Von sizilianischer Archaik zu modernistischer Ästhetik. Aktualisierungen der Cavalleria rusticana bei Verga, Mascagni und Coppola

Abstract

Abstract While Verga’s novella Cavalleria rusticana (1880) can be called a veristic tale about an archaic rural Sicilian world, based on the principles of honour and revenge, later adaptations replace the archaic character of the action by sentiment and melodrama. This holds true for Verga’s own play (1884) and even more for Pietro Mascagni’s famous opera (1890). In 1990, Francis Ford Coppola makes extensive use of the opera in the ending of The Godfather Part III, in order to provide Michael Corleone with the qualities of a tragical hero, qualities he actually does not have, given his brutal character in The Godfather Part I and II. Bymaking the opera a mise en abyme of the Godfather Part III-plot, Michael Corleone’s individual guilt is reduced to the effect of the archaic rules of rural Sicily, the land of his father and grandfather. In fact, he himself becomes a victim of a culture he wants to overcome. This strategy constrains Coppola to foreground, through the opera, the archaic world of the novella that had actually been abolished in the drama and the opera. Thus, the Godfather Part III takes up the veristic determinism of Verga’s novella.