What is "verismo"

n. An artistic movement, from 19th century Italian literature and opera, in which rural and everyday people and themes were treated in an often melodramatic manner

Verismo (meaning "realism", from Italian vero, meaning "true") was an Italian literary movement which peaked between approximately 1875 and the early 1900s. Giovanni Verga and Luigi Capuana were its main exponents and the authors of a verismo manifesto. Capuana published the novel Giacinta, generally regarded as the "manifesto" of Italian verismo. Unlike French naturalism, which was based on positivistic ideals, Verga and Capuana rejected claims of the scientific nature and social usefulness of the movement.

Literary verismo was begun between around 1875 and 1895 by a group of writers – mostly novelists and playwrights. It did not constitute a formal school, but it was still based on specific principles. Its birth was influenced by a positivist climate which put absolute faith in science, empiricism and research and which developed from 1830 until the end of the 19th century. It was also clearly based on naturalism, a literary movement which spread in France in the mid-19th century. Naturalist writers included Émile Zola and Guy de Maupassant – for them, literature should objectively portray society and humanity like a photograph, strictly representing even the humblest social class in even its most unpleasant aspects, with the authors analysing real modern life like scientists.

Literary verismo developed in the fruitful urban cultural life of Milan, which brought together intellectuals from different areas, but tended to portray central and southern Italian life – Sicily is described in the works of Verga, Capuano and Federico de Roberto, Naples in works by Matilde Serao and Salvatore di Giacomo, Sardinia in the works of Grazia Deledda, Rome in the poems of Cesare Pascarella and Tuscany in works by Renato Fucini.

The first author to theorize on Italian verismo was Capuano, who theorized the "poetry of the real" – thus Verga, at first part of the late Romantic literary movement (he was called the poet of the duchesses and had considerable success), later shifted to verismo with his novellas Vita dei campi and Novelle rusticane and finally with the first novel of the 'Ciclo dei Vinti' cycle, I Malavoglia in 1881. Sicilian-born, Verga lived in Florence during the same period as the verismo painters – 1865 to 1867 – and his best known story, "Cavalleria rusticana", contains certain verbal parallels to the effects achieved on canvas by the Tuscan landscape school of this era. "Espousing an approach that later put him in the camp of verismo (verism), his particular sentence structure and rhythm have some of the qualities of the macchia. Like the Macchiaioli, he was fascinated by topographical exactitude set in a nationalist framework"— to quote from Albert Boime's work, The Art of the Macchia and the Risorgimento. Verga and verismo differed from naturalism, however, in their desire to introduce the reader's point of view on the matter while not revealing the author's personal opinions.

In opera, verismo (meaning "realism", from Italian vero, meaning "true") was a post-Romantic operatic tradition associated with Italian composers such as Pietro Mascagni, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Umberto Giordano, Francesco Cilea and Giacomo Puccini.

Verismo as an operatic genre had its origins in an Italian literary movement also called 'verismo' (see Verismo (literature)). The Italian literary movement of verismo, in turn, was related to the international literary movement of Naturalism as practised by Émile Zola and others. Like naturalism, the verismo literary movement sought to portray the world with greater realism. In so doing, Italian verismo authors such as Giovanni Verga wrote about subject matter, such as the lives of the poor, that had not generally been seen as a fit subject for literature. A short story by Verga called Cavalleria rusticana ("Rustic Chivalry"), then developed into a play by the same author, became the source for what is usually considered to be the first verismo opera: Cavalleria rusticana by Mascagni, which premiered on 17 May 1890 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Thus begun, the operatic genre of verismo produced a handful of notable works such as Pagliacci, which premiered at Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on 21 May 1892, and Puccini's Tosca (premiering at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900.) The genre peaked in the early 1900s, and lingered into the 1920s.

In terms of subject matter, generally "[v]erismo operas focused not on gods, mythological figures, or kings and queens, but on the average contemporary man and woman and their problems, generally of a sexual romantic, or violent nature." However, two of the small handful of verismo operas still performed today take historical subjects: Puccini's Tosca and Giordano's Andrea Ch én ier. "Musically, verismo composers consciously strove for the integration of the opera's underlying drama with its music." These composers abandoned the "recitative and set-piece structure" of earlier Italian opera. Instead, the operas were "through-composed," with few breaks in a seamlessly integrated sung text. While verismo operas may contain arias that can be sung as stand-alone pieces, they are generally written to arise naturally from their dramatic surroundings, and their structure is variable, being based on text that usually does not follow a regular strophic format.

The most famous composers who created works in the verismo style were Giacomo Puccini, Pietro Mascagni, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Umberto Giordano and Francesco Cilea. There were, however, many other veristi: Franco Alfano, Alfredo Catalani, Gustave Charpentier ( Louise), Eugen d'Albert ( Tiefland), Ignatz Waghalter (Der Teufelsweg and Jugend), Alberto Franchetti, Franco Leoni, Jules Massenet ( La Navarraise), Licinio Refice, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari ( I gioielli della Madonna), and Riccardo Zandonai.

The term verismo can cause confusion. In addition to referring to operas written in a realistic style, the term may also be used more broadly to refer to the entire output of the composers of the giovane scuola ("young school"), the generation of composers who were active in Italy during the period that the verismo style was created. One author (Alan Mallach) has proposed the term "plebeian opera" to refer to operas that adhere to the contemporary and realistic subject matter for which the term verismo was originally coined. At the same time, Mallach questions the value of using a term such as verismo, which is supposedly descriptive of the subject and style of works, simply to identify an entire generation's music-dramatic output. For most of the composers associated with verismo, traditionally veristic subjects accounted for only some of their operas. For instance, Mascagni wrote a pastoral comedy ( L'amico Fritz), a symbolist work set in Japan ( Iris), and a couple of medieval romances ( Isabeau and Parisina). These works are far from typical verismo subject matter, yet they are written in the same general musical style as his more quintessential veristic subjects. In addition, there is disagreement among musicologists as to which operas are "verismo" operas, and which are not. (Non-Italian operas are generally excluded). Giordano's Andrea Ché nier, Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana, Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, and Puccini's Tosca and Il tabarro are operas to which the term verismo is applied with little or no dispute. The term is sometimes also applied to Puccini's Madama Butterfly and La fanciulla del West. Because only three verismo works not by Puccini continue to appear regularly on stage (the aforementioned Cavalleria rusticana, Pagliacci, and Andrea Chénier), Puccini's contribution has had lasting significance to the genre.

Some authors have attempted to trace the origins of verismo opera to works that preceded Cavalleria rusticana, such as Georges Bizet's Carmen, or Giuseppe Verdi's La traviata. Modest Moussorgsky's ″Boris Godonov″ should not be ignored as an antecedent of verismo, especially because of Moussorgsky's focus on peasants, alongside princes and other aristocracy and church leaders, and his deliberate relating of the natural speech inflexions of the libretto to the rhythms of the sung music, different from, for example, Tchaikovsky's use of Pushkin's verse as a libretto.

The Verismo (meaning "realism", from Italian vero, meaning "true") refers to a 19th-century Italian painting style. This style was practiced most characteristically by the " Macchiaioli" group of painters, who were forerunners of the French Impressionists.

Verismo, which may be italicised in English as a foreign word, or not, means "realism" in Italian, and is used in English for 19th century realist movements in the arts in Italy:

• Verismo (music) in opera
• Verismo (painting)
• Verismo (literature)