Giovanni Verga - writer

Sicilian remembered as one of Italy’s greatest novelists

Giovanni Verga wrote short stories 
and novels from an early age

The writer Giovanni Verga, regarded by some as the greatest Italian novelist after Alessandro Manzoni, was born on this day in 1840 in the Catania area of southeast Sicily.

Verga wrote romantic and historical novels in the early part of his career but later shifted his focus to what became known as verismo, a style rooted in stark realism, focused on unvarnished depictions of rural and working‑class life.

His major works include the novels I Malavoglia (1881) and Mastro-don Gesualdo (1889), which have come to be seen as his masterpieces, and his short story collections Vita dei campi (1880) and Novelle rusticane (1883). 

The opera composer Pietro Mascagni can be given some credit for introducing Verga’s work to wider audiences. His most famous composition, Cavalleria rusticana, which premiered in 1890, was based on a short story and play by Verga of the same name, written 10 years earlier.

Verga grew up as part of a bourgeois family with noble origins, whose forebears are thought to have arrived in Sicily from Aragon, in Spain. Though the family home was in Catania, where his birth was registered, some sources say he was born in a house in Vizzini, a hilltop town 60km (36 miles) south of Catania, others that he was born on a country estate in nearby Tiepidi, perhaps because the family relocated there during a cholera outbreak. 

Verga began writing in his teens and continued while ostensibly studying law at the University of Catania. His early works, such as Amore e Patria (Love and Homeland), I carbonari della montagna (The Carbonari of the Mountain) and Sulle lagune (On the Lagoons) had historical, patriotic themes.

At the time of Italian Unification, in 1860-61, Verga served with the Catania National Guard, which was charged with keeping order following Giuseppe Garibaldi’s conquest of Sicily. Several times between 1860 and 1864, this service required him to visit Florence.

During one extended stay in the Tuscan capital he wrote Una peccatrice (translated into English as A Mortal Sin), which was much different from his previous work in that its subject matter was a passionate romance. After settling in Florence, where he wrote Storia di una capinera - translated as The Sparrow - a novel about the plight of a girl forced by circumstance to become a nun, he began to be influenced by the Scapigliatura movement.

A 1907 edition of Verga's 
acclaimed I Malavoglia

The Scapigliatura - which literally translates as ‘dishevelment’ - were a somewhat bohemian, anti‑establishment artistic group based primarily in Milan from the late 1850s to the 1870s. Its writers were generally young and disillusioned, yet cosmopolitan, and determined to break with the polite, patriotic literature of post‑Unification Italy.

The movement’s rejection of romantic idealisation, its fascination with the darker edges of modern life, and its stylistic experimentation played a key part in Verga’s transition to verismo.

His 1873 novel Eva, in which the rejection of romanticism is a central theme, provided an early manifestation of this shift in style, which gained pace after he moved to Milan and became part of the city’s literary circle, fully embracing Scapagliato themes in his next two novels Tigre reale (The Royal Tigress) and Eros.

The evolution of Verga’s writing into the starker verismo that became his hallmark followed the arrival in Milan - by then the home of most of Italy’s major newspapers and publishing houses - of his close friend, Luigi Capuana, another Sicilian writer.  They were both deeply impressed by L'Assommoir - The Drinking Den - which is regarded as one of the finest works of Émile Zola, a major figure in the Naturalism movement in French literature.

This became the inspiration for the verismo movement, which they set out to create in order to fill a gap they perceived in Italian literature.

Encouraged by the reception for his short stories, exploring the verismo themes of poverty, fatalism, family duty, social immobility, honour codes, and the harsh economics of survival, often set in the fishing villages and rural communities of his native Sicily, Verga wrote I Malavoglia - published in English as The House by the Medlar Tree - and Mastro-don Gesualdo to great critical acclaim, even though the financial returns were modest. 

Verga is commemorated in many ways in Catania,
including this bust in the Giardino Bellini

He had planned that they would be the first two in a cycle of five novels - to be entitled I vinti (The Vanquished) - but no more were written.

This was probably for a variety of reasons. The first two novels had been enormously demanding projects, draining his creativity. He also became highly critical of his own prose, rewriting extensively but sometimes abandoning entire drafts.  He found writing for the theatre more rewarding financially, although he endured a long dispute with Mascagni over royalties from Cavalleria rusticana.

In any case, his income from family properties in Sicily provided him with a comfortable lifestyle. The management of these properties also took up time.

After spending decades in Milan, Verga increasingly retreated to Catania and his family estate. Never married, he became a public figure locally - a respected gentleman, landowner, and cultural authority, who was eventually named a Senator of the Kingdom of Italy - but his national literary engagement dwindled. New movements emerged, leaving verismo behind.

Moreover, by the second decade of the new century, he was elderly and ill. His last years were spent almost entirely in Catania, with no major writing projects. He died there in January, 1922.

If Verga’s ambitions remained unfulfilled, he left a deep influence on Italian literature. His work is still part of the curriculum in Italian schools. He sits alongside Luigi Pirandello and Leonardo Sciascia as part of the great triumvirate of Sicilian literature.

His legacy can also be seen in the neorealism movement that revived Italian cinema in the postwar years, in particular in the films of Luchino Visconti, who often drew on Verga’s themes. Visconti’s second major feature, his 1948 film La terra trema (The Earth Trembles) was an adaptation, if a loose one, of I Malavoglia.

The Verga family home in
Catania now houses a museum

Travel tip:

The Verga family home at Via Sant'Anna 8 in Catania is now given over in part to the Casa Museo Giovanni Verga, a literary museum dedicated to preserving Giovanni Verga’s memory. The museum occupies the second floor of a late 18th century palazzo, which was declared a national monument in 1940. The preserved living spaces still retain the original furnishings. The writer's library, in his private study, consists of more than 2,600 volumes. Copies of Verga's manuscripts are exhibited inside the display cases, while the originals are kept in the library of the University of Catania. A lectern stands in front of the large window in the living room, at which Verga would write his poems and essays observing the daily life of people who passed by on Via Sant'Anna. Paintings, prints and engravings by artists who were friends of Verga adorn the walls. A collection of photographs, mainly of family and friends, taken by Verga himself was discovered at the house shortly after his death. Via Sant’Anna one of several streets linking Via Vittorio Emanuele II with the parallel Via Giuseppe Garibaldi, just a five-minute walk from Catania’s duomo, the Basilica Cattedrale di Sant’Agata.

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Luchino Visconti's 1948 film La
terra trema was filmed in Aci Trezza

Travel tip:

Aci Trezza, a picturesque fishing village on the Ionian coast, located about 15km (9 miles) north of Catania, was immortalised as the setting for his masterpiece novel I Malavoglia, which revolved around the struggles of the Toscano fishing family. A local museum, Casa del Nespolo, housed in a traditional 19th-century house, features memorabilia, photographs, and exhibits dedicated to Verga's work.  Luchino Visconti filmed La terra trema,  his 1948 neo-realist cinematic adaptation of Verga's novel, on location in Aci Trezza, with some local residents in the cast. Off the coast, jagged dark basalt sea stacks known as i faraglioni rise straight out of the water. Greek mythology holds that these massive volcanic rocks were hurled at Odysseus by the blinded giant Polyphemus as the hero escaped. Isola Lachea, another large offshore rock, functions as a protected nature reserve rich in local marine and plant species. Other attractions include the  Baroque architecture of the church of San Giovanni Battista and the Norman Castle, standing tall above the village, which also offers a vantage point from which to watch the annual Vele dei Malavoglia regatta. 

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More reading:

Alessandro Manzoni, the writer credited with Italy’s greatest novel 

How Leonardo Sciascia mercilessly exposed Mafia links with Italian politics

Luigi Capuana, a leading figure in the verismo movement

Also on this day:

1753: The birth of Marie Josephine of Savoy

1898: The birth of baker and chocolatier Pietro Ferrero

1938: The birth of actor Giuliano Gemma

1964: The birth of businessman and coffee-maker Andrea Illy

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Pietro Mascagni – composer

One opera was enough to build reputation of musician

Pietro Mascagni in 1890, the year his opera
Cavalleria Rusticana, was first played

Pietro Mascagni, the creator of the opera Cavalleria rusticana, died on this day in 1945 in Rome, at the age of 81.

Cavalleria rusticana was an outstanding success when it was first performed in Rome in 1890 and was said to have single-handedly brought the Verismo movement, in which the characters were ordinary people rather than gods, mythological figures or kings and queens, into Italian opera.

The beautiful intermezzo from the opera was used in the sound track of the 1980 film Raging Bull and a production of the opera was used as the setting for the climax of the 1990 film The Godfather Part III, with Michael Corleone’s son Anthony playing Turridu, the opera’s male protagonist. The film ends with the intermezzo playing.

In 2001 Andrea Bocelli recorded a song entitled Mascagni on his Cieli di Toscana album and had an excerpt from Cavalleria rusticana incorporated into the music.

The opera has been so successful that it has led to Mascagni sometimes being dismissed as a one-opera composer, but, in fact, the composer wrote 15 operas, as well as orchestral and piano music and songs.

Two of Mascagni’s other operas, L’amico Fritz and Iris, have remained in the European repertoire and have been regularly performed since their premières.

Mascagni, pictured in 1905

Mascagni was born in Livorno in Tuscany in 1863. He began studying music at the age of 13 and soon produced compositions of his own.

In 1881 he won first prize for a Cantata which was performed at a musical contest in Milan.

The following year, Mascagni passed the admission examination for the Milan Conservatory, where he first met the composer, Giacomo Puccini.

In 1885 Mascagni composed Il Re a Napoli in Cremona, a romance for a tenor and orchestra. Then he left Milan without completing his studies and began touring as an orchestra conductor for opera companies and he also gave piano lessons.

In 1889, a competition was announced for a one-act opera. The following year, Mascagni completed the composition of Cavalleria rusticana and sent the manuscript to Milan.

Cavalleria rusticana won the contest and Mascagni was summoned to Rome to present his opera.  The première was held at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. It was an outstanding success and was then performed all over Italy. It was also performed in Hungary, Germany, Russia and Argentina and Mascagni became famous internationally.

Listen to Mascagni's most famous piece

Mascagni, who was married in 1889 to Lina Carbognani, with whom he went on to have three children, continued to write music and produce operas and went all over the world conducting orchestras.

Mascagni, centre, at a meeting in 1885 with his fellow
musicians Alberto Franchetti (left) and Giacomo Puccini

By 1915 he was writing music to accompany silent films. In 1930 he conducted La Bohème in Torre del Lago as an homage to Puccini who had died in 1924.

In 1940, celebrations for the 50th anniversary of Cavalleria rusticana took place all over Italy, often with Mascagni conducting the orchestra.

His last opera season was in Rome featuring Cavalleria rusticana and L’amico Fritz, by which time he was so frail he had to conduct sitting on a chair.

Mascagni died on August 2, 1945 in his apartment at The Grand Hotel Plaza in Rome, which had by then been commandeered by the Allies but where he was allowed to remain.

His last years were marred by bitterness at his treatment by the post-Fascist Italian government, who punished him for his support for Mussolini and snubbed his funeral ceremony at Rome’s Cimitero Monumentale on August 4.

However, in 1951 Mascagni’s remains were transferred from Rome to his birthplace, Livorno, and reburied with honours.

The Terrazza Mascagni promenade in Livorno

Travel tip:

Livorno, where Mascagni was born, is the second largest city in Tuscany after Florence. Although it is a large commercial port, it has many attractions, including an elegant sea front, the Terrazza Mascagni, and an historic centre with canals.

Inside the sumptuous Grand Hotel Plaza in Rome

Travel tip:

The Grand Hotel Plaza in Rome, where Mascagni lived in an apartment from 1927 until his death in 1945, is in Via del Corso in the heart of the city. It has beautiful views of Rome from its rooftop terraces. The hotel was remodelled in the 1920s, inspired by the Art Nouveau style in fashion at the time. It has been used as a film location on many occasions.

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