Profile of Ruggero Leoncavallo on Famous Like Me

Ruggiero Leoncavallo (March 8, 1857 - August 9, 1919) was an Italian opera composer.

He was born in Naples and educated at the Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella of that city. 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. Pagliacci was performed in Milan in 1892 with immediate success; today it is the only work by Leoncavallo in the standard operatic repertory. The next year his 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 sung, especially in Italy.) 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 often sung.

Leoncavallo was the librettist for all of his own operas. Many considered him the greatest Italian librettist of his time after Boito.

Leoncavallo died in Montecatini.

Operas

• Pagliacci (May 21, 1892 Teatro Dal Verme, Milan)
• I Medici (9 Nov. 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 Nov. 1900 Teatro Lirico, Milan)
• Der Roland von Berlin (13 Dec. 1904 Deutsche Oper, Berlin)
• Maia (15 Jan. 1910 Teatro Costanzi, Rome)
• Gli Zingari (16 Sept. 1912 Hippodrome, London)
• Mimi Pinson (1913 Teatro Massimo, Palermo) [rev. of La Bohème]
• Edipo Re (13 Dec. 1920 Opera Theatre, Chicago)

Operettas

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

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