Verismo is a late 19th-century italian operatic movement that brought working-class characters and realistic violence onto the opera stage.
Verismo (Italian for 'realism') emerged in Italian opera in the late 1880s as a parallel to the literary realism of Émile Zola in France and Giovanni Verga in Italy. Pietro Mascagni's 'Cavalleria rusticana' (1890) and Ruggero Leoncavallo's 'Pagliacci' (1892) introduced operas about peasants and travelling players whose passions ended in murder — a deliberate rejection of the mythological and aristocratic subjects of earlier Italian opera. Giacomo Puccini absorbed verismo's directness and added a melodic gift the others lacked: 'La bohème' (1896), 'Tosca' (1900), and 'Madama Butterfly' (1904) gave the movement its most enduring works. Umberto Giordano's 'Andrea Chénier' (1896) and Francesco Cilea's 'Adriana Lecouvreur' (1902) extended the style. Verismo lasted barely a generation as a movement, but its emotional directness, orchestral density, and willingness to put ordinary lives onstage permanently changed opera's range.