Verismo

Веризм

Audio: Verismo

Verismo is the Italian operatic realism of the late 19th century, bringing the everyday life of ordinary people and their passions to the stage. Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci.

Verismo (from the Italian vero — “true”) carried the principles of literary naturalism into opera. Instead of gods and kings — peasants, workers, artisans; instead of lofty sentiments — jealousy, poverty, violence, love, and death in their rawest form.

The style's manifestos were the short operas Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni (1890, one act) and Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo (1892, prologue and two acts), often staged together in a single evening. The peak of verismo expression is the operatic dramaturgy of Giacomo Puccini (La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly), where realism is fused with boundless melody.

Cultural Versus

Verismo

Sub-category:: classical

38%similarity

Dodecaphony

Sub-category:: classical

Dodecaphony is a compositional technique in which all twelve pitches of the chromatic scale are used in a predetermined order (the row). Developed by Arnold Schoenberg in the early 1920s; Josef Matthias Hauer had independently published a similar system in 1919.