Poetiche e polemiche', in Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli,
eds., Storia dell'opera italiana, vi (Turin, 1988), 68-9.
57 Enrico Thovez, 'La leggenda del Wagner', in L'arco d'Ulisse. Prose di combattimento (Naples,
1921), 98-120; here 117-18.

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