A new style of opera known as verismo (realism) appeared in in Italy in the last decade of the 19th century. Influenced by the slightly earlier Italian literary verismo and the naturalism of important writers such as Emile Zola in France and Henrik Ibsen in Norway, verismo in opera used passionate declamation and emotionally charged harmonies and melodies to depict everyday people—commonly of lower social classes—in ordinary, realistic, violent, melodramatic, and sometimes even sordid situations. The main exponents of operatic verismo were Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945), Ruggiero Leoncavallo (1858–1919), and Giacomo Puccini—the most important Italian opera composer after Verdi.

Mascagni’s masterpiece of verismo is Cavalleria rusticana (Rustic Chivalry; 1890), while Leoncavallo is best known for I Pagliacci (Clowns; 1892). The two works are frequently performed in opera houses together. The latter is the story of Canio, a circus clown whose unrequited love for the beautiful Columbina eventually leads him to murder his romantic rival. (These names are taken from the medieval commedia dell’arte, which featured stock characters representing certain “types.”) In the famous recitative and aria, “Vesti la giubba” (Put on the costume), Canio decries the fact that he must now wear “a clown’s fake smile” while inside, he is in agony. This new awareness of the subconscious workings of the inner mind was also manifest in the work of such psychoanalysts as Sigmund Freud.