Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

Tosca

What is a Verismo Opera?
(And is Tosca One?)

Frequently, during a rehearsal, or a round-table discussion of performance practices, disapproval is expressed or demands are made on the basis of adherence to the verismo style. Thus, the question “What is verismo , and the verismo style?” is not an idle one. This is a very vexing question, because, while many people will make authoritative assertions regarding what may and may not be done when performing a verismo opera, nobody is capable of showing you the document or manifesto which embodies the definition and rules of execution of verismo (or of any other style of musical execution, for that matter.)

One runs immediately to The Grove Dictionary of Music , which is very parsimonious in its discussion, only willing to give us one paragraph on the subject. This one paragraph, however useful, leaves us with the impression that there are only two operas we know which qualify for the category of verismo operas: Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci . The Grove Dictionary of Music is quite accurate in its failure to give any description or definition of verismo music. Verismo is a school of Italian literature, the Italian branch of the late nineteenth-century movement in which writers unflinchingly portrayed life with what they considered naturalism.

What, then, is a verismo opera? It seems quite reasonable to apply that term to an opera which uses a verismo text, that is to say, a dramatic work in which the characters are drawn from the lower (or at least the ordinary) social classes, the life of these classes is depicted with a certain colorful relish, and the dramatic situations emphasize “the violent clash of fierce, even brutal passions, particularly hatred, lust, betrayal, and murder.” (This lovely quote from The Grove Dictionary of Music reveals that strong writing is not to be found only in Danielle Steele's fiction.)

Is there, then, no such animal as verismo music? A little thought, and a few elliptical syllogisms, will justify our belief that there is. In verismo literature, the preeminent place is always granted to the novelist Giovanni Verga, the author of the novella Cavalleria Rusticana , on which Mascagni based his opera. The other verismo operas, according to The Grove Dictionary of Music , imitated the characteristics of Mascagni's in the hope of having the same success as his. Thus, if we can describe the kind of music that must go with the Verga text, we may hope to have described verismo music.

This is not difficult to do. Mascagni's music, as we might have suspected, is not cool, clever, classical, balanced, detached, ornamental, intellectually developed or explainable. It is full-blooded, soaring, passionate, long-lined, simple, undeveloped, straightforward, in places even a bit crude. And, perhaps above all, there is no attempt at restraint, but, on the contrary, every opportunity is taken advantage of, both in the text and in the music, to be full-throated, emphatic. If one had to choose one word to describe what was new in this music, one would be tempted to select the word vehement .

The shape of individual pieces is not based on formal principles but on the changing demands of the unfolding text. In regard to this last observation, it should be noted (still using Cavalleria Rusticana as the paradigm) that patterns of construction are indeed detectable, as, for instance in the long opening chorus sung off-stage, in Alfio's entrance aria, and the drinking chorus in the last scene. But these are largely decorative pieces, in which the emotional element is either subdued or not as crucial as in some others, for instance, Santuzza's aria or her duet with Turiddu. And even in these highly (almost painfully) dramatic pieces, one can discern, however dimly, a basic construction. It should be emphasized that music is, after all, music, and, like all arts, is based on the establishment, repetition and comparison of patterns. The complete abandonment of formal elements (or their use in such a manner that they cannot be perceived) results in a chaotic magma which most people cannot recognize as music, and which most composers wisely avoid.

Sometimes commentators speak as if a composer, in this case Mascagni, woke up one morning and decided to invent verismo opera, whereas it is clear that many of the roots of verismo music had long been forming. A study of Verdi's works easily reveals that, from the very beginning of his artistic life, he had been striving toward a musical style in which the musical and the declamatory values were equal, in which the text had ever-increasing emotional force, and in which the form of the music followed the dictates of that text word by word. He frequently exhorted his librettists to find “la parola scenica,” and when it was found he never failed to set it to music of the most overt expressiveness. And neither he nor his librettists shied away from “hatred, lust, betrayal, and murder.”

One surprising assertion in The Grove Dictionary of Music paragraph is that many other Italian operas of the same period as Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci are sometimes included in the category of verismo operas, which more properly belong to other genres. He specifically mentions Tosca as a prime example. I can only wonder why this opera should be excluded. The musical aesthetics seem fundamentally the same as Mascagni's: full-blooded, soaring, passionate, long-lined, simple, undeveloped, straightforward, in places even a bit crude. There is certainly no evidence that Puccini was guilty of excessive restraint, or failure to take advantage of every opportunity to be full-throated and emphatic. Perhaps The Grove Dictionary of Music denies the conformity of Tosca on the basis that two of the three leading characters are not commoners. But almost nothing is made of this fact in the drama. Scarpia may be a Baron, but it is his personal qualities and his power as the Chief of Police that affect the plot. And Cavaradossi is characterized by political beliefs that hardly qualify him as a royalist. But even more important, what plot or music could be more qualified to be described by The Grove Dictionary of Music lurid quartet, “hatred, lust, betrayal and murder”?

It therefore seems wayward of the august authors to assert that Puccini is not to be included among the verismo composers. If one remembers the chief characteristics of verismo , ordinary people, local color, and full-blown passions, one finds paradigms of all three in every Puccini work. Think of the sex and greed, the hatred and revenge portrayed in Manon Lescaut . Think of the ordinary people in La Bohème . Think of the crudity of the lust and the brutality of the emotions and actions in Tosca . (Didn't Shaw call it “a crude little shocker”?) How about the local color in Madama Butterfly , Turandot , and La Fanciulla del West ? All in all, it would be perverse to deny pride of place to the greatest of them all.

-William Yannuzzi

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