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| "La Lupa" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by Giovanni Verga | |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
| Publication | |
| Published in | Vita dei Campi, Cavalleria Rusticana and Other Stories |
| Media type | |
| Publication date | 1880 |
"La Lupa" ("The She-Wolf") is a short story by Sicilian writer Giovanni Verga, first published in 1880.
"La Lupa" is one of a series of short stories about peasant life in Sicily published by Giovanni Verga between March and July 1880. Later that year they were republished as a collection, Vita dei Campi ("Rural Life"). [1] An English translation of "La Lupa", by D. H. Lawrence, was first published in 1928 as part of the collection Cavalleria Rusticana and Other Stories. [2]
The novella is about an aging, beautiful woman, Pina, who is nicknamed "La Lupa" ("the she-wolf") because of her sexual attitude toward men. She has a daughter, Maricchia, who is old enough to be married and has a substantial dowry, yet is not wanted by anyone because of her mother's behaviour. Pina falls in love with a young farmworker, Nanni, who refuses her and says that he wants Maricchia. Pina then makes Maricchia marry Nanni so that she can always have him near, threatening her with death if she refuses. Pina then repeatedly seduces an anguished Nanni despite her daughter's protests. The story ends with Nanni approaching Pina with an axe as she once more attempts to seduce him.
Upon publication, Vita dei Campi was "moderately well received", with reviewers recognising "a new voice speaking in an original way about a world strikingly different from the urban society whose mores preoccupied French realist authors". [1] Writing in Modern Language Notes , Gregory L. Lucente stated "at its appearance 'La Lupa' was regarded as so strikingly realistic to be utterly unlike its predecesssors in nineteenth-century Italian fiction". [3] Writing in The Literary Encyclopedia , Susan Amatangelo of the College of the Holy Cross described Vita dei Campi as "the most celebrated collection of short stories written by Giovanni Verga, both because of its significance in the author’s artistic journey and because of the fame of particular stories", stating "the stories serve as a preview of the narrative style and themes of his Verist (or Realist) masterworks." [4]
In the early-1890s, Pietro Mascagni set a libretto to Verga's short story "Cavalleria rusticana", producing a highly successful opera of the same name. This brought about "a short-lived fashion for veristic subjects in the Italian musical theatre". [5] Beginning in spring 1893, Giacomo Puccini held an interest in adapting "La Lupa" into an opera. [6] An agreement was reached for Verga to prepare a libretto and Federico De Roberto to carry out its versification. [5] Puccini abandoned the project in 1894 following a discussion with Blandine von Bülow (the stepdaughter of Richard Wagner), [6] having concerns over the "dialogicity" of the libretto and the "unpleasant characters, without one single luminous, sympathetic figure". [7]
In 1896, Verga himself developed "La Lupa" into a play of the same name; [8] it premiered in Turin that same year. [2] A modern production of the play directed by Franco Zeffirelli was staged at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence in 1965. [2]
In 1996, "La Lupa" was adapted into an Italian film of the same name directed by Gabriele Lavia and starring Monica Guerritore as Pina.
Pietro Mascagni was an Italian composer primarily known 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. While it was often held that Mascagni, like Ruggero Leoncavallo, was a "one-opera man" who could never repeat his first success, L'amico Fritz and Iris have remained in the repertoire in Europe since their premieres.
In opera, verismo, from vero, meaning 'true', was a post-Romantic operatic tradition associated with Italian composers such as Pietro Mascagni, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Umberto Giordano, Francesco Cilea and Giacomo Puccini.
Giovanni Carmelo Verga di Fontanabianca was an Italian realist (verista) writer.
Vizzini is a town and comune in the Metropolitan City of Catania, on the island of Sicily, southern Italy. It is located 60 kilometres (37 mi) from Catania in the Hyblaean Mountains, on the most northwesterly slopes of Monte Lauro.
Martino Stanislao Luigi Gastaldon was an Italian composer, primarily of salon songs for solo voice and piano. However, he also composed instrumental music, two choral works, and four operas. Today, he is remembered almost exclusively for his 1881 song "Musica proibita", still one of the most popular pieces of music in Italy. Gastaldon also wrote the lyrics for some of his songs, including "Musica proibita", under the pseudonym Flick-Flock. He was born in Turin and after a peripatetic childhood studied music there and in Florence. By 1900, he had settled permanently in Florence, where he died at the age of 77. In his later years, he also worked as a voice teacher, music critic, and art dealer.
Domenico Monleone was an Italian composer of operas, most noted for his opera Cavalleria rusticana of 1907, which for a while rivalled the success of Mascagni's work of the same name which was from the same source. The work was the third opera to be based on Verga's 1884 theatrical adaptation of his own short story, Cavalleria rusticana, Stanislao Gastaldon’s Mala Pasqua (1888) being the first, and Mascagni's famous opera (1890) being the second. Mascagni and his lawyers intervened and Monleone changed the opera ‘beyond recognition’ setting the music to a new libretto. In this form it was presented as La giostra dei falchi in 1914.
Lina Bruna Rasa was an Italian operatic dramatic soprano. She was particularly noted for her performances in the verismo repertoire and was a favourite of Pietro Mascagni who considered her the ideal Santuzza. Bruna Rasa created the roles of Atte in Mascagni's Nerone, Cecilia Sagredo in Franco Vittadini's La Sagredo and Saint Clare in Licinio Refice's 1926 oratorio, Trittico Francescano. She also sang the role of Tsaritsa Militrisa in the Italian premiere of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan.
A she-wolf is a female gray wolf.
Cavalleria rusticana is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from an 1880 short story of the same name and subsequent play by Giovanni Verga. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on 17 May 1890 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Since 1893, it has often been performed in a so-called Cav/Pag double-bill with Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo.
La lupa is Italian for "the she-wolf", a female wolf.
Mala Pasqua! is an opera in three acts composed by Stanislao Gastaldon to a libretto by Giovanni Domenico Bartocci-Fontana. The libretto is based on Giovanni Verga's play, Cavalleria rusticana which Verga had adapted from his short story of the same name. Mala Pasqua! premiered on 9 April 1890 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, six weeks before Pietro Mascagni's opera Cavalleria rusticana which was also based on Verga's play. Bartocci-Fontana's libretto adds some elements that were not in Verga's original and expands on others. The name of the Santuzza character was also changed to Carmela, but the basic plot and setting remain the same. Its title refers to the curse which Carmela places on Turiddu, the lover who had spurned her: "Mala Pasqua a te!". Following its Rome premiere, Mala Pasqua! had a few more performances in Perugia and Lisbon, but it was completely eclipsed by the phenomenal success of Mascagni's opera. After the 1891 Lisbon run it was not heard again until 2010 when it was given a semi-staged performance in Agrigento, Sicily.
"Rosso Malpelo" is a short story by Giovanni Verga. The title "Rosso Malpelo" is Italian for "evil redhead", a nickname which combines Rosso (red) with Malpelo, as Sicilians believed people with red hair were malicious and had an evil disposition. The story, written in 1878, is set in Verga's native Sicily and reflects the social and economic conditions endured by the poor working classes in Southern Italy at the time. The story is a fine example of Italian Realism or Verismo, and is written in Verga's concise, impersonal and distinctly Sicilian style, manipulating the narrative voice into something more akin to the oral tradition. His subject matter and scientific style has led to comparison to Émile Zola's more widely known book, Germinal.
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.
La lupa is a 1953 Italian drama film directed by Alberto Lattuada.
La lupa is a 1996 Italian drama film directed by Gabriele Lavia. It is based on the novella with the same name by Giovanni Verga.
Cunziria is an 18th-century village in Vizzini, Sicily.
Lorenzo Muscoso is an Italian director, author and journalist.
Jeli the Shepherd is a short story written by Italian author Giovanni Verga as a part of his collection The Life of the Fields.
"Cavalleria rusticana" is a short story by the Sicilian Giovanni Verga, published in a collection entitled Novelle rusticane in 1883 and presented in dramatic form as a one-act tragedy at Turin in 1884. Pietro Mascagni made this prose play the basis of the verse-libretto of his one-act opera, Cavalleria rusticana (1890).
Cavalleria rusticana is an 1890 opera by Pietro Mascagni. The title may also refer to:
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