Event details:
- Title: “Cavalleria Rusticana & Pagliacci” and the Birth of “Verismo”
- Date: 5 October 2026 (Monday)
- Time: 7:00 – 8:00 pm
- Venue: Room PQ305, 3/F, Core P, PolyU campus
Seats are limited! Scan the QR code or visit the link here for registration: https://polyu.hk/NJqGh
— About the Talk—
Until 1890, when Pietro Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” won the first prize in a competition, operas had typically been about kings and queens, lords and ladies or, occasionally, characters from myths or the Bible. But Mascagni set his one-act opera in rustic Sicily with neither nobles nor knights anywhere near: just peasants, passion, church, wine, sin and murder. It was a hit from its debut. When Ruggero Leoncavallo saw “Cavalleria”, he was inspired to write “Pagliacci”, which debuted in 1892, also set in a small Italian town and also climaxes with a jealous husband murdering his unfaithful wife (based, Leoncavallo said, on a true story). Both operas were set in what would have been for audiences of the time more or less the present day. The stories and the characters who peopled them, furthermore, were meant to be drawn from life, to be “true”, hence “Verismo”, and led directly to what is its best-known example, Puccini’s “La bohème”, which debuted just a few years later.
— About the Speaker—
Peter Gordon has spoken widely on opera and its intersection with literature and culture at universities, conservatories and opera companies in Greater China.
More info about our theme: https://events.polyu.edu.hk/lavieboheme/home