Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola was a French novelist, playwright, journalist, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in the renowned newspaper headline J'Accuse…! Zola was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902.
In opera, verismo 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.
Germinal is the thirteenth novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. Often considered Zola's masterpiece and one of the most significant novels in the French tradition, the novel – an uncompromisingly harsh and realistic story of a coalminers' strike in northern France in the 1860s – has been published and translated in over one hundred countries and has additionally inspired five film adaptations and two television productions.
Les Rougon-Macquart is the collective title given to a cycle of twenty novels by French writer Émile Zola. Subtitled Histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le Second Empire, it follows the lives of the members of the two titular branches of a fictional family living during the Second French Empire (1852–1870) and is one of the most prominent works of the French naturalism literary movement.
Giovanni Carmelo Verga was an Italian realist (verista) writer, best known for his depictions of life in his native Sicily, especially the short story Cavalleria rusticana and the novel I Malavoglia.
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 Italian authors influenced by the works of Émile Zola, French author and creator of naturalism. Capuana also wrote poetry in Sicilian, of which an example appears below.
Federico De Roberto was an Italian writer, who became well known for his novel I Viceré (1894), translated as The Viceroys.
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 Terra Trema is a 1948 Italian dramatic film directed by Luchino Visconti. The movie is loosely adapted from Giovanni Verga's novel I Malavoglia (1881) for the screen.
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.
Nicola Alongi, was a Sicilian socialist leader, involved in the Fasci Siciliani a popular movement of democratic and socialist inspiration in 1891-1894. He was killed by the Mafia.
Giovanni Passannante was an Italian anarchist who attempted to assassinate king Umberto I of Italy, the first attempt against Savoy monarchy since its origins. Originally condemned to death, his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. The conditions of his imprisonment drove him insane and have been denounced as inhumane.
The Lady of the Wheel is a 2012 historical fiction novel by Sicilian American author Angelo F. Coniglio. The book follows the life of a girl who was abandoned as an infant, with the major themes of the book including poverty, exploitation and family values. Coniglio's work has been compared to the verismo (realism) of Sicilian author Giovanni Verga.
Carusu is the Sicilian word for "boy" and is derived from the Latin carus which means "dear" In the mid-1800s through the early 1900s in Sicily, carusu was used to denote a "mine-boy", a labourer in a sulfur, salt or potash mine who worked next to a picuneri or pick-man, and carried raw ore from deep in the mine to the surface. As with other mining industries, the use of carusi declined as mines switched to other, more efficient methods of transporting minerals to the surface, and the use of children is said to have ended by the 1920s or 1930s, but teenagers were still employed to carry ore to the surface as late as the 1950s.
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.
Germinal is a 1963 French language French-Italian-Hungarian film directed by Yves Allégret. It is an adaptation of the 1885 novel Germinal by Emile Zola.
The Compagnie des mines d'Anzin was a large French mining company in the coal basin of Nord-Pas-de-Calais in northern France. It was established in 1756 and operated for almost 200 years.
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.
