Leoncavallo: Pagliacci

Also available on Blu-ray Premiered on May 21st, 1892 at Milan’s Teatro Dal Verme under the baton of Arturo Toscanini, Pagliacci was immediately a huge success, and today it’s Leoncavallo’s most represented operas as “Vesti la giubba” is perhaps one of the most famous operatic arias of all times. The composer drew inspiration from a real incident that had occurred in a Calabrian town, an incident steeped in love and death, which inspired him to write his personal contribution to the new stylistic-aesthetic trends of Italian opera. In the Prologue, Leoncavallo inserted an outright manifesto of Verismo (“real theatre”). His aim was to “paint a scene from real life” and since “the artist is a person, […] he should write for the people. Therefore, he took inspiration from real life.” In the story of Nedda, Tonio and Canio we therefore find a well combined mix of art and reality, operatic theatre and life, with the second almost taking over the first, to the extent that the chorus, towards