Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945)
Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana
Composed in 1889
When Pietro Mascagni’s name is mentioned, classical music fans immediately think of Cavalleria Rusticana. The one-act opera became an international hit after its debut performance in Rome on May 17, 1890.
After years of struggling as a composer and music teacher, Mascagni joined a competition sponsored by music publisher Edoardo Sonzogno for an original one-act opera. The opera, which is based on a short story by Giovanni Verga, won the prize and fame for the composer from Livorno, Italy. The story takes place on Easter morning as villagers gather for morning Mass. Turiddu has returned from military service to find his first love Lola married to Alfio. He seduces Santuzza to make Lola jealous. This begins a tale of love, betrayal and vengeance.
Cavalleria Rusticana, which means “rustic chivalry,” was one of the first verismo operas. Verismo is a style of Italian opera writing that originates in real stories and is full of high drama, violent plots, and emotionally charged harmonies and melodies
Amid this drama is a sweet interlude, the Intermezzo. The piece is brief, but it transcends the yearning of the first scene of the one-act opera as villagers leave an Easter Mass with the building animosity of the second scene. It is the calm before the storm and foreshadows the tragedy to come.
The Intermezzo is the most famous part of Cavalleria Rusticana and has been used in several films and television shows including “Raging Bull,” “The Godfather Part III” and “The Sopranos.”
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Divertimento from The Fairy’s Kiss
Composed in 1928
Igor Stravinsky was born in Russia to musical parents and grew up taking piano lessons. However, his parents expected him to become a lawyer and to his own admission, he was a terrible law student. While at the University of St. Petersburg, Stravinsky met Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov, son of the composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Stravinsky began to study under the elder composer.
Stravinsky‘s social circle expanded at this time to include Sergei Diaghilev, founder of Ballet Russes. The two began collaborating on several projects including The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring.
In 1928, Ida Rubinstein, a former Ballet Russes star approached a number of composers to write ballets based on earlier masters. Stravinsky chose Tchaikovsky as the 35th anniversary of his death was in 1928. He penned The Fairy’s Kiss based on Hans Christian Andersen’s tale “The Ice Maiden.”
The story of “The Ice Maiden” centers on Rudy, an orphan raised by his uncle, who becomes a skilled huntsman and mountain climber and falls in love with Babette, the miller’s daughter.
However, their relationship faces challenges, and after a confrontation with Babette’s cousin, Rudy encounters the Ice Maiden, a mystical figure who took his mother’s life and claimed him as a baby. Despite reconciling with Babette, tragedy strikes on the eve of their wedding.
Stravinsky said, “I chose Andersen’s The Ice Maiden because it suggested an allegory of Tchaikovsky himself. The fairy’s kiss on the heel of the child is also the muse marking Tchaikovsky at his birth – though the muse did not claim him at his wedding, as she did the young man in the ballet, but at the height of his powers..”
Years later, Stravinsky rearranged the work as a Divertimento made up of four movements including the Sinfonia, Danses suisses, Scherzo, and Pas de deux.
Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)
Cello Concerto in B Minor
Composed in 1895
In Antonin Dvořák’s early life, he found himself drawn to one of his piano students, Josefina Káunitzová. Although he professed his love for her, Josefina never returned his devotion and eventually married another man. Antonin later married Josefina’s sister, Anna, but it seems that his love for Josefina was still evident 22 years into his marriage to Anna. It was around this time, as Josephina became seriously ill, that Dvořák wrote his Cello Concerto in B minor as a memorial to her. Dvořák song “Lasst mich allein” was a favorite of Josephine’s, and he wove it throughout his Cello Concerto in B minor.
The concerto is influenced by both his Bohemian roots and his American experiences. Dvořák was living in New York with his wife at the time of its composition. Dvořák found writing a cello concerto to be quite a daunting task, one with which he was not particularly pleased even upon its completion. One hurdle to overcome was the relation of the relatively quiet cello to the boisterous orchestra. To solve this dilemma, Dvořák gave both the cello and the orchestra moments in the limelight and varied the texture of the sound when the cello and orchestra play together. He achieved this by switching up the combinations of instruments that played together, particularly pairing the cello with the winds, illuminating the beauty of the cello’s rich sound.
Dvořák was adamant that no one change any part of his composition not even his friend Hanuš Wihan, for whom the piece was written. Wihan suggested two cadenzas, but Dvořák rejected them, particularly, at the end of the piece, stating that the end should be “like a breath, … then there is a crescendo, and the last measures are taken up by the orchestra, ending stormily. That was my idea, and from it cannot recede.” The concerto premiered in 1896 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra featuring Leo Stern as the cello soloist.
