Giacomo Puccini - Puccini, His Contemporaries, and The verismo Style

Puccini, His Contemporaries, and The verismo Style

Verismo is a style of Italian opera that began in 1890 with the first performance of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana, peaked in the early 1900s, and lingered into the 1920s. The style is distinguished by realistic – sometimes sordid or violent – depictions of everyday life, especially the life of the contemporary lower classes. It by and large rejects the historical or mythical subjects associated with Romanticism.

Puccini's career as a composer is almost entirely coincident in time with the verismo movement. Only his Le villi and Edgar preceded Cavalleria rusticana. At least two of Puccini's operas, Tosca and Il tobarro, are generally considered to be verismo operas. Some view Puccini as essentially a verismo composer, while others, although acknowledging that he took part in the movement to some degree, do not view him as a "pure" verismo composer. In addition, critics differ as to the degree to which particular operas by Puccini are, or are not, properly described as verismo operas. For example, Puccini scholar Mosco Carner places only two of Puccini's operas other than Tosca and Il tobarro within the verismo school: Madama Butterfly, and La fanciulla del West.

Puccini is by far the most-performed composer among his Italian contemporaries. Eleven of Puccini's operas numbered among the 200 most-performed operas between August 2008 and December 2011 (worldwide, by composers of any nationality, as surveyed by Operabase). Only three composers, and three works, by Italian contemporaries of Puccini appear on this list: Cavalleria rusticana by Mascagni, Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo, and Andrea Chenier by Umberto Giordano). Cavalleria rusticana, Pagliacci, and Andrea Chenier are uniformly considered to be verismo operas-- they represent the primary verismo works in performance today other than those written by Puccini. Thus, whether one counts just Tosca and Il tobarro, or all of Puccini's post-1890 work, as verismo operas affects the degree to which the verismo school can be said to influence opera performance in the present day.