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Opera and verismo: Regressive points of view and the artifice of alienation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Adriana Guarnieri Corazzol
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Extract

Although the term ‘verismo” emerged in both literature and opera during roughly the same period (in novels and spoken theatre around the 1870s, in opera around the 1890s), the modern tendency has been to regard this as a coincidence of little consequence. However, it is perhaps worth returning to the question in light of recent studies in literary verismo, some of which offer new perspectives and even contribute to a re-definition of operatic verismo. I shall start, then, from the hypothesis that a new comparison between these two types of verismo may lead to a common definition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 1993 , pp. 39 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Egon Voss has rejected any important similarity, basing his argument primarily on Verga's letter/preface to ‘L'amante di Gramigna”; see his ‘Verismo in der Oper”, Die Musikforschung, 31 (1978), 303–13.Google Scholar Voss points out the prevalence of historical and exotic subjects, the absence of social criticism, the elevated language of the libretti, the lack of psychological development and the theatricality – all in his opinion important non-veristic elements of so-called verismo opera. See also Baldacci, Luigi, ‘Il libretto di Cavalleria rusticana”, in Pietro, and Ostali, Nandi, eds., Cavalleria rusticana 1890–1990: Cento anni di un capolavoro (Milan, 1990), 41–6Google Scholar; and Kelkel, Manfred, Naturalisme, vérisme et réalisme dans l'opéra de 1890 à 1930 (Paris, 1984), 235–51.Google Scholar

2 The term giovane scuola is contemporary to the period; but it refers to all composers of that generation. In charring the history of the verismo movement in this broad sense, some studies deal with problems of definition. See, for example, Rinaldi, Mario, Musica e verismo (Rome, 1932)Google Scholar; Gavazzeni, Gianandrea, I nemici della musica (Milan, 1965)Google Scholar; L'opera, II/2 (01–03, 1966: a number dedicated to verismo)Google Scholar; Ugolini, Giovanni, ‘Umberto Giordano e il problema dell'opera verista”, in Morini, Mario, ed., Umberto Giordano (Milan, 1968), 17–87Google Scholar; Mariani, Renato, Verismo in musica e altri studi (Florence, 1976)Google Scholar; Parmentola, Carlo, ‘La giovane scuola’, in Basso, Alberto, ed., Storia dell'opera (Turin, 1977), 1/2, 499–587Google Scholar; Casini, Claudio, ‘Il verismo musicale italiano’, in Mascagni (Milan, 1984), 9–29Google Scholar; Vallora, Marco, ‘La storia di “Cavalleria” e lo spettro del verismo’Google Scholar and ‘Plagi, sipari, pagliacci’, in Aulenti, Gae and Valora, Marco, eds., Quartetto della maledizione. Materiali per ‘Rigoletto’, ‘Cavalleria’ e ‘Pagliacci’, ‘Fanciulla’ (Milan, 1985), 37–92.Google Scholar For a more narrowly defined study of verismo, but one viewed within a broader European context, see Kelkel, , Naturalisme (n. 1.)Google Scholar

3 On the background to Verga's so-called conversion, see especially Debenedetti, Giacomo, Verga e il naturalismo. Quaderni inediti, ed. Debenedetti, Renata (Milan, 1976).Google Scholar

4 See, for example, Dalmonte, Rossana, ‘Il prologo de I Pagliacci. Nota sul verismo in musica’, Musica/Realtà, 8 (1982), 105–14.Google Scholar However, for a discussion of the idea of operatic verismo derived from its first models (Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci), see Morelli, Giovanni, ‘Quelle for belle incognite borghesi Sulla popolarità nazionale dell'opera lirica italiana, da Rigoletto alla Fanciulla attraverso Cavalleria-Pagliacci’, in Bellina, Anna Laura and Morelli, Giovanni, eds., L 'Europa musicale. Un nuovo rinascimento: La civiltà dell'ascolto (Florence, 1988), 245–96.Google Scholar

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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 son 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 Verga, Giovanni, I Malavoglia – Mastro-don Gesualdo, ed. Lanza, Concetta Greco (Rome, 1984), x.Google Scholar

7 On the melodramatic nature of Verga's theatrical works, in particular ‘La lupa’ (simultaneously a libretto and a drama), see Ferrone, Siro, II teatro di Verga (Rome, 1972), 191–252Google Scholar; for a general survey of theatrical production during the period, including opera, see Teatro dell'Italia unita, ed. Ferrone, Siro (Milan, 1980).Google Scholar

8 On this general topic, see in particular Ricoeur, Paul, Time and Narrative, II (Chicago, 1985).Google Scholar

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11 This, for example, is the type found in Homo!, a collection of tales by Capuana, (Milan, 1883)Google Scholar; see also Madrignani, Carlo Albero, Capuana e il naturalismo (Bari, 1970), 186–96.Google Scholar

12 Roberto, Federico De, La sorte (Palermo, 1990).Google Scholar

13 See, for example, Eikenbaum, Boris, Leskovi sovremennaja proza – Genri i teorija novelly (1925)Google Scholar; 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’.

14 See Baldi, Guido, L'artificio della regressione. Tecnica narrativa e ideologia nel Verga verista (Naples, 1980).Google Scholar

15 Verga, (see n. 6), 21–2.Google Scholar

16 Debenedetti, (see n. 3), 244Google Scholar, 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.

17 For a general discussion of verismo opera as a ‘musical novel’, see Dahlhaus, (n. 5), 87–94Google Scholar; on the opera composer as ‘hidden narrator’ (functioning through a system of motifs), see Bianconi, Lorenzo, ‘Introduzione’ to La drammaturgia musicale, ed. Bianconi, Lorenzo (Bologna, 1986), 7–51, esp. 38Google Scholar; on the presence of a narrator in the opera-novel, see Dahlhaus, Carl, ‘Zeitstrukturen in der Oper’, Die Musikforschung, 34 (1981), 2–11.Google Scholar For more recent discussions of operatic narrativity, see Abbate, Carolyn, Unsung Voices. Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Zoppelli, Luca, ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen: Proposta per una lettura narratologica dell'epos wagneriano’, Studi musicali; 20 (1991), 317–38.Google Scholar

18 It is from this perspective that Cavalleria rusticana has reaped its great twentieth-century success; see in particular Auden, W. H., The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays, 3rd edn (London, 1975), 481–2.Google Scholar Auden's appreciation derives precisely from his sense of the style: the ‘true’ and ‘vital’ (i.e., artistic) existence of both awkward music and awkward characters.

19 On the melodramatic nature of verismo opera, see above all Dahlhaus, Carl, Nineteenth-Century Music (Berkeley, 1989), 351–9.Google Scholar For a definition of melodrama in historical context, from mélodrame to nineteenth-century narrative, see Brooks, Peter, The Melodramatic Imagination (New Haven, 1976).Google Scholar

20 Amongst the various models in prose fiction, perhaps the most obvious are the novels of Eugène Sue and Alexandre Dumas père, in both of whom the dialogue tends towards a constant state of emotional excitement.

21 On these writers, and in general on the humanitarian socialism of the period, see Rosa's, Alberto Asor classic Scrittori e popolo. Il populismo nella letteratura italiana contemporanea, 6th edn (Rome, 1975), 61–8.Google Scholar

22 Galli, Amintore, Estetica della musica ossia Del Bello nella Musica Sacra, Teatrale e da Concerto, in ordine alla sua storia (Turin, 1900), 8Google Scholar: ‘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 Bakhtin, Mikhail, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Holquist, Michael, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, 1981).Google Scholar For an attempt to apply this perspective to opera between Mozart and Wagner, see Greene, Richard B., Listening to Richard Strauss Operas. The Audience's Multiple Standpoints (New York, 1991), 18–28Google Scholar

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 Bracco, Roberto, ‘Introduzione’, in Teatro verista, ed. Bracco, Roberto (Brescia, 1975), 22.Google Scholar For a comparison of the three texts (novella, prose drama, libretto), see Verga, Giovanni, La lupa, ed. Muscara`, Sarah Zappulla (Palermo, 1991).Google Scholar

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 Capuana, Luigi, Rospus, fiaba in un atto, in prosa o quasi (Florence, 1887).Google Scholar

28 Milda, fiaba in un atto di Luigi Capuana, musica di Paul Allen, vocal score (Milan, 1913).Google Scholar

29 For the libretto, see Capuana, Luigi, Malia, melodramma in 3 atti … (Milan, 1895)Google Scholar; the commedia in prosa (published in Rome, 1981)Google Scholar was collected in Le paesane (1894).Google Scholar

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. Ghidetti, Enrico, I (Rome, 1973), 427–74 and 317–23.Google Scholar The collection was first published in Catania (1893).

32 For all these titles, see Racconti (n. 31), II, 1–225.Google Scholar

33 (Palermo, 1892); it first appeared in episodes in Nuova Antologia (07–12 1890).Google Scholar

34 (Milan, 1977), 100–5.Google Scholar

35 Collected in Prose di romanzi, I, ed. Andreoli, Annamaria (Milan, 1988), 871–906.Google Scholar

36 Salgari, Emilio, La bohème italiana 1898–1899, repr. ed. Pozzo, Felice (Bergamo, 1990).Google Scholar 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 bohème’.

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 bohème, 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.Google Scholar

39 On this topic, see especially Luperini, Romano, Simbolo e costruzione allegorica in Verga (Bologna, 1989).Google Scholar

40 Both on this subject, and for a broad picture of Verga's work, see Spinazzola, Vittorio, Verismo e positivismo (Milan, 1977).Google Scholar

41 On irony in I Malavoglia see Petroni, Franco, ‘Il linguaggio negato. Saggio sui Malavoglia’, in Luperini, Romano, ed., Le fonti dei ‘Malavoglia’ e la loro rielaborazione (Catania, 1984), 1–17Google Scholar; on the various authorial points of view in Verga, see Petroni's, ‘L'irrazionale negato. Saggio sui Gesualdo’, L';ombra d';Argo, 2/5 (1984), 1–23.Google Scholar

42 See Capuana, Luigi, Giacinta secondo la prima edizione del 1879, ed. Paglieri, Marina, intro. Guido Davico Bonino (Milan, 1980), 62Google Scholar, 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 Headington, Christopher, Westbrook, Roy and Barfoot, Terry, Opera: A History (London, 1988), 212–28.Google Scholar

44 For a definition and a demonstration – although restricted to Puccini – see Torrefranca, Fausto, Giacomo Puccini e l'opera internazionale (Turin, 1912), 107–9Google Scholar; given the author';s anti-operatic and powerfully idealistic stance, he obviously uses the term in a negative sense.

45 See Gozzano, Guido, I sandali della diva. Tutte le novelle, intro. Marziano Guglielminetti (Milan, 1983).Google Scholar

46 Pirandello, Luigi, L';umorismo, 2nd, expanded edn (Florence, 1920)Google Scholar; Bergson, Henri, Le rire (Paris, 1900)Google Scholar; and Freud, Sigmund, Der Witz and seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten (Vienna–Leipzig, 1905).Google Scholar For important observations on irony as self-consciousness, as an internal scission in the author';s consciousness, and on humour as a–sublimity and demonism (primarily with reference to Romantic literature) see also Lukàcs, Gyorgy, The Theory of the Novel. A HistoricooPhilosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature (London, 1971), 74–5, 90–3.Google Scholar

47 On this, and also on general characteristics of mass an, see Hauser, Arnold, The Philosophy of An History (London, 1959), 277–365.Google Scholar

48 See Maehder, Jürgen, ‘Musik über Musik. Meyerbeer, Rossini e Wagner nella Bohème di Ruggero Leoncavallo’, in Dentro l';opera. Livelli di lingua e stile nel melodramma, atti del convegno, Venice, 1989, forthcoming.Google Scholar

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

50 On tourism as a symbolic attitude of mass culture, and on the characteristics of the ‘third culture’ in general, see Morin, Edgar, L';Esprit du temps (Paris, 1962).Google Scholar

51 See Marinis, Marco de, ‘Emotion et interprétation dans l';expérience du spectateur au théâtre’, in Helbo, André, ed., Approches de l';opéra (Paris, 1986), 175–81.Google Scholar

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 Rosa, Alberto Asor, ‘La cultura’, in Storia d';Italia, iv/2 (Turin, 1975), 819–1311; here 932.Google Scholar

53 For a general survey of the problems, see in particular Eco, Umberto, Apocalittici e integrati (Milan, 1964)Google Scholar; for specific definitions, see Spinazzola, Vittorio, ‘Le coordinate del sistema letterario’, in Livelli e linguaggi letterari nella società di massa (Trieste, 1985), 29–40Google Scholar; and Schulz-Buschhaus, Ulrich, ‘Livelli di stile e sistema dei generi letterari nella società di massa’, in the same volume, pp. 41–8.Google Scholar

54 I use these terms in the sense defined by Elias, Norbert, Engagement and Distanzierung. Arbeiten zur Wissenssoziologie, I (Frankfurt am Main, 1983).Google Scholar

55 See Rosa, Asor (n. 52), 969–71 and nn. 1 and 2.Google Scholar

56 See Benedetto, Renato Di, ‘Poetiche e polemiche’, in Bianconi, Lorenzo and Pestelli, Giorgio, eds., Storia dell';opera italiana, VI (Turin, 1988), 68–9.Google Scholar

57 Thovez, Enrico, ‘La leggenda del Wagner’, in L';arco d';Ulisse. Prose di combattimento (Naples, 1921), 98–120; here 117–18.Google Scholar