Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci and the dogged pursuit of Realism

Ruggierro Leoncavallo never quite reached the terminal velocity necessary to escape from planet Puccini. His boldest attempt to trump Puccini at his own game was Leoncavallo’s composition of his own version of La Boheme, which premiered one year after Puccini’s in 1897. Although comparisons of the two works are fascinating, after a few years of relative popularity, Leoncavallo was permanently left with the short end of the stick. But Leoncavallo could thank Puccini indirectly for his one lasting masterpiece - I Pagliacci. Leoncavallo had been originally hired to write the libretto for Puccini’s 1892 Manon Lescaut. Puccini rejected his work and Leoncavallo, fired with enthusiasm, plunged into I Pagliacci, which also premiered in 1892. Leoncavallo, having earned degrees in both music composition and literature, decided to write his own libretto for I Pagliacci. The libretto was an inspired offspring of the school of “verismo” (realism), a style made increasingly popular two years earlier with Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. Verismo was a response to the fairy tale world of princes and kings whose issues were far removed from the pains of real people, and the reality of the newly unified democratic republic of Italy. Unfortunately, verismo was soon regarded as something of a victim of it own success, where reality seemed to play a somewhat distant second to the lurid shock value of its febrile “in your face” style. Who knew that the brief success of verismo Italian opera in the late 19^th century would find a rebirth in the American 21^st century of Jerry Springer like talk shows and schlock reality TV. Next up on Jerry: homicidal trailer trash singing husbands, and the women who love them.

When one prissy English critic declared Puccini’s Tosca, which premiered in 1900, a “shabby little shocker” he was probably going after the entire school of verismo wholesale. I Pagliacci seems more deserving the title of “shabby” than Tosca, and plenty of shabbiness has accrued over time as performers and directors took “artistic” liberties with the music and libretto in a shameless campaign to strut their own stuff. Many of the high notes (most notably Tonio’s interpolated high Ab at the end of the prologue) are simply not in the score. Sometimes entire sentences, not just single notes, have been placed into the stratosphere. Without the lasting fame and respect of a venerated master (e.g. Verdi or Puccini) to keep them in check, performers of “lesser” composers (e.g. Leoncavallo) have had their revisionist way. The most egregious example in I Pagliacci is the frequent transfer of the last line of the opera “The comedy is over” away from the sarcastic and deformed Tonio; in almost all performances today Canio, fresh on the heels of his double homicide, delivers the line. Shocking? yes. Realistic – no. The ironic detachment from the murderous events just transpired that would be required is really not in Canio’s makeup; Hannibal Lecter is not alive and well, and singing in Calabria. But if it sells a few more tickets, we’ll pretend, and all in the name of enhanced reality. When performers can’t police themselves, it falls to a star conductor to reign in the excesses, and Toscanini did his best to restore authenticity to I Pagliacci. Today, only a few luminaries like Ricardo Muti seem willing to carry on the good fight against “tradition”. To quote Toscanini: "Tradition is just the last bad performance”. Still, without the high cholesterol moments of “anything you can sing, I can sing higher/longer”, it is disappointing to many ears to hear the music and words as they were written by Leoncavallo. But like many bad diets, the thrill of the moment wears badly with age.

Leoncavallo knew he had a hit on his hands with I Pagliacci, when he was sued for plagiarism. Apparently the concept of a play within a play, and the murderous results that occur when the lines between them become blurred were a popular subject. Leoncavallo was able to get the lawsuit dropped when he honestly testified that art in this case had imitated life: His I Pagliacci was based on an actual incident of a murderous troubadour forgetting where a play ended and his wife began, in which Leoncavallo’s own father was the presiding magistrate. Case dismissed. But plagiarism is, and always will be, the sincerest form of flattery. See if you can hear some fairly brazen plagiarism by Leoncavallo in the music of the Chorus of the Bells in I Pagliacci as he pays “homage” to Emmanuel Chabrier’s Espana written some ten years earlier in 1883. And for a special Hollywood homage to the topic of deranged performers who can’t figure out where fiction ends and reality begins, go no further than 1947’s A Double Life in which actor Ronald Colman/Othello gets to fulfill everyone’s guilty pleasure when he strangles Shelley Winters/Desdemona.

So what can be said about the people in I Pagliacci – are they worthy of their own episode on Jerry Springer? Enter Canio, the jealous husband, who is willing to murder in order to preserve his abusive relationship with wife Nedda; after all, she owes him big time for scraping her out of the gutter. Nedda has one fine Carmen like moment of moral clarity right before she is stabbed to death, when she declares she is willing to die for her convictions. Still, we wonder why she hadn’t run away years ago from this sham marriage unless she is something of an enabling masochist. Her therapy bills would be large, indeed. And who is Silvio? – a handsome small town schlemazel whose major resume item is simply to show up – and then die for his punctuality. The deformed and caustic hunchback Tonio helps to round out this extended family. He has little of the pathos of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but twice the brutality. And Beppe, the last member of the troupe merely wants to stay out of harms way, and when the dust settles is just another unemployed singer. Perhaps the Canios rate more than a mere episode on a Springer show, and, like the Osbornes, deserve their own long running reality TV series.

Ultimately Leoncavallo deserved to be remembered for more than I Pagliacci. But it was not to be. He, like Mascagni, was destined to be a one hit wonder, suffering most of his adult life from premature adoration and kvetching, as Mascagni did, that “I was crowned before I was King”.

No discussion of I Pagliacci would be complete without mentioning favorite recordings. The best of all time probably remains the 1953 recording featuring Jussi Bjoerling, Victoria de Los Angeles, Leonard Warren and Robert Merrill. I often wonder if Warren and Merrill flipped a coin for who would sing which baritone role. Bjoerling rarely performed Canio on stage because he felt the role was ignoble; no controversy there. Another notable recording is from 1971 with Placido Domingo, Montserrat Caballe, and Sherrill Milnes. I just love Milnes’ performance as he plays Tonio as if he were Iago’s twin brother, but with any higher brain functions removed. And he holds the high Ab at the end of the prologue long enough to establish residency in all 50 states. Not a paragon of authenticity, but when you got it, flaunt it, baby! Bargain hunters are referred to an excellent 1992 recording on the Naxos label, with Bo Skovhus as the most recognizable star. Let us conclude by repeating Tonio’s final words of the prologue: “On with the show! Let’s begin!”

Synopsis

The scene: The village of Montalto, in Calabria. It is mid August in the year 1860, during the religious holiday of The Feast of the Assumption.

The character Tonio is the prologue. He announces that we are about to see a slice of life, with all its pains. It may look outwardly like Commedia Dell’Arte, with familiar stock characters, but do not be deceived. As the curtain goes up, the true action begins: it is three in the afternoon as a troupe of itinerant actors literally drums up business for this evening’s performance of a classic comic love triangle story. Canio, the leader of the troupe, misinterprets an innocent jest, and launches into a barely disguised jealous tirade about his wife Nedda. When Canio leaves to have a drink with the villagers, Tonio makes awkward advances on Nedda. She fights him off with a whip, no pepper spray being available. When Nedda’s lover Silvio arrives he asks her to run away with him. Tonio overhears their tryst and swears vengeance, and leaves to find Canio. When Canio returns, Silvio runs away, and Canio threatens Nedda at knifepoint to reveal the name of her lover. Before bloodshed can ensue, Beppe, another member of the troupe, convinces Canio to focus on tonight’s performance, as it is nearly showtime. As Canio gets into makeup, he pours out his heart in the show-stopping aria “Vesti la giubba” (put on the costume). When the play within the play begins, we see art imitating life with a vengeance: Tonio playing Taddeo, makes awkward advances on Nedda/Columbina. Then Beppe, playing the handsome Arlecchino enters, and begs Nedda/Columbina to run away with him. When Canio/Pagliaccio comes home from a hard day at the office, who can blame him for passing over from comic fantasy into tragic reality when he demands the name of her lover, again with the visual aid of a knife. At first the audience is amazed at the lifelike acting, and Nedda makes one last desperate attempt to charm Canio out of his rage, but within moments it is clear we are about to plunge into murder. Canio stabs Nedda and when Silvio finally reveals himself when he attempts to save her, he too is fatally stabbed. The “comedy” is over.