Credits:

Svetlana Aksenova

Description:

Leoncavallo’s ultimate verismo operaZaz, an opera brimming with fragile, beautiful melodyLeoncavallo’s Zaz opened the 2020 season at the Theater an der Wien. An opera in four acts for which the composer wrote both music and libretto, it is filled with the fragile beauty of melody that is Leoncavallo’s hallmark. Before the success of his best-known work, Pagliacci, Leoncavallo earned his living playing the piano in Parisian music halls, and the world of the suburban Paris music hall in which this opera is set is vividly drawn as a result. Zaz was premiered in 1900 at the Teatro Lirico in Milan. Leoncavallo later produced a revised version in 1919, shortly before his death, cutting passages he considered longwinded; this production is based on that revision, while also drawing in places on the original 1900 version.SynopsisZaz, the star attraction of a music hall in Saint-tienne outside Pari