LEONCAVALLO, RUGGERO (b. Naples, Italy 23 April 1857 (?); d. nr. Florence, 9 Aug 1919. )
Leoncavallo trained at the Naples Conservatory, where he studied piano and composition. Much of the detail of his early life is confused or missing. We know that on graduation from the Conservatory he followed in his father's footsteps and studied law. By 1876 he had determined to make his living as a musician.
At first he worked mainly as a performer, playing and singing in cafes. A series of early operas, often inspired by the works of Wagner, failed to succeed.
The publisher, Ricordi, eventually introduced him to Puccini, for whom he was to provide a libretto. Puccini promptly fired him.
Leoncavallo then seems to have decided to abandon his grandiose Wagnerian ambitions. Basing his libretto on one of his father's law cases, he wrote his opera Pagliacci (The Buffoons), which he sent to Ricordi's rival for publication. It premièred in Milan in 1892 and was an immediate success.
His next two operas were failures. Having decided that success was to be found in verismo, Leoncavallo now became interested in basing a work on the writer Henri Murger's autobiographical Scènes de la vie Bohème (Scenes from a Bohemian Life.) What followed was one of those messy disasters which often occur in the lives of creative artists.
Having started on his new work, Leoncavallo discovered that Luigi Illica was also using Murger's material, as the basis of a libretto for none other than Puccini. The Puccini/Illica version reached the stage fifteen months before Leoncavallo's opera was complete. It was called La Bohème.
Its success added insult to injury. To his dying day Leoncavallo swore that he had discussed his plans with Illica and Puccini, and that his idea had been stolen with Ricordi's consent.
Zaza, Leoncavallo's next opera was successful and was chosen by the singer Geraldine Farrar as her farewell piece at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in 1926.
Government approval of Leoncavallo's work led to another opera commission. Then, in 1904, his song Mattinata, written specially for the occasion, was recorded by Caruso. Three years later the whole of Pagliacci was recorded, marking another operatic first.
In the years between this recording and his death, Leoncavallo composed largely forgettable operetta. Much of this was not even successful in his own time. He died, bitter and frustrated at the end of the First World War.
