Pagliacci is an opera in a prologue and two acts by Ruggero Leoncavallo, first performed in Milan in 1892. It is the clown opera above all others: it tells the story of Canio, an actor in a travelling troupe who discovers the infidelity of his wife Nedda and kills her in the middle of a performance. A central work of Italian verismo, it owes much of its fame to the aria "Vesti la giubba" and the closing line "La commedia è finita".
Prologue. Before the curtain rises, Tonio, one of the players, addresses the audience. He announces that the story about to unfold is no mere fiction: the actors are people of flesh and blood, with real passions and real sorrows.
Act I. A troupe of travelling players arrives in a Calabrian village. Canio, its leader, announces the evening's performance. His wife Nedda, weary of his jealousy, violently rejects the advances of Tonio, the troupe's deformed clown. Nedda in fact has a lover, the young villager Silvio, with whom she plans to run away that very night. Tonio catches them and alerts Canio, who arrives in time to hear the lovers' farewell, though Silvio escapes unrecognised and Nedda refuses to give up his name. Shattered, Canio must nonetheless dress for the show, and sings "Vesti la giubba": the clown must laugh even as his heart breaks.
Act II. The villagers watch the comedy, which cruelly mirrors the real situation: Colombina (Nedda) deceives Pagliaccio (Canio) with Harlequin. Canio gradually loses the line between theatre and life and demands from Nedda the name of her lover. When she refuses, he stabs her on stage; Silvio, rushing to her aid, is killed in turn. Canio lets the knife fall and speaks the final words: "La commedia è finita".
Leoncavallo wrote his own libretto and claimed to have drawn on a real crime that took place in Calabria during his childhood. He composed the work in the wake of the success of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana (1890), which had opened the way for verismo: short operas of violent passions, rooted in everyday life. Pagliacci was first performed on 21 May 1892 at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan, conducted by the young Arturo Toscanini, and was an immediate success.
Since the end of the nineteenth century, Pagliacci and Cavalleria rusticana have usually been given together in a single evening, a double bill known in the opera world as "Cav and Pag". It is the only work by Leoncavallo to have held a firm place in the international repertoire.
The score packs some of the most familiar moments in Italian opera into little more than an hour. Tonio's prologue, "Si può?", is a bravura piece for baritone. Nedda has her ballad "Stridono lassù", in which she envies the freedom of the birds. The summit is "Vesti la giubba", Canio's lament, one of the most celebrated tenor arias in the whole repertoire, recorded by Caruso and by every great tenor after him.
In the second act, Leoncavallo superimposes two musical layers: the light, almost operetta-like music of the play within the play, and the real drama that bursts through it. The contrast between the feigned minuet and Canio's cry, "No, Pagliaccio non son", produces one of the most gripping endings in the lyric theatre.
Pagliacci still works because its subject does not age: the distance between the public mask and private pain. In just two acts, the work offers an unsparing portrait of jealousy and a reflection on the actor's trade. Its brevity and intensity make it an ideal first opera for anyone who has never seen one.
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