Word: verismo
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...plot, with a little rearrangement, might easily serve for an Italian opera of the verismo school. It resolves around a second-rate traveling strong man and his strange, dull-witted assistant and concubine. A tightrope walker laughs at the strong man and is kind to his slave, and the strong man kills him. In the end the girl dies, and the strong man is left groveling in remorse on a deserted beach reminiscent of the one where he found...
...also knew where his genius lay, wisely rejected both the Wagnerian influence and the broader version of the Italian verismo style as practiced by Mascagni and Leoncavallo. Instead, he clung to his own romantic, melodious, bittersweet tales shot through with a uniquely warm lyricism and underscored with lushly singing strings. A painstaking workman who admired clarity ("The black scores," he said, "are the easiest to fake"), he left as his legacy only eleven operas. But 34 years after his death, the world of opera has not found a composer who can speak to the universal audience Puccini commands...