Since we’ve got Puccini done, let’s look at the other two important Italian verismo composers Mascagni and Leoncavallo.

Mascagni has Cavalleria Rusticana and L’amico Fritz. L’amico Fritz only has traction because of the fantastic recording with a young Pavarotti and Mirella Freni providing some of the most beautiful singing of all time. All. Time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DNPZOSCatA

Leoncavallo has his own version of La Boheme. He also contributed to the libretto of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut but it is Pagliacci for which he is know. Before the three tenors and the rise of Nessun dorma, Vesti la giubba from Pagliacci was the most popular aria ever written.

This is a tough match and it boils down to Cavalleria versus Pagliacci. Ultimately Cavalleria ends anticlimactically while Pagliacci ends with la commedia e finita. Pagliacci is the perfect opera dramatically.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReewuKqhZls

Leoncavallo victor.

In a quaint matching of names we have Monteverdi versus Verdi.

I’d like to say that Monteverdi hung in there but this match was over before it started.

Verdi victor.

Why? Because there is nothing quite as purely Italian as Verdi’s Va pensiero from Nabucco. It was written in 1842, 20 years before the Italian Unification of 1865 but only a few years before the uprisings of 1848.

What we might not realize is that the Italians were ruled by foreigners for over a thousand years. From the fall of Rome in the west up through the Renaissance and beyond, Italy was sliced up and squabbled over by legions of Visigoths, Ostrogoths, the Martels, Lombards, Byzantines, French, Normans, Germans, Spanish, Huns and even Muslims.

In addition to that was the ghibellines and the guelphs. The ghibellines supported German imperial rule of Italy while the guelphs supported papal rule of Italy.

Most of northern and central Italy was fractured into ghibelline cities and guelph cities. There wasn’t a guelph area and a ghibelline area, it was a town by town division. This division comes up briefly in Puccini's Gianni Schicchi.

The text to Va pensiero is based on the Hebrew exile in Babylon. The Hebrews have gathered by the river and sing about their longing for their homeland. I think Va pensiero can be heard as the whole of Italy longing for a homeland, an Italian homeland that is unified and at peace.

For 1,500 years Italy had been subjected to constant war amongst foreign powers on Italian soil. There were pockets of stability such as the Medici in Florence, the Doges of Venice, and the Emirate of Sicily. However, the Medici ruled for 300 years which leaves 1,200 years of strife.

Interestingly Sicily appeared to have the most stability under Muslim rule. Christians and Jews were allowed to practice their faith but had to pay an extra tax. If they converted to Islam then they paid a different tax. Under Islam, the city of Syracuse became the second largest city in the western world with a population of 450,000. It was only eclipsed in splendor by the Muslim wonder-city of Cordova in Spain.

I apologize for the history lesson but within this context, Va pensiero is one of the foundations of Italy as we know it today.