Verismo
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Verismo is a style of Italian opera distinguished by realistic (sometimes sordid or violent, but not necessarily) depictions of contemporary everyday life (especially the life of the lower classes), as opposed to historical or mythological subjects. Verismo works aim at realism (hence the name "verismo," or "realism"). By contrast, the intimate psychological penetration in realistic settings of natural social chatter of a work like Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier is not ordinarily discussed in terms of verismo, simply because of its "costume" setting.
The “realistic” approach of Verismo extends into the music in that the score of a Verismo opera is for the most part continuous and cannot easily be divided into separate scenes or “numbers” to be performed in concert (as is the case with the genres preceding Verismo). No Verismo melody, fragment, or leitmotif is composed simply because it sounds pretty. The purpose of each bar of a Verismo score is to convey or reflect scenery, action, or a character’s feelings. In this approach, Verismo composers followed Richard Wagner’s method. Indeed, Wagner’s influence on Verismo is obvious. Act One of Die Walküre and Act Three of Siegfried contain the seeds of many future Verismo fragments and melodies.
Giacomo Puccini, the greatest Verismo composer, supplied no overtures for his operas, since an overture, in his view, had nothing to do with the dramatic action on the stage. By the time of his career, opera audiences had become disciplined to settling into silence when the house lights dimmed, a virtue afforded by gaslight and electricity.
Though Bizet's Carmen (1875) was the first Realistic opera, Verismo came to the fore fifteen years later in Italy, with the historic premiere (1890) of Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana. The most famous composers of Verismo opera were Mascagni, Ruggero Leoncavallo (whose Pagliacci is often coupled with Cavalleria), Giacomo Puccini, Umberto Giordano, and Francesco Cilea. There were, however, many other veristi: Franco Alfano best known however for completing Puccini's Turandot, Alfredo Catalani, Gustave Charpentier (Louise) Eugen d’Albert (Tiefland), Alberto Franchetti, Franco Leoni, Jules Massenet (La Navarraise), Licinio Refice, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, and Riccardo Zandonai.
Of the abovenamed composers, the Italians comprised a group that was called the Giovane Scuola ("Young School"). Don Lorenzo Perosi is included in the Giovane Scuola, even though he wrote almost exclusively sacred music.
In the late 1990s, a journalist in a major Boston newspaper made the absurd claim that Verismo "began with Cavalleria Rusticana in 1890 and pretty much ended with Pagliacci two years later." This is patently incorrect. Puccini's Il Tabarro was written in 1918. Later still (1921) was Mascagni's Il Piccolo Marat, an archetypical Verismo opera. An opera does not need bloodshed to be a Verismo opera. Perhaps the most truly "realistic" opera of them all -- real people to whom every one of us can relate -- is Puccini's 1896 masterpiece, La bohème.
Other usages
The term verismo is also sometimes used to describe the very recognizable musical style that was prevalent among Italian composers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For most of the veristi, traditionally veristic subjects accounted for only some of their operas. Mascagni himself wrote a pastoral comedy (L'amico Fritz), a symbolist work set in Japan (Iris), and a couple of medieval romances (Isabeau and Parisina). These works are far from typical verismo subject matter, and yet they are written in the same general musical style as his more purely veristic subjects. So context is very important in understanding the intended meaning of the term verismo, as it is used both as a description of the gritty, passionate, working class dramas that the term was coined to describe, but also as the musical movement in which the giovane scuola were participants.
See also
es:Verismo fr:Vérisme it:Verismo (letteratura) ja:ヴェリズモ・オペラ nl:Verisme fi:Verismi