Ruggero Leoncavallo

Ruggero Leoncavallo was an Italian Opera composer and librettist. He was born on 23rd April 1857 in Naples, Italy and died on 9th August 1919 in Montrecatini Terme, Tuscany, Italy aged 62.

“Pagliacci” (Clowns or Players) (1892)
“La Bohème” (The Bohemians) (1897)
“Zazà” (1900)
“Zingari” (1912)

1857: Ruggero Leoncavallo was born on 23rd April in Naples, Italy. His father was Vincenzo Leoncavallo, a magistrate and judge. As a child the family lived in Montalto Uffugo in Calabria where he was schooled but he returned to Naples to be educated at the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory and gave concerts in cafes and taught piano and singing to earn some money. He later went to Bologna University where he studied literature with the poet Giosue Carducci.

1879: His uncle Giuseppe, who works at the Foreign Ministry in Cairo, asks him to come to Egypt to show off his skills on the piano. He becomes a piano teacher and works for the new Khedive (ruler) Tewfik Pasha playing the piano.

1882: Armed rebellion breaks out in Egypt in support of Ahmed Urabi and he has to leave Cairo abruptly and returns to France. He lives in Montmartre in Paris and becomes an accompanist for artists who play at Sunday concerts in cafes and other venues. He meets his future wife, Berthe Rambaud, one of his students.

1886: He becomes inspired by the French romantics and Alfred de Musset in particular and writes a symphonic poem based on his poetry called “La Nuit de Mai” (May Night).

1887: “La Nuit de Mai” (The Night in May) receives to great acclaim and with the money earned he and Berthe travel to Milan to begin his operatic career.

1890: Having seen the great success of “Cavalleria Rusticana” by Pietro Mascagni and sets about writing his own verismo opera (real or modern life story) called “Pagliacci”.

1892: “Pagliacci” (Clowns or Players) premieres in Milan on 21st May conducted by Arturo Toscanini. It is an immediate success due to its mixture of humour and violence. He claims it is based on the actual events of a murder trial in Montalto Uffugo at which his father had been the judge.

1893: He produces “I Medici” (The Medici) in Milan but it does not have the same reaction from the audience as his previous work. He writes his own librettos for his operas and also writes libretti for other composers such as “Manon Lescaut” for Giacomo Puccini, first performed during the year.

1895: He finally marries Berthe Rambaud.

1896: The four-act “Chatterton” is premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. It is based on the life of the English poet Thomas Chatteron and was largely written in 1876 but the performance is not a success.

1897: He premieres “La Bohème” (The Bohemians) on 6th May at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice but it is overshadowed by Puccini’s version from the year before which audiences much prefer.

1900: His next opera “Zazà” on 10th November at the Teatro Lirico in Milan is more successful.

1904: The Emperor of Germany, Wilhelm the Second, commissions him to write “Der Roland von Berlin” to glorify the Hohenzollern dynasty. It premieres at the Konigliches Opernhaus in Berlin on 13th December but is a complete failure.

1906: He tours to New York and elsewhere in the United States of America with performers from La Scala Milan which is a great success. 

1910: His next opera “Maïa” is premiered at the Teatro Contanzi in Rome on 15th January and one of his later operettas, “Malbrouc” is given on 19th January at the Teatro Nazionale in the city.

1912: His operetta “La Reginetta delle Rose” (The Rose Queen) is given in Rome in June. His next full scale opera is also a success. “Zingari” is first performed in London at the Hippodrome Theatre on 16th September and has a long run and then tours the USA.

1913: His two-act farce “Are You There?” appears at the Prince of Wales theatre in London but the rowdy audience hate it and there is almost a riot.

1915: The Operetta “La Candidata” (The Candidate) is performed on 6th February at the Teatro Nazionale in Rome.

1916: The operettas, “Goffredo Mameli” performed on 27th April at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, Italy and “Prestami tua Moglie” (Lend me your Wife) at the Casino delle Terme, Montecatini on 2nd September.

Ruggero Leoncavallo died on 9th August 1919 in Montrecatini Terme, Tuscany, Italy. Hundreds attended his funeral including Pietro Mascagni and his rival Giacomo Puccini. He was buried in the Cimiterio delle Porte Sante in Florence. After a campaign both his and his wife’s remains were transferred in 1989 to Brissago in Switzerland where he once had a villa. He liked the village but did not stipulate it in his will. An opera often attributed to Leoncavallo, “Edipe Re” was premiered in Chicago, USA in 1920 but this is now heavily disputed. 

Ruggero Leoncavallo studied at the Naples Conservatory and completed his first opera, “Chatterton” in 1876 (based on a work by Alfred de Vigny) before his twentieth birthday although it was not performed publicly until sometime later. Afterwards he fell on hard times and became a café pianist and occasionally taught pupils piano in Paris, London, and Egypt.

The famous baritone Victor Maurel introduced him to Ricordi, the leading music publisher of the day in Milan. This was a bitter sweet encounter. Heavily influenced by Richard Wagner and his leitmotifs he had the idea of a three-part Italian answer to the “Ring” cycle. Only the first part, “I Medici” was ever completed. It met with little success and caused major problems with Ricordi which led him not to want to finish the work.

In 1890 the success of Pietro Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” led him to realise that realism was the way forward and he wholeheartedly adopted the verismo movement. He began composing what would be become “Il Pagilacci” based on one of his magistrate father’s legal cases. The opera was an immediate success and allowed him to put on public performances of his earlier works, “I Medici” and “Chatterton”. Both “Pagilacci” and “Cavalleria Rusticana” are nowadays famously paired together in double bills known colloquially as “Cav and Pag”. 

In 1892 he finished his adaption of Murger’s “Scegravenes de la vie de Bohegraveme” (Scenes of of Bohemian Life) fifteen months after Giacomo Puccini’s version although at the time both were equally successful it is Puccini’s which has become the staple at opera houses around the world today. He nonetheless admired greatly the works of Giuseppe Verdi and Puccini with their melodic storytelling. He actually contributed to writing the libretto of Puccini’s opera “Manon Lescaut”. 

He was an avid reader and enjoyed the writings of French naturalists such as Henri Murger which influenced his “La Bohème” and “Zazàgave”. However, his German language “Der Roland von Berlin” commissioned by Kaiser Wilhelm the Second for an opera celebrating the Hohenzollern dynasty was a failure in 1904.

He was an early adaptor of recorded music in the early twentieth century and his song “Mattinata” was recorded by Enrico Caruso in 1904 to great success. On 8th December 1905 he recorded five of his own pieces for the Welte-Mignon reproducing mechanical piano. 

He left unfinished his most ambitious work adapting the plays “Edipo Re” and “Prometeo” into operas. He wrote the libretti for most of his own operas and some critics ranked him as the greatest librettist in Italy. 

Little from Leoncavallo’s other operas is heard today but he is a central figure of the Italian verismo movement and influenced later verismo and early twentieth century composers such as Umberto Giordano, Francesco Cilea, and even Giacomo Puccini, who were attracted to elements of his gritty, emotional realism. His soaring vocal melodies have also directly influenced generations of dramatic tenors and baritones and in particular how they approached declamatory singing in live performance and early recordings. 

The Museo Leoncavallo (Leoncavallo Museum) was established in 2002 in Brissago to commemorate him and the Museo Ruggiero Leoncavallo in his childhood home, Montalto Uffugo, was opened in 2010.

List of works by Leoncavallo.