verismo

American  

[vuh-riz-moh, ve-reez-maw] / vəˈrɪz moʊ, vɛˈriz mɔ /

noun

1. the use of everyday life and actions in artistic works: introduced into opera in the early 1900s in reaction to contemporary conventions, which were seen as artificial and untruthful.

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verismo British  

/ veˈrismo, vɛˈrɪzməʊ /

noun

1. music a school of composition that originated in Italian opera towards the end of the 19th century, drawing its themes from real life and emphasizing naturalistic elements. Its chief exponent was Puccini

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Etymology

Origin of verismo

1905–10; < Italian: realism, equivalent to ver ( o ) true (< Latin vērus ) + -ismo -ism

Example Sentences

His verismo operatic adaptation of Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge,” from 1999, was prominently documented on a New World Records album from Chicago’s Lyric Opera.

From New York Times • Dec. 23, 2022

New Year’s Eve brings to the stage Giordano’s verismo melodrama, a barnburner tale of love, politics and a poison-filled necklace set in late-19th-century Russia.

From New York Times • Feb. 23, 2022

But that world had just been transformed by the Great War, and there had been enough of the grim reality that Puccini poignantly underscored in his verismo operas.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 2, 2020

Indeed, Samuel Barber’s “First Essay,” which debuted in 1938, is about as European as American music gets, a stretch of serious craft laced with Romantic and verismo infections.

From Washington Post • Feb. 28, 2020

At the first I listened to some of the hot-blooded music of an Italian composer of the so-called school of verismo.

From A Book of Operas Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music by Krehbiel, Henry Edward