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Ruggero Leoncavallo

Ruggero (Ruggiero) Leoncavallo (April 23, 1857- August 9, 1919) was an Italian opera composer. His opera, Pagliacci, was and remains one of the most popular works in the operatic repertory, currently appearing as number 14 on Opera America's list of the 20 most-performed operas in North America.^[1]

The son of a judge, Leoncavallo was educated at the Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella in his native city, Naples (the date 1858, given for his birth in older histories of music, is incorrect). After some years spent teaching and in ineffective attempts to obtain the production of more than one opera, he saw the enormous success of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana in 1890, and he wasted no time in producing his own verismo hit, Pagliacci. (According to Leoncavallo, the plot of this work had a real-life origin: he claimed it derived from a murder trial over which his father had presided.)

Pagliacci was performed in Milan in 1892 with immediate success; today it is the only work by Leoncavallo in the standard operatic repertory.^[2] Its most famous aria Vesti la giubba ("Put on the trappings" or, in the better-known older translation, "On with the motley") was recorded by Enrico Caruso and became the world's first record to sell a million copies.

The next year his I Medici was also produced in Milan, but neither it nor Chatterton (1896)—both early works—obtained any favour, and it was not until La bohème was performed in 1897 in Venice that his talent obtained public confirmation. (Its two tenor arias are still occasionally performed, especially in Italy, yet it was outshone by Puccini's opera of the same name and on the same subject (albeit a better libretto), which was premiered in 1896.) Subsequent operas by Leoncavallo were Zazà (1900) (the opera of Geraldine Farrar's famous farewell performance at the Met), and Der Roland (1904). Nothing from the latter opera is heard today, but the baritone aria from Zazà is still sometimes sung.

Leoncavallo also composed songs, most famously Mattinata, which he wrote for Caruso. He was the librettist for all of his own operas. Many considered him the greatest Italian librettist of his time after Boito. Among Leoncavallo's libretti for other composers is his contribution to the libretto for Puccini's Manon Lescaut.

He died in Montecatini, Tuscany, in 1919.

• Pagliacci (May 21, 1892 Teatro Dal Verme, Milan)
• I Medici (9 November 1893 Teatro Dal Verme, Milan) [first part of the trilogy Crepusculum - not completed ]
• Chatterton (10 March 1896 Teatro Argentina, Rome) [rev. of a work written in 1876 ]
• La bohème (6 May 1897 Teatro La Fenice, Venice)
• Zazà (10 November 1900 Teatro Lirico, Milan)
• Der Roland von Berlin (13 December 1904 Deutsche Oper, Berlin)
• Maia (15 January 1910 Teatro Costanzi, Rome)
• Zingari (16 September 1912 Hippodrome, London)
• Mimi Pinson (1913 Teatro Massimo, Palermo) [rev. of La Bohème]
• Edipo Re (13 December 1920 Opera Theatre, Chicago)

• La jeunesse de Figaro (1906, USA)
• Malbrouck (19 January 1910 Teatro Nazionale, Rome)
• La reginetta delle rose (24 June 1912 Teatro Costanzi, Rome)
• Are You There? (1 November 1913 Theatre Prince of Wales, London)
• La candidata (6 February 1915 Teatro Nazionale, Rome)
• Prestami tua moglie (2 September 1916 Casino delle Terme, Montecatini)
• Goffredo Mameli (27 April 1916 Teatro Carlo Felice, Genoa)
• A chi la giarrettiera? (16 October 1919 Teatro Adriano, Rome)
• Il primo bacio (29 April 1923 Salone di cura, Montecatini)
• La maschera nuda (26 June 1925 Teatro Politeama, Naples)

• 'Leoncavallo, Ruggero', in Stanley Sadie and Christina Bashford (eds.) The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, 1992, Macmillan, pp. 1148-1149. ISBN 0935859926
• 'Leoncavallo, Ruggero' in Rosenthal, H. and Warrack, J., 1979, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera, 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press pp. 278-279.

• Biography and complete list of compositions Festival Leoncavallo (in Italian)
• Fondazione Leoncavallo (in German and Italian)