Pagliacci Italian premiere, and it was given in New York on 15 June 1893, with Agostino Montegriffo as Canio. Around 1890, when Pietro Mascagni's "Cavalleria rusticana" premiered, Leoncavallo was a little-known composer. After seeing Mascagni's success, he decided to write an opera in response: one act composed in the verismo style. Leoncavallo wrote that he based the story of "Pagliacci" on an incident from his childhood: a murder in 1865, the victim of which was a Leoncavallo family servant, Gaetano Scavello. The murderer was Gaetano D'Alessandro, with his brother Luigi an accomplice to the crime. The incident resulted from a series
Paulo Szot studied at Jagiellonian University in Poland. He began singing professionally in 1990 with the National Song & Dance Ensemble "Śląsk". Later, he made his professional opera debut in a production of "Il barbiere di Siviglia" at the Municipal Theatre of São Paulo in 1997. Since then, he has performed with the New York City Opera, the Palm Beach Opera, the Canadian Opera Company, Opéra de Marseille, and Vlaamse Opera, among others, in such operas as "L'elisir d'amore", "La bohème", "Don Giovanni", "Cavalleria rusticana", "Pagliacci", "Carmen", "Così fan tutte", "Le nozze di Figaro" and "Maria Golovin". In March 2010 he made