Verismo - Other Musical Usages

Other Musical Usages

The term "Verismo" is also sometimes used to describe the highly recognizable musical style that was prevalent among Italian composers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For most of the veristi, traditionally veristic subjects accounted for only some of their operas. Mascagni himself 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. Thus context is extremely important in understanding the intended meaning of "verismo", as it is used both as a description of the gritty, passionate, working-class dramas that the term was coined to describe, and also as the musical movement in which the giovane scuola were participants.