Realism
Music as Human Document
Realism inherits from the Scapigliatura its critique of conventional Romanticism and its interest in the “true,” but strips it of its fantastic and intellectualistic components in order to apply an objective and almost scientific analysis of social reality, under the influence of Positivism.
Public domain (Commons)
A musical current which, under the influence of Positivism and Naturalism, abandoned the historical and mythological subjects of Romantic melodrama in order to represent contemporary reality—especially that of the lower classes—with an objective and almost scientific attitude.
The beginning
1875
The movement began in Italy after Unification, parallel to the literary Verismo of Verga and Capuana and under the influence of Naturalism, finding in Amilcare Ponchielli’s opera La Gioconda, first performed at Teatro alla Scala in Milan on 8 April 1876, a fundamental precursor of a musical theatre based on everyday reality and on non-idealized passions.
Nineteenth-century musical Realism is the translation into sound of the principles of literary realism. Rejecting Romantic idealization, the composer becomes a scientist and photographs society. The aim is no longer to move audiences through noble passions, but to expose humanity for what it truly is. Opera becomes a cross-section of life, staging the primordial passions of the people—jealousy, honor, poverty—without moralistic filters and with a direct and anti-rhetorical language.
Traditional cantabile style is called into question, and a “conversational singing” emerges—a declamation closer to speech and closely following prose in literature. The orchestra is no longer a pedestal for the voice, but becomes a descriptive instrument that paints the social environment and the noises of daily life, creating a more realistic “local color.”
The peak
1880-1890
The movement reached its peak in the decade preceding the “Young School,” with works that attempted to apply the principles of impersonality and adherence to truth to bourgeois and popular subjects, preparing the ground for the explosion of Verismo.
The turning point
1890
The enormous success of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana in 1890 marked the hinge with the subsequent period, transforming the theoretical premises of Realism into the disruptive Verismo that intensified its violence and concision.
The end
1890
The impulse of Realism as a movement of research came to an end with the birth of Verismo, which absorbed its principles of impersonality and low subjects, transforming them into high-intensity drama often centered on sensational events and crime reports.
Poetics
The dominant poetics is that of impersonality. The composer must disappear from the work, refraining from any subjective commentary. Music must neither idealize nor embellish, but adhere to the truth of the situation and of the characters’ psychology, almost as if it were an objective chronicle.
Historiographical context
Realism is an autonomous and crucial transitional period between Verdi’s mature Romanticism and the explosion of Verismo. It highlights how the revolution of the “Young School” did not arise from nothing, but represents the culmination of a cultural and aesthetic debate rooted in Positivism and literary Verismo, thus restoring new dignity to composers such as Catalani and Ponchielli.
History
The Italy of Realism is post-Unification Italy, a country facing enormous social problems such as the Southern Question, industrialization, and urbanization. Opera ceases to be the voice of the Risorgimento and becomes the mirror of new social tensions.
Realist Italy is a young nation, recently born from the process of unification, and confronting for the first time the harsh reality of its internal imbalances. Patriotic fervor and the heroic ideals of the Risorgimento give way to profound disillusionment in the face of problems both vast and complex. The Southern Question emerges with dramatic urgency: an economic and cultural fracture that sees southern Italy sinking into endemic backwardness, with a latifundist agricultural system incapable of sustaining its own laborers. At the same time, in the North, early industrialization uproots thousands of people from the countryside and crowds them into newly developing urban centers. This uncontrolled urbanization creates new forms of poverty and social conflict, with masses of workers living in precarious hygienic conditions and struggling for fundamental rights. In this scenario, literature, art, and music can no longer afford to sing the glories of the nation or idealized love. They feel instead a moral duty to confront reality, becoming the mirror of new and lacerating social tensions and a tool of investigation and, at times, denunciation.
Thought
The dominant thought of this period is Positivism, a philosophical current that places absolute trust in science and in the experimental method as the only instruments of knowledge. Intellectuals such as the philosopher Roberto Ardigò, with his theory of the “fact” as the only knowable reality, and the sociologist Pasquale Villari, promoter of social inquiries to “study” the country’s problems, provide the model. Consequently, art and literature are called upon to abandon Romantic invention and to adopt this same method, analyzing reality objectively, almost as a biologist or sociologist would do in the face of their field of investigation.
The cultural background nourishing the realist vision is Positivism, a current of thought permeating every field of knowledge. This philosophy places absolute and almost religious faith in science and in the experimental method, considered the only valid tools for attaining knowledge. The thinker who best embodies this tendency in Italy is Roberto Ardigò, whose philosophy “of the fact” sweeps away centuries of metaphysics, arguing that the only reality that can be studied is that which is concrete, material, and verifiable. At the same time, figures such as the sociologist Pasquale Villari, through his famous “Southern Letters,” promote the necessity of rigorous social inquiry, urging intellectuals to study the country’s ills with diagnostic precision in order to cure them. This cultural climate profoundly influences art, because writers and artists are henceforth called upon to set aside imagination and personal sentiment in order to become objective analysts of reality. The novel, the opera, and the painting must become human documents—laboratories in which passions are dissected as a biologist would analyze an organism—demonstrating how individual actions are not the result of free will, but are determined by history and by the social environment.
Art
In the visual arts, the parallel movement is that of the Macchiaioli, such as Giovanni Fattori and Silvestro Lega, who abandon historical subjects to paint scenes of everyday life, agricultural labor, and military life, with an anti-academic approach and an attention to the “macchia” (patch of color) as a synthetic representation of truth.
In the field of the visual arts, the movement that most faithfully reflects the new sensibility is that of the Macchiaioli, active mainly in Florence. These painters initiate a genuine revolution against the rigid conventions of the Academies of Fine Arts. They reject noble and mythological subjects, grand compositions, and meticulous polished drawing in order to focus on everyday scenes. Artists such as Giovanni Fattori and Silvestro Lega bring their canvases outdoors in order to capture reality directly. Their revolutionary technique is based on the “macchia”: color is applied in broad, synthetic areas, juxtaposing light and dark tones to represent not the object itself, but the impression produced by light. Whether depicting soldiers resting during maneuvers, peasants bent over fields, or women engaged in domestic activities, their approach is anti-rhetorical and deeply sincere, aiming to capture a fragment of truth with immediacy and visual honesty.
Literature
In Italy, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the current of Realism establishes itself, overcoming the ideals of Romanticism. It does not yet have a single unified model, but finds significant examples in the analysis of psychological and pathological realities within the Scapigliatura, as in Fosca by Tarchetti, and in the great historical and social fresco of customs and everyday life delineated by Ippolito Nievo in his book Confessions of an Italian.
In the literary sphere, before Verismo defined a rigorous model, the current of Realism manifested itself in diverse yet converging forms aimed at overcoming Romantic ideals. A crucial role was played by the Scapigliatura, a movement of rupture that explored the darker and irrational aspects of reality, analyzing with an almost clinical attitude the pathologies of the psyche and the contradictions of modern society. An emblematic example is the novel Fosca by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, in which love is no longer an ennobling feeling but a disease that consumes body and mind. On another front, a monumental work such as Confessions of an Italian by Ippolito Nievo, although still linked to the historical genre, anticipates the modern realist novel through its extraordinary ability to construct a vast social fresco. Through the vicissitudes of its protagonist, Nievo meticulously outlines the evolution of customs, mentalities, political life, and everyday habits of an entire era, demonstrating how individual destiny is inextricably linked to the great flow of social history.
Performance practice and genres
Performance practice requires singer-actors capable not only of vocal virtuosity, but of powerful stage acting. Fidelity to the written text and to the scientific intention of librettist and composer becomes stricter, limiting ornamental liberties in the name of dramatic truth.
The dominant genre is the bourgeois or popular musical drama. The closed forms of Romantic opera—the aria and the cabaletta—dissolve into a continuous flow more logical and more adherent to the unfolding of the action, anticipating the structure of Verist drama.
Places and key figures
The centers are the opera houses of the great post-Unification cities, such as Milan, which becomes the laboratory of these new tendencies thanks to the cultural and publishing dynamism of firms such as Casa Ricordi and Sonzogno.
Realism, Verismo, Positivism, Naturalism, Impersonality, Objectivity, Social chronicle, Science, Experimental method, Psychological analysis, Human documents, Truth, Reality, People, Bourgeoisie, Working class, Southern Question, Industrialization, Urbanization, Social struggles, Post-Unification disillusionment, Milan, Florence, Casa Ricordi, Sonzogno, Bourgeois drama, Popular drama, Conversational singing, Local color, Singer-actors, Fidelity to the text, Anti-Romanticism, Anti-rhetoric, Amilcare Ponchielli, Alfredo Catalani, La Gioconda, La Wally, Giovanni Verga, Luigi Capuana, Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, Ippolito Nievo, Roberto Ardigò, Pasquale Villari, Georges Bizet, Carmen, Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega, Macchiaioli, Spade and Milk, Fosca, Confessions of an Italian, Social analysis, Genre painting, Representation of truth, Everyday life, Science and art, Musical Realism, Musical theatre, Transition, Young School
Representative works
In Italy, works such as La Gioconda (1876) by Ponchielli, for its brutal realism in portraying the Venetian people, and La Wally (1892) by Catalani, for its setting in a popular and wild environment, guide melodrama toward this new sensibility.
Music in History
Realism directs music toward dramatic concreteness and representation of everyday life.
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