Santuzza's seduction and pregnancy, Turiddu's brutal rejection of her, her curse upon him, his final remorse were all added by Verga when he had to build up Santuzza into a big and sympathetic role for Duse. As a subject for a short libretto, it is excellent. The situation is strong, self-contained and immediately clear; it provides roles for a convenient number and range of voices; and the emotions involved are both singable emotions and easy to contrast musically. The psychology is straightforward enough for song but not silly: how right it is, for instance, that Turiddu should reproach Santuzza for having let him seduce her—"Pentirsi e vano do-po I'offesa." Thanks to the swiftness with which music can express a change in feeling, even Turiddu's sudden switch of attitude from contempt to remorse becomes much more plausible in the opera than it seems in the spoken drama. Targioni-Tozzetti and Menasci quite rightly stuck pretty closely to Verga's story, their chief addition being the lines in which Turiddu begs Lucia to accept Santuzza as a daughter. But, having at their disposal as librettists what a dramatist no longer has, a chorus, they took full advantage of it. The choral episodes, the chorus of spring, the mule-driving song, the Easter hymn, the drinking song take up more than a quarter of the score. It might have been expected that, particularly in so short a work, to keep postponing and interrupting the action so much would be fatal; but, in fact, if one asks what was the chief contribution of the librettists towards giving the work the peculiar impact and popularity it has, I think one must say it was precisely these episodes. Thanks to them, the action of the protagonists, their personal tragedy, is seen against an immense background, the recurrent death and rebirth of nature, the liturgical celebration of the once-and-for-all death and resurrection of the redeemer of man, the age-old social rites of the poor, so that their local history takes on a ritual significance; Turiddu's death is, as it were, a ritual sacrifice in atonement for the sins of the whole community. One of the most moving moments in the opera, for example—and nothing could he less verismo—occurs when Santuzza, the excommunicated girl who believes that she is damned, is translated out of her situation and starts singing out over the chorus, like Deborah the Prophetess, "Inneggiamo il Signor non e mortol" If the interplay of rite and personal action which is the secret of Cavalleria Rusticana is not a typical concern of the verismo school, the libretto interest of Pagliacci is even less naturalistic, for the subject is the psychological conundrum— "Who is the real me? Who is the real you?" This is presented through three contradictions. Firstly, the contradiction between the artist who creates his work out of real joys and sufferings and his audience whom it amuses, who enjoy through its imaginary joys and sufferings which are probably quite different from those of its creator. Secondly, the contradiction between the actors who do not feel the emotions they are portraying and the audience who do, at least imaginatively. And, lastly, the contradiction between the actors as professionals who have to portray imaginary feelings and the actors as men and women who have real feelings of their own. We are all actors; we frequently have to hide our real feelings for others and, alone with ourselves, we are constantly the victims of self-deception. We can never be certain that we know what is going on in the hearts of others, though we usually overestimate our knowledge—both the shock of discovering an infidelity and the tortures of jealousy are due to this. On the other hand, we are too certain that nobody else sees the real us.
In the Prologue, Tonio, speaking on behalf of Leoncavallo and then of the cast, reminds the audience that the artist and the actor are men. When we reach the play within the play all the contradictions are going simultaneously. Nedda is half- actress, half-woman, for she is expressing her real feelings in an imaginary situation; she is in love but not with Beppe who is playing Harlequin. Beppe is pure actor; as a man he is not in love with anybody. Tonio and Canio are themselves, for their real feelings and the situation correspond, to the greater amusement of the audience for it makes them act so convincingly. Finally there is Nedda's lover Silvio, the member of the audience who has got into the act, though as yet invisibly. When Nedda as Columbine recites to Harlequin the line written for her, "A stannotte—e per sempre tua sard!" Canio as Pag- liaccio is tortured because he has heard her use, speaking as herself, these identical words to the lover he has not seen. One has only to imagine what the opera would be like if, with the same situation between the characters, the Commedia were omitted, to see how much the interest of the opera depends on the question of Illusion and Reality, a problem which is supposed only to concern idealists.
About the music of these two operas, I can, of course, only speak as a layman. The first thing that strikes me on hearing them is the extraordinary strength and vitality of the Italian operatic tradition. Since 1800 Italian opera had already produced four fertile geniuses, Bellini, Rossini, Donizetti and Verdi, yet there was still enough left to allow, not only the lesser but still formidable figure of Puccini, but also the talents of Ponchielli, Giordano, Mascagni and Leoncavallo to create original and successful works. Today, indeed—it may have seemed different in the nineties—we are more conscious in the works of these later composers of the continuity of the tradition than of any revolutionary novelty. We do not emerge from the house, after hearing Cavalleria or Pagliacci for the first time, saying to ourselves, "What a strange new kind of opera!" No, before the first ten bars are over, we are thinking: "Ah, another Italian opera. How jolly!"
Comparing one with the other (a rather silly but inevitable habit), Leoncavallo strikes me as much more technically adroit. One of the strange things about Mascagni is the almost old-fashioned simplicity of his musical means; he writes as if he were scarcely aware of even the middle Verdi. There are dull passages in Cavalleria Rusticana, e.g., the music of the mule-driving song, but, in the dramatic passages, the very primitive awkwardness of the music seems to go with the characters and give them a conviction which Leoncavallo fails to give to his down-at-heel actors. For instance, when I listen to Turiddu rejecting Santuzza in the duet, "No, no! Turiddu, rimani," I can believe that I am listening to a village Don Giovanni, but when I listen to Silvio making love to Nedda in the duet, "Decidi, il mio destin," I know that I am listening to a baritone. As a listener, then, I prefer Mascagni; if I were a singer, I daresay my preference would be reversed.
In making their way round the world, Cav & Pag have had two great advantages: they are relatively cheap to produce and the vocal writing is effective but does not make excessive demands so that they are enjoyable even when performed by provincial touring companies, whereas works like La Gioconda or Fedora are intolerable without great stars. Take, for example, the famous aria "Vesti la giubba": if the singer is in good voice, he has a fine opportunity to put it through its paces; if his voice is going, he can always throw away the notes and just bellow, a procedure which some audiences seem to prefer.