Umberto Giordano

Something of an operatic one-hit wonder, Umberto Giordano was part of the Italian giovane scuola (“young school”) of composers who followed Verdi and were part of the verismo movement of opera realism introduced by Pietro Mascagni. Giordano was born in Foggia in 1867. After graduating from the Naples Conservatory in 1890, he earned a commission to compose the first of some dozen operas he would complete over his lifetime. Produced in 1892, Mala vita (“Evil Life”) was a semi-scandalous verismo work about a textiles dyer who begs God to cure his tuberculosis in exchange for reforming a prostitute. Following the less successful romantic work Regina Diaz (1894), Giordano moved to Milan, where he wrote his verismo magnum opus. The sympathetic and uncomplicated Andrea Chénier (1896), based on the life of the French Revolution poet, established him as a significant young composer. Fedora (1898) was less successful despite featuring up-and-coming tenor Enrico Caruso. Giardano strove to match Chénier’s success in several subsequent operas, concluding with Il re (“The King”) in 1929, and he spent his last years composing songs until his death in 1948.