Before It and Joker: the killer clown from Pagliacci by Leoncavallo

After Stephen King’s It and Joker, Batman’s enemy, who became the protagonist of Todd Phillips’ award-winning film, we are now accustomed to associating the figure of the clown with tragic, if not downright horror, situations. The clown’s traditionally therapeutic and liberating laughter is so often linked in our imagination to the terrible outcome of an enigmatic and imponderable event. It is the fruit of an ambiguity inherent in the depths of the human soul.

Already at the end of the 19th century some artists had begun to underline the contrast between the reassuring and colorful exterior of the clown and the darkness hidden inside. The undisputed protagonist of the Circus shows and the children’s favorite thus begins to show the human suffering hidden within him.

Among these is the great Ruggero Leoncavallo. The composer who, at the end of the 20th century, wrote the music and libretto for Pagliacci, a realist opera performed for the first time at the Teatro del Verme in Milan in 1892.

As is known, the work narrates what today we would define as a “femicide”. Canio/Cagliaccio, manager of a small troupe of wandering comedians, kills Nedda/Colombina, his unfaithful young wife, out of jealousy, instigated by Tonio/Taddeo, also a member of the troupe and a lover rejected by the woman.

Even if the “dramas of jealousy” were not new in the plots of operas, in this case, according to the author’s declarations, the story was inspired by a crime story that occurred in a remote village in Calabria and of which he himself had been a witness.

The work achieved immediate popular success. First of all, the artifice of the “theater within the theater” was appreciated: the crime takes place on the small stage, during the show, in front of an audience of villagers who cannot understand at the moment whether it is fiction or reality. Furthermore, the work shows a true story, which happened in that same era, with the performers who, apart from the stage costumes, wore clothes from everyday life.