Ruggero Leoncavallo

His other notable compositions include the song "Mattinata", popularized by Enrico Caruso, and, to a lesser extent, his version of La bohème which, however, was overshadowed by Puccini's highly successful opera of the same name.

Ruggero Leoncavallo studied at University of Bologna and San Pietro a Majella Conservatory of Music. Training under Giosuè Carducci and Beniamino Cesi is recorded. The recorded working language is Italian. The field of work recorded is performing arts and music. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are opera. Works named in the authority record are Pagliacci.

• Name — Ruggero Leoncavallo • Birth Name — Ruggiero Giacomo Maria Giuseppe Emmanuele Raffaele Domenico Vincenzo Francesco Donato Leoncavallo • Born — 23 April 1857 • Birthplace — Naples, Kingdom of the Two Sicilies • Died — 9 August 1919 • Place of death — Montecatini Terme, Kingdom of Italy • Occupation — * Opera composer • librettist • Years Active — 1879–1919

The son of Vincenzo Leoncavallo, a police magistrate and judge, Leoncavallo was born in Naples, at the time the capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, on 23 April 1857. As a child, Leoncavallo moved with his father to the town of Montalto Uffugo in Calabria, where he lived during his adolescence. In 1868 he returned to Naples, where he eventually became a student at San Pietro a Majella Conservatory. From 1876 to 1877, he studied literature under the famed Italian poet Giosuè Carducci at the University of Bologna. He also lived in Potenza, from 1876 until 1878. In 1879, Leoncavallo's uncle Giuseppe, director of the press department at the Foreign Ministry in Egypt, suggested that his young nephew come to Cairo to showcase his pianistic abilities. Ruggero Leoncavallo arrived in Egypt shortly after the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II had deposed Khedive Ismail (June 1879) and replaced him as Khedive of Egypt with Ismail's son Tewfik Pasha. Mahmud Hamdi Pasha (1863–1921), the teenage brother of the new Khedive, appointed Ruggero Leoncavallo as "his private musician". His time in Egypt concluded abruptly in mid-1882, as the British intervened in the Urabi revolt of 1879–1882 in Alexandria and Cairo led by Ahmed Urabi; the composer fled and travelled to France. In Paris, Leoncavallo found lodging in Montmartre. • Illustration — Leoncavallo's house at Montecatini Terme An agent located in the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis secured Leoncavallo employment as an accompanist and instructor for artists who performed in Sunday concerts mostly at cafés. In Paris, Leoncavallo met the singer Berthe Rambaud (1869–1926) who became his "preferred student"; they became partners in Paris in 1888 and married in Milan in 1895. Increasingly inspired by the French romantics, particularly Alfred de Musset, Leoncavallo began work on a symphonic poem based on Musset's poetry entitled La nuit de mai. The work was completed in Paris in 1886 and premiered in April 1887 to critical acclaim. With this success, and now with enough accumulated money, in 1888 Leoncavallo moved to Milan with Rambaud. Back in Italy, Leoncavallo spent some years teaching and attempting ineffectively to obtain the production of more than one opera, notably Chatterton. In 1890 he saw the enormous success of Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana and wasted no time in producing his own verismo work, Pagliacci. (According to Leoncavallo, the plot of this work had a real-life origin: he claimed it derived from a murder trial in Montalto Uffugo, 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 repertoire. Its most famous aria, "Vesti la giubba" ("Put on the costume" or, in the better-known older translation, "On with the motley"), was recorded by Enrico Caruso and laid claim to being the world's first record to sell a million copies (although this is probably a total of Caruso's various versions of it, made in 1902, 1904 and 1907). The next year his I Medici was also produced in Milan, but neither it nor Chatterton (belatedly produced in 1896)—both early works—obtained much lasting favour. Much of Chatterton, however, was recorded by the Gramophone Company (later His Master's Voice) as early as 1908, and remastered on CD almost 100 years later by Marston Records. Leoncavallo himself conducts the performance or at very least supervises the production. It was not until Leoncavallo's La bohème was performed in 1897 in Venice that his talent obtained public confirmation. However, this work was outshone by Puccini's opera of the same name and on the same subject, which had been premiered by the Teatro Regio in Turin in February 1896. Two tenor arias from Leoncavallo's version are still occasionally performed, especially in Italy. Subsequent operas by Leoncavallo in the 1900s were: Zazà (the opera of Geraldine Farrar's famous 1922 farewell performance at the Metropolitan Opera), and 1904's Der Roland von Berlin. In 1906 the composer brought singers and orchestral musicians from La Scala to perform concerts of his music in New York, as well as making an extensive tour of the United States. The tour was, all in all, a qualified success. He had a brief success with Zingari, which premiered in Italian in London in 1912, with a long run at the Hippodrome Theatre. Zingari also reached the United States but soon disappeared from the repertoire. After a series of operettas, Leoncavallo appeared to have tried for one last serious effort with Edipo re. It had always been assumed that Leoncavallo had finished the work but had died before he could finish the orchestration, which was completed by Giovanni Pennacchio. However, with the publication of Konrad Dryden's biography of Leoncavallo it was revealed that Leoncavallo may not have written the work at all (although it certainly contains themes by Leoncavallo). A review of Dryden's study notes: "That fine Edipo re... was not even composed by [Leoncavallo]. His widow paid another composer to concoct a new opera using the music of Der Roland von Berlin. Dryden didn't find one reference to the opera in Leoncavallo's correspondence nor is there a single note by him to be found in the handwritten score." Pennacchio may either have concocted the opera or have had to do more to Leoncavallo's incomplete work to "fill in the gaps" using Leoncavallo's earlier music.

• Pagliacci – 21 May 1892, Teatro Dal Verme, Milan. • I Medici – 9 November 1893, Teatro Dal Verme, Milan). (The first part of the uncompleted trilogy, Crepusculum.) • Chatterton – 10 March 1896, Teatro Argentina, Rome. (Revision 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, Königliches Opernhaus, Berlin. • Maïa – 15 January 1910, Teatro Costanzi, Rome. • Zingari – 16 September 1912, Hippodrome, London. • Mimi Pinson – 1913, Teatro Massimo, Palermo. (Revision of La bohème.) • Mameli (about Goffredo Mameli) – 27 April 1916, Teatro Carlo Felice, Genoa. (Note that the Fondazione Leoncavallo classes this as an opera rather than an operetta.) • Edipo re – 13 December 1920, Chicago Opera. (Produced after the composer's death, at very least orchestration not by Leoncavallo, completed or perhaps composed by Giovanni Pennacchio.)

• Illustration — Ruggero Leoncavallo • La jeunesse de Figaro – 1906, New York. • Malbrouck – 19 January 1910, Teatro Nazionale, Rome. • La reginetta delle rose – 24 June 1912, Teatro Costanzi, Rome. • Are You There? – 1 November 1913, Prince of Wales Theatre, London. • La candidata – 6 February 1915, Teatro Nazionale, Rome. • Prestami tua moglie – 2 September 1916, Casino delle Terme, Montecatini. (English title: Lend me your wife.) • Goffredo Mameli – 27 April 1916, Teatro Carlo Felice, Genoa. • A chi la giarrettiera? – 16 October 1919, Teatro Adriano, Rome. (English title: Whose Garter Is This?) Produced after the composer's death. • Il primo bacio – 29 April 1923 Salone di cura, Montecatini. Produced after the composer's death. • La maschera nuda – 26 June 1925 Teatro Politeama, Naples. Produced after the composer's death.

• La nuit de mai – poème symphonique for tenor and orchestra after Alfred de Musset, Paris 1886 (also performed and recorded in 1990 and – with Plácido Domingo – in 2010) • Séraphitus Séraphita – Poema Sinfonico after Honoré de Balzac, Teatro alla Scala, Milan 1894

Ruggero Leoncavallo is recorded as librettist, composer, pianist, screenwriter and conductor.