So he deserted the old models, Auber, Meyerbeer and Halévy for something more substantial, his deeper and gigantically conceived Aida. James Wolfe of the Metropolitan Opera said of the bigness of this work as produced at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York: “I have played before audiences of 30,000 in arenas in Mexico. I am so at home in the opera that I do cross-word puzzles waiting for my cue, and yet at the Metropolitan when I first played the King in Aida with its flaming music, its hundreds of people and its scores of horses, I was over-awed and frightened!”
After this, Verdi’s splendid mass, The Requiem, was written for the death of the Italian hero Manzoni. In it he approaches the German school in depth and seriousness, veering away from the emptiness of Italian writing.
In his last efforts he seems definitely influenced by Wagner; for, with his Otello and Falstaff we find a new Verdi, surpassing in form and sincere melody anything that he had done. He was very fortunate to have Arrigo Boito, his friend, to write librettos based on Shakespeare’s Othello and Merry Wives of Windsor. When Falstaff was given in New York (1925) a young American baritone, Lawrence Tibbet, in the rôle of Ford, flashed into fame.
Verdi was a man of the people, loving Italy and being loved in return, a master of voice, ready to take good suggestions to improve his work, always kind, high-minded, and generous. He knew the orchestra and wrote for it in a way that not only gave, in his last three masterpieces, a new flavor to Italian opera, but led the way for future composers.
Boito and His “Mefistofele”
Arrigo Boito (1842–1918), journalist, poet, and composer sprang into prominence with his Mefistofele, in which the Russian singer, Chaliapin, has attracted huge audiences at the Metropolitan. When it was first given in Italy, the audiences missed the coloratura arias, and the critics were very hard on the young composer. So he went back to journalism for many years. His next opera Nero has a gory plot, but is real and not embroidered as were most of the Italian operas. Boito had studied in Germany and had absorbed much of the realism and truthfulness that Gluck and Wagner, taught. Nero had an elaborate first performance (1924) by the celebrated Arturo Toscanini, one of the greatest living conductors, at La Scala in Milan. It is a tremendous stage spectacle, surpassing in scenic effect many of the older melodramas.
“Cavalleria Rusticana” and “I Pagliacci”
In 1890 the first truly realistic opera was written in Italy. A prize was offered by the publisher Sonzogno and an unknown man, Pietro Mascagni, won it with Cavalleria Rusticana (Rustic Chivalry). He was born in 1863, the son of a baker. He was a musical boy, but his father wished him to be a lawyer, so he had to work at the piano in secret. One day when he had been locked up by his father who did not want him to practise, he was discovered by his uncle, who sympathized with him and took him to Count Florestan, who helped the young musician to study in Milan.
Mascagni’s work in Cavalleria Rusticana was vivid and he used both the old and the new style of writing. It is full of the most entrancing melody (the Intermezzo, the Brindisi, or drinking song, and Santuzza’s aria, Voi lo sapete). He also wrote Iris and Amico Fritz, which never equalled Cavalleria.
With Ruggiero Leoncavallo (1858–) it was different, for only after writing a number of operas did he produce a success in the world-famous I Pagliacci. He wrote the tragic story of these strolling players as well as the music, which is not as popular in style as Cavalleria, but it is superbly put together and very dramatic. As these operas are both short, they are often performed together. The rôle of Canio (I Pagliacci) was one of Caruso’s masterpieces. How wonderful to think that his voice has been preserved for the future generations through his records of which Ridi Pagliaccio (Laugh Clown) is one of the finest. It is generally admitted that Caruso’s voice was the most glorious of our age, and certainly there was no artist more idolized than he. In this same opera Antonio Scotti’s performance of the famous Prologue is equally beautiful.