«Se’ tu forse un uom?». Mascolinità, amore e violenza nel melodramma verista plebeo

During the belle époque, plebeian verismo melodrama – best known for Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci – emerged as a highly successful and easily accessible subgenre of opera, characterized by popular settings, plots inspired by crime reports, and adulterous love triangles culminating in violent death, often at the hands of a betrayed husband or abandoned fiancé. Positioned at the intersection of opera studies and cultural history, this study examines librettos and contemporary opera reviews to reveal how the moving effect on audiences was driven by a fragile and weeping – yet not less violent – masculinity. Such masculinity was perfectly embodied by the betrayed tenor, who first despairs at the loss of his beloved and then, in a fit of rage, kills her in what is framed as a «crime of passion». The invocation of unconditional love for the victim and the appeal to a deeply intimate tragedy by the perpetrator husband or the jilted partner served as a powerful rhetorical strategy to elicit the audience sympathy and the moral absolution for him and the crime committed.