Ruggero Leoncavallo

Ruggero Leoncavallo, born in Naples in 1857, spent years scraping by as a café pianist across Europe before success found him. When Mascagni's short opera Cavalleria rusticana became a sensation, Leoncavallo answered with a compact shocker of his own: Pagliacci, the story of a troupe of traveling players whose leader murders his unfaithful wife in the middle of a performance. He wrote the words himself and claimed the plot came from a real case tried by his father, a judge.

Premiered in Milan in 1892 with the young Arturo Toscanini conducting, Pagliacci made his name and has held the stage ever since, usually sharing an evening with Cavalleria. His other operas, including a La bohème that lost the race with Puccini's version, rarely surface.

There is no real question where to start: Pagliacci, a little over an hour, with the clown's lament Vesti la giubba at its center.