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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.
General Gabriele D'Annunzio, Prince of Montenevoso, sometimes written d'Annunzio as he used to sign himself, was an Italian poet, playwright, orator, journalist, aristocrat, and Royal Italian Army officer during World War I. He occupied a prominent place in Italian literature from 1889 to 1910 and later political life from 1914 to 1924. He was often referred to under the epithets il Vate and il Profeta.
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. Verismo as an operatic genre had its origins in an Italian literary movement of the same name. This was in turn related to the international literary movement of naturalism as practised by Émile Zola and others. Like naturalism, the verismo literary movement sought to portray the world with greater realism. In so doing, Italian verismo authors such as Giovanni Verga wrote about subject matter, such as the lives of the poor, that had not generally been seen as a fit subject for literature.
Francesca da Rimini or Francesca da Polenta was a medieval noblewoman of Ravenna, who was murdered by her husband, Giovanni Malatesta, upon his discovery of her affair with his brother, Paolo Malatesta. She was a contemporary of Dante Alighieri, who portrayed her as a character in the Divine Comedy.
Parisina is a 586-line poem written by Lord Byron. It was probably written between 1812 and 1815, and published on 13 February 1816.
Parisina is an opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto after Byron's 1816 poem Parisina.
Francesca da Rimini, Op. 4, is an opera in four acts, composed by Riccardo Zandonai, with a libretto by Tito Ricordi II, after D'Annunzio's play Francesca da Rimini. It was premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin on 19 February 1914 and is still staged occasionally.
Niccolò III d'Este was Marquess of Ferrara from 1393 until his death. He was also a condottiero.
Literaturoper, a term coined by the German music critic Edgar Istel, describes a genre of opera that emerged during the late 19th century. When an existing play for the legitimate theatre is set to music without major changes and without the intervention of a librettist, a “Literaturoper” is the result. Although the term is German, it can be applied to any kind of opera, irrespective of style or language.
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.
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.
Giovacchino Forzano was an Italian playwright, librettist, stage and film director. A resourceful writer, he authored numerous popular plays and produced opera librettos for most of the major Italian composers of the early twentieth century, including the librettos for Giacomo Puccini's Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi.
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.
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.
Laura Malatesta, better known as Parisina Malatesta, was an Italian marchioness. She was the daughter of Andrea Malatesta, lord of Cesena, and his second wife, Lucrezia Ordelaffi. She had an affair with her illegitimate stepson, Ugo d'Este, and both were beheaded by her husband, Marquis Niccolò III d'Este of Ferrara.
Ugo d'Este, also known as Hugh Aldobrandino, was the son of Niccolò III d'Este and his lover Stella de' Tolomei.
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.
Parisina Malatesta was the wife of Niccolò III d'Este, who beheaded her with her lover and stepson Ugo d'Este. Her tragic story has inspired writers and musicians:
Ginevra d'Este was an Italian noblewoman. She and her twin sister Lucia were daughters of Niccolò III d'Este and his second wife Parisina Malatesta - they also had a younger brother, who died aged a few months. She was the first of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta's three wives.
Stella de’ Tolomei, was an Italian courtier and royal mistress. She was the official royal mistress of Niccolò III d'Este, Marquis of Ferrara for many years and the mother of several of his acknowledged illegitimate children.
References
- ↑ Parisina Archived 2011-09-28 at the Wayback Machine www.italianopera.org
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