Verismo, << vuh RIHZ moh, >> is an artistic movement that flourished in Italian literature and opera during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The word verismo is Italian for realism. The writers and opera composers of the Verismo movement sought to present life with objective realism. Their plots were drawn from life, usually of the lower classes. Writers used direct language, explicit descriptions, and naturalistic dialogue.
The rise of Verismo may have been a reaction to the excessive use of fantastic plots drawn from ancient legend. It may also have arisen because, in Italy after unification in 1870, the country’s various regions wanted to reaffirm their local culture and identity through drama, literature, and music. Verismo was especially strong in Sicily and southern Italy.
Verismo writers and composers were influenced by the naturalistic novels of French writers such as Alexandre Dumas fils, Honore de Balzac, and Émile Zola, who focused on the less attractive aspects of life—crime, prostitution, violence, and unprincipled behavior (see Dumas, Alexandre, fils; Balzac, Honoré de; Zola, Émile). Many Verismo operas, in particular, have at their heart a horrifying crime of passion, especially one in a peasant or working-class setting.
The Verismo movement is generally considered to have begun with the publication of Luigi Capuana’s short-story collection Studies of Women (1877) and novel Giacinta (1879). The best-known Verismo writer was Capuana’s friend, the Sicilian writer Giovanni Verga. In 1880, Verga published his short story “Cavalleria Rusticana” (“Rustic Chivalry”). He adapted it as a play four years later, and the composer Pietro Mascagni turned it into the first Verismo opera in 1889 (see Mascagni, Pietro). The success of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana was in part due to its form—compressed into one act, it gained considerable dramatic impact. Its popularity led to a number of one-act operas in a similar vein. The most successful was I Pagliacci (The Clowns, 1892), which the composer Ruggero Leoncavallo adapted from one of the court cases of his father, who was a lawyer (see Leoncavallo, Ruggero). Other important Verismo writers included Federico de Roberto, Matilde Serao, Renato Fucini, and Grazia Deledda.
Verismo provided the impetus for the operatic masterpieces of Giacomo Puccini. His most typically Verismo opera is Il Tabarro (The Cloak, 1918), which centers on murder and marital infidelity. But the majority of his operas, including La Boheme (1896), Tosca (1900), and Madama Butterfly (1904), use Verismo techniques. See Puccini, Giacomo.
Although Verismo was mainly an Italian artistic movement, it had partly been influenced by artistic currents in France and in its turn it affected French opera. It strongly influenced such works as Jules Massenet’s La Navarraise (The Girl from Navarre, 1894) and Gustave Charpentier’s Louise (1900).
See also Boheme, La; Cavalleria Rusticana; Madama Butterfly.
