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Alas, Neapolitan
composer Ruggiero Leoncavallo is on that list. He
studied at the San Pietro a Maiella
music conservatory in Naples and then wandered
in England, France, Holland, Germany—even as far
afield as Egypt—as an itinerant teacher of voice and
piano as well as a pianist in the popular cafés
chantants of the day. He came of age just
in time to get in on the new music of verismo—realism,
the likes of Bizet’s Carmen or
Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana,
but he made only a single lasting contribution:Pagliacci
(Clowns or Buffoons). It
is still one of the most popular works in the
repertoire and so short that it forms an inevitable
double-bill with Cavalleria Rusticana.
Pagliacci
premiered in 1892 in
Milan and was greeted with great enthusiasm. The most
famous aria, Vesti la giubba, was later
recorded by Enrico Caruso
and was the first recording to sell one million
copies. It remains extremely popular today. Leoncavallo wrote
other operas—i Medici (1893), Chatterton
(1896), Zazà(1900), and Der
Roland von Berlin
(1904), but none of those remain in the
standard repertoire, especially not the one with the
German title! It was commissioned by Kaiser Wilhelm
II, himself—an ardent Leoncavallo fan. Indeed, the
work—about the early days of the Hohenzollern
dynasty —premiered in Berlin with the Kaiser
present. The opera went belly-up even before the
Hohenzollern dynasty did.
An unfortunate
destiny for any musician is to be the composer of “the
other one”—that is, of a version of a more famous work
by another composer. There are two great examples of
this in Italian opera: one is Paisiello’s Barber of
Seville1,
still played occasionally as an historical curiosity
but totally overshadowed—to put it mildly—by Rossini’s
later work of that name; the other is Leoncavallo’s La
Bohème. It premiered in 1897, less than a
year after Puccini’s work. Critics and public passed
judgment on the two operas immediately. It wasn’t even
close. At least one treatment of the life of Puccini I
have seen on Italian TV has the two composers engaged
in a nasty rivalry. I have no idea if there is any
truth to that, but Leoncavallo actually wrote part of
the libretto for Puccini’s Manon Lascaut;
it is hard to imagine him doing that for a bitter
rival.2
Interestingly, Leoncavallo (like Wagner and a few
others) was the librettist for all of his own operas
and was considered a great one. Leoncavallo wrote a beautiful song, Mattinata, which remains popular. He composed it in 1903 at the request of a recording company; Enrico Caruso then recorded it, accompanied by Leoncavallo, himself, at the piano. You have heard the song somewhere, sometime. Everyone has. Leoncavallo wrote both music and lyrics. The title means “Morning,” and the Italian text starts:
It is very literary, even containing a reference to Homer’s “rosy-fingered dawn.” Who knows if that was not part of Leoncavallo’s problem? —too many interests. A number of sources, indeed, try to deal with the “flash in the pan” aspect in his life. They come to no conclusion, except to point out that the composer was not obsessed with music to the exclusion of all else. The reason he was a fine librettist, for example, is that his literary interests took him to Bologna after his music studies in Naples so he could attend the university there, particularly the literature classes held by the greatest Italian poet of the day and Nobel laureate, Giosuè Carducci. Or maybe there is no reason; maybe Leoncavallo's genius caught fire once and once only in his life. He then produced a magnificent work for which he will be remembered. That's still not too bad. 1. There are at least 11 versions of The Barber of
Seville. Here
is a list. 2. There is, however, evidence
of at least some amusing rivalry. There exists a
letter (cited in "A Little-Known Letter by Berlioz
and Unpublished Letters by Cherubini, Leoncavallo,
and Hugo Wolf" by Artur Holde in The Musical Quarterly,
Vol. 37, No. 3 (Jul., 1951), pp. 340-353) from
Leoncavallo to French composer, Jules Massenet, in
which Leoncavallo asks about getting permission from
Edmond Rostand to set Rostand's 1897 play, Cyrano de Bergerac,
to music before Puccini got hold of it! As it turns
out, Rostand wasn't interested, saying that
"...there is already enough music in my work." |
There is a considerable list of
composers known primarily for only one piece of music,
even though they wrote many. Claude Joseph Roget de
Lisle comes to mind immediately; he was the composer
of the stirring national anthem of France, La Marseillaise. Another is 
Between
1909 and his death, Leoncavallo wrote a number of
other operas, operettas and songs, which today are
totally obscure. He never did return to his youthful
ambition to compose an operatic trilogy about the
Italian Renaissance. Actually, he did finish the first
part—I Medici—produced as a stand-alone piece
(see above). The other parts were to be called