Leoncavallo, Ruggero (1858-1919)

Italian operatic composer. He played in restaurants, composing in his spare time, until the success of I pagliacci/The Strolling Players (1892). His other operas include La Bohème/Bohemian Life (1897) (contemporary with Puccini's version) and Zaza (1900).

He studied piano privately at first and then entered the Naples Conservatory, which he left in 1876 with a master diploma. He went to Bologna to attend Giosuè Carducci's lectures in literature, and was on the point of producing his first opera, Chatterton there, but was swindled and found himself penniless. He made a precarious living by giving lessons and playing the piano at cafés, but later managed to travel widely as a café pianist. He then began a trilogy on the Italian Renaissance, Crepusculum, with I Medici, but never produced the planned two following works, Savonarola and Cesare Borgia. In the meantime he enjoyed enormous success with I pagliacci in Milan in 1892 and soon all over Italy.

La Bohème in Venice in 1897 suffered from the appearance of Puccini's work on the same subject, and in spite of a commission for a German opera for Berlin, Der Roland von Berlin, in 1904, he never repeated the success of I pagliacci. He wrote all his own libretti and some for other composers.

Works Opera operas Chatterton (after Alfred de Vigny, composed 1876, produced 1896), I Medici, I pagliacci (1892), La Bohème (after Murger, 1897), Zaza (1900), Der Roland von Berlin (after Willibald Alexis, 1904), Maia (1910), Gli zingari, Goffredo Mameli, Edipo rè (after Sophocles, 1920), Tormenta (unfinished); operettas A chi la giarettiera (1919), Il primo bacio, Malbruk (1910), La reginetta delle rose (1912), Are You There? (1913), La candidata, and Prestami tua moglie.

Ballet La vita d'una marionetta.

Orchestral symphonic poem Serafita (after Balzac's novel).