Cavalleria’s tribulations: rewritings of the Verghian tale between literature and other arts

Abstract

The anniversary of the hundred years since the death of Giovanni Verga is an opportunity to remember the work of Ermanno Comuzio, music and film critic, passionate and attentive connoisseur of melodrama and its history. Starting from one of his essays of 1996, thanks to the additions of two decisive contributions by Zappulla Muscarà (2014) and Giorgio Longo (2919), here the judicial misadventures that have involved Verga and Mascagni in a long dispute, made of numerous lawsuits, complaints and trials on the revenues of Cavalleria rusticana. These events could almost represent the subject of a judicial film with sometimes dramatic and sometimes grotesque tones.

In the course of this work, the various phases of Cavalleria are synthetically reconstructed, starting from the writing of the texts (the novella, the drama, the libretto for the melodrama) to reach the numerous film shootings, with some references to other melodramas derived from the novella in question, but less known: Mala Pasqua by Stanislao Gastaldon and Cavalleria Rusticana by Giovanni and Domenico Monleone.