Verismo

As touched upon in the last post, verismo is the name given to a movement in Italian opera and literature which sought a truth or realism in the art form. Out went the historical settings, the kings and queens, the courts, the etiquette: the verismo artists wanted to depict life in all its unattractive glory with characters and situations that you might find in any small Italian town at the turn of the twentieth century. In truth, perhaps the most famous verismo opera is not Italian at all, but French. Bizet's Carmen tells an earthy story about a decade before the Italian movement started. In opera terms (and record company marketing), the term verismo  has also expanded to mean, roughly, 'those composers writing at the turn of the century, whatever the subject matter.' It may well be that Giordano is a true verismo composer: it's just that Andrea Chenier's setting (revolutionary France) does not really fit with the verismo principles.

La mamma morta: Andrea Chenier

We have already looked at this famous aria from Umberto Giordano's 1896 opera Andrea Chenier (the same year as Puccini's La Boheme). The librettist of Chenier was Luigi Illica, who also worked on La Boheme (and Tosca and Madam Butterfly) in collaboration with Giuseppe Giacosa. Now let's look a bit more at the opera itself, some of the music, some new voices and a new style of opera.