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Revenge Between Legal and Social Norms in Cavalleria Rusticana

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Law and Opera

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Abstract

Revenge is usually considered a mere instinctive and spontaneous reaction to an injustice. However, as the legal anthropologist knows well, revenge is also an action regulated by unwritten laws in most traditional communities. It is therefore possible to see revenge as one of the most ancient legal institutions, and possibly the most ancient form of punishment provided for by traditional legal systems.

This paper is centered on such “normative” revenge, analyzed through the reading of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. Here, the plot is characterized by a number of cross-revenges, all of them committed in compliance with the unwritten norm “Offences must be revenged.” Such a rule is a common feature of the rural legal order in nineteenth century’s Italy, and it will lead to the dramatic ending “They killed gaffer Turiddu!”

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana premiered in 1890. The libretto written by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci (see Targioni-Tozzetti & Menasci 2002) adapted from a play and a short story by Giovanni Verga (see Verga 1967). The short story was published in March 1880 in the journal Fanfulla della Domenica and then, in August, in the short story collection Vita dei campi; see Saccone (2002), p. 106.

    In 1883 Verga adapted the short story into a play. The libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci keeps the typical veristic topics; however, there is a large stylistic distance between Verga’s works and the libretto: see Gaillard (1992), p. 178. Indeed, in this sense, as the literary critic Sansone (1990), p. 201, states, “the essential features of literary verismo did not pass into Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. Verga’s formal restraint and impersonality were incompatible with the emotional subjectivity of operatic singing”.

  2. 2.

    Kelsen (1941), p. 77.

  3. 3.

    Ehrlich (1922), p. 133.

  4. 4.

    Sacco (1995).

  5. 5.

    Ruscillo (2009), p. 85.

  6. 6.

    Monk (1990), p. 170.

  7. 7.

    See Lorini and Masia (2015b) and particularly Lorini and Masia (2015a), pp. x–xi.

  8. 8.

    Pigliaru (1975).

  9. 9.

    The coercive power of the state does not emerge in the libretto, but producers of the opera sometimes introduce some symbols of the state into the opera setting. For instance, in the Cavalleria Rusticana (1968), produced by Giorgio Strehler, there is a long framing of Savoia’s stemma but there is no representation of state sanctioning reaction against Alfio. By contrast, Franco Zeffirelli’s production of Cavalleria Rusticana (1981), set in Vizzini (Verga’s home village in the province of Catania), is nearer to Verga’s play where the gendarmes appear soon after the duel.

  10. 10.

    Gaillard (1992), p. 186.

  11. 11.

    Saccone (2002), p. 111.

  12. 12.

    Tillona (1975), p. 264.

  13. 13.

    Ruscillo (2009), p. 85.

  14. 14.

    Sansone (1990), p. 199.

  15. 15.

    Conte (2000), pp. 7–32. See also Di Lucia (2007).

  16. 16.

    Pigliaru (1975), p. 124.

  17. 17.

    Lorini (2016), pp. 79–85.

  18. 18.

    Bastianelli (1910).

  19. 19.

    Ruscillo (2009), p. 85.

  20. 20.

    Gaillard (1992), p. 186.

  21. 21.

    Marotta (1956).

  22. 22.

    Kambartel and Schneider (1981), p. 164. Cf. Lorini (2000), pp. 181–185.

  23. 23.

    Conte (2011), pp. 71–72.

  24. 24.

    Ryle (1982), p. 17.

  25. 25.

    Bréhier (1917), p. 357.

  26. 26.

    Lorini (2000), p. 184.

  27. 27.

    Reiner (1956), p. 27.

  28. 28.

    Scheler (1994), p. 32.

  29. 29.

    Lorini (2013), pp. 143–147.

  30. 30.

    Gelli (1929), p. 5.

  31. 31.

    Gelli (1929), p. 1.

  32. 32.

    Lorini (2014), p. 127.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Law, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

    Giuseppe Lorini & Olimpia Giuliana Loddo

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  1. Giuseppe Lorini
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  2. Olimpia Giuliana Loddo
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Correspondence to Giuseppe Lorini or Olimpia Giuliana Loddo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Angelo Sraffa Department of Legal Studies, Bocconi Universtiy, Milan, Italy

    Filippo Annunziata

  2. Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan

    Giorgio Fabio Colombo

Additional information

This article is the result of joint research undertaken by the two authors. The final written version of Sects. 1 and 3 can be attributed to Giuseppe Lorini, and that of Sects. 2 and 4 to Olimpia G. Loddo. Both authors consider themselves responsible for every word of their joint work.

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Lorini, G., Loddo, O.G. (2018). Revenge Between Legal and Social Norms in Cavalleria Rusticana . In: Annunziata, F., Colombo, G. (eds) Law and Opera. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68649-3_14

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