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Image:Ruggiero
leoncavallo.jpg|right|150px|Photograph of Ruggiero
Leoncavallo
Ruggiero Leoncavallo (March 8, 1857 - August 9,
1919) was an Italy|Italian opera composer.

He was born in Naples and educated at the
Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella of that city.
After some years spent teaching and in ineffective
attempts to obtain the production of more than one
opera, he saw the enormous success of Mascagni's
Cavalleria Rusticana in 1890, and he wasted no
time in producing his own Verismo hit, I
Pagliacci|Pagliacci.  Pagliacci was performed in
Milan in 1892 with immediate success; today it is
the only work by Leoncavallo in the standard
operatic repertory.  The next year his Medici was
also produced in Milan, but neither it nor
Chatterton (1896)—both early
works—obtained any favour, and it was not
until La Bohème was performed in 1897 in
Venice that his talent obtained public
confirmation.  (Its two tenor arias are still
occasionally sung, especially in Italy.) 
Subsequent operas by Leoncavallo were Zazà
(1900) (the opera of Geraldine Farrar's famous
farewell performance at the Metropolitan
Opera|Met), and Der Roland (1904).  Nothing from
the latter opera is heard today, but the baritone
aria from Zazà is still often sung. 

Leoncavallo was the librettist for all of his own
operas.  Many considered him the greatest Italian
librettist of his time after Arrigo Boito|Boito.

Leoncavallo died in Montecatini.

==Operas==

*Pagliacci (May 21 1892 Teatro Dal Verme, Milan) 
*I Medici (9 Nov. 1893 Teatro Dal Verme, Milan)
first part of the trilogy Crepusculum - not
completed  
*Chatterton (10 March 1896 Teatro Argentina, Rome)
rev. of a work written in 1876  
*La Bohème (Leoncavallo)|La Bohème (6 May 1897
Teatro La Fenice, Venice) 
*ZazĂ  (10 Nov. 1900 Teatro Lirico, Milan) 
*Der Roland von Berlin (13 Dec. 1904 Deutsche
Oper, Berlin) 
*Maia (15 Jan. 1910 Teatro Costanzi, Rome) 
*Gli Zingari (16 Sept. 1912 Hippodrome, London) 
*Mimi Pinson (1913 Teatro Massimo, Palermo) rev.
of La Bohème 
*Edipo Re (13 Dec. 1920 Opera Theatre, Chicago)

==Operettas==

*La jeunesse de Figaro (1906, USA) 
*Malbrouck (19 Jan. 1910 Teatro Nazionale, Rome) 
*La reginetta delle rose (24 June 1912 Teatro
Costanzi, Rome) 
*Are you There? (1 Nov. 1913 Theatre Prince of
Wales, London) 
*La candidata (6 Feb. 1915 Teatro Nazionale, Rome)

*Prestami tua moglie (2 Sept. 1916 Casino delle
Terme, Montecatini) 
*Goffredo Mameli (27 April 1916 Teatro Carlo
Felice, Genoa) 
*A chi la giarrettiera? (16 Oct. 1919 Teatro
Adriano, Rome) 
*Il primo bacio (29 April 1923 Salone di cura,
Montecatini) 
*La maschera nuda (26 June 1925 Teatro Politeama,
Naples)