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.
Carlo, Count Gozzi was an Italian (Venetian) playwright and champion of Commedia dell'arte.
Pulcinella is a 21-section ballet by Igor Stravinsky with arias for soprano, tenor and bass vocal soloists, and two sung trios. It is based on the 18th-century play Quatre Polichinelles semblables, or Four similar Pulcinellas, revolving around a stock character from commedia dell'arte. The work premiered at the Paris Opera on 15 May 1920 under the baton of Ernest Ansermet. The central dancer, Léonide Massine, created both the libretto and the choreography, while Pablo Picasso designed the costumes and sets. The ballet was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballets Russes. A complete performance takes 35–40 minutes. Stravinsky revised the score in 1965.
Amica is an opera in two acts by Pietro Mascagni, originally composed to a libretto by Paul Bérel. The only opera by Mascagni with a French libretto, it was an immediate success with both the audience and the critics on its opening night at the Théâtre du Casino in Monte-Carlo on 16 March 1905. Mascagni himself conducted the performance. The opera had its Italian premiere on 13 May 1905 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.
Leopoldo Mugnone was an Italian conductor, especially of opera, whose most famous work was done in the period 1890–1920, both in Europe and South America. He conducted various operatic premieres, and was also a composer of operas.
Lina Bruna Rasa was an Italian operatic 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.
Celestina Boninsegna was an Italian operatic dramatic soprano, known for her interpretations of the heroines in Verdi's operas. Although particularly eminent in Verdi's works, she sang a wide repertoire during her 25-year career, including Rosaura in the world premiere of Mascagni's Le maschere. Boninsegna made many recordings between 1904 and 1918, and her voice was one of the most successfully captured on disc during that period.
Emma Carelli was an Italian operatic soprano who was particularly associated with the dramatic soprano roles of the verismo repertoire and the works of Richard Wagner. After a singing career which lasted almost two decades, she managed the Teatro Costanzi in Rome for almost fifteen years. After studying with her father, Beniamino Carelli, at the Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella, she made her professional debut in 1895 in the title role of Mercadante's La vestale during the centenary celebrations at Altamura and went on to appear in the opera houses of many Italian cities. In 1898 she married the left-wing politician, self-made millionaire, and later impresario, Walter Mocchi.
Giuseppe Pietri was an Italian composer, known primarily for his work in operetta. Excerpts from one of his works, the opera Maristella, were widely recorded and continue to be so on CD. The aria "Io conosco un giardino" from that work has been popular with tenors, and has been frequently recorded separately; among the singers to record it are Luciano Pavarotti, Beniamino Gigli, Joseph Calleja and more recently, Rolando Villazón. Pietri studied composition at the Milan Conservatory at Gaetano Coronato. He studied harmony and counterpoint with Amintore Galli. He composed operas in versistical tradition, but it was his operettas that made him a popular success. He developed an independent Italian idiom for the operetta. The most famous was L'acqua cheta, which premiered in Rome in 1920. The text was from a 1908 Tuscan dialect piece by Augusto Novelli, a romantic comedy in the Florentine petty bourgeois style. Rompicollo was premiered in 1928 in Milan, and was translated into German as Das große Rennen.
Giuseppe Lillo was an Italian composer. He is best known for his operas which followed in the same vein of Gioachino Rossini. He also produced works for solo piano, a small amount of sacred music, and some chamber music.
Zanetto is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci. It received its first performance on 2 March 1896 at the Liceo Musicale Rossini in Pesaro. Only 40 minutes long and with cast of two singers, Zanetto was originally described by its composer as a scena lirica rather than an opera. It is set in the countryside near Florence during the Renaissance and tells the story of an encounter between a beautiful courtesan, Silvia, and a young wandering minstrel, Zanetto. The libretto was adapted from an Italian translation by Emilio Praga of François Coppée's play Le passant in which the young Sarah Bernhardt had won fame in the en travesti role of Zanetto.
Antonio Cagnoni was an Italian composer. Primarily known for his twenty operas, his work is characterized by his use of leitmotifs and moderately dissonant harmonies. In addition to writing music for the stage, he composed a modest amount of sacred music, most notably a Requiem in 1888. He also contributed the third movement, Quid sum miser, to the Messa per Rossini, a collaborative work created by thirteen composers to honor Gioacchino Rossini.
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.
Carlo Lombardo dei Baroni Lombardo di San Chirico known also under the composer-pseudonyms Léon Bard, Leo Bard, Leblanc and M. Fernandez, was an Italian operetta impresario, comedian, librettist, publisher and "composer" of pasticcio productions of other composers' music. He is regarded in Italy as the father of the late 19th and early 20th Century revival in Italian operetta.
Gloria is a tragic opera in three acts by Francesco Cilea with an Italian libretto by Arturo Colautti. A variation on the Romeo and Juliet story and set in 14th century Siena, the libretto is based on Victorien Sardou's 1874 play La Haine (Hatred). The opera premiered on 15 April 1907 at La Scala conducted by Arturo Toscanini with Solomiya Krushelnytska in the title role. Gloria was a failure at its premiere when it was withdrawn after two performances and fared little better in the 1932 revised version, although there have been two late 20th century revivals. It proved to be Cilea's last staged opera. In the 43 years following the premiere of Gloria he worked on two or three further operas which were never performed and continued to compose chamber and orchestral music.
Sì is an operetta in three acts composed by Pietro Mascagni to a libretto by Carlo Lombardo with verses by Arturo Franci. The libretto is based on Lombardo's operetta La duchessa del Bal Tabarin and Felix Dörmann's libretto for Majestät Mimi set by Bruno Granichstaedten in 1911. Mascagni's only venture into operetta, it premiered on 13 December 1919 at the Teatro Quirino in Rome. The operetta takes its name from its central character, Sì, an actress at the Folies Bergère, so called because she could never say no.
Amelia Felle is an Italian operatic soprano and voice teacher. Born in Bari, she has been active on the stages of Italian and European opera houses and concert halls since her debut in 1981. She holds the chair in vocal chamber music at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome, a position she previously held at the Conservatorio Tito Schipa in Lecce.
Giuseppe Balducci was an Italian composer, primarily of operas. Born in Iesi, he spent most of his career in Naples and was one of the originators of the "salon opera" genre, the forerunner of chamber opera.
Nicola De Giosa was an Italian composer and conductor active in Naples. He composed numerous operas, the most successful of which, Don Checco and Napoli di carnevale, were in the Neapolitan opera buffa genre. His other works included sacred music and art songs. His songs were particularly popular, bringing him fame as a salon composer both in Italy and abroad. De Giosa died in Bari, the city of his birth, at the age of 66.
Nicola Daspuro was an Italian writer, journalist, and librettist. Amongst his librettos were those for Macagni's L'amico Fritz and Giordano's Mala vita. Several of his librettos were written under the anagramatic pseudonym P. Suardon.
