Masks, Minuets and Murder: Images of Italy in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci

This article interprets Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci (1892) as a voicing of Italy's 'Southern Question' - the problem of the underdeveloped and socially troubled Italian South. Pagliacci juxtaposes cultural symbols that include a commedia dell'arte figure representative of the Italian South and antique genres perceived to be emblematic of 'civilized' northern culture. By interpreting the interaction of costumes and musical styles, I argue that the work incorporates images of southern Italy - that 'violent', 'uncontrollable', yet 'picturesque' region - into a broader, northern-dominated conception of Italian nationhood (an interpretative mechanism typical of contemporary image-making media such as magazines and novels).