Exponents of The Verismo Style of Composition
Although worldwide Giacomo Puccini is generally accepted as the greatest Verismo composer, this claim is disputed by certain musical commentators in Italy who place him outside the Verismo school. Other critics consider Puccini to have had merely a partial Verismo involvement. The most accepted modern-day view is that at least a few of his operas (Tosca, for one) are classifiable as verist. And if one does not synonymize "Verismo" with "bloodshed", one could postulate that Puccini gave us the most perfect "realistic" opera in La Bohème.
Though Bizet's Carmen (1875) was the first gutsy slice-of-life opera, true Verismo came to the fore a decade and a half later in Italy, with the historic premiere (1890) of Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana.
The most famous composers of Verismo opera, discounting Puccini, were Mascagni, Ruggero Leoncavallo (whose Pagliacci is often coupled with Cavalleria), Umberto Giordano, and Francesco Cilea. There were, however, many other veristi: Franco Alfano, best known however for completing Puccini's Turandot, 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 Italian verismo composers comprised a musicological group known in its day as the giovane scuola ("Young School").
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