In the prologue to "Pagliacci," Ruggiero Leoncavallo's nimble shocker of 1892, the singer who is about to play the hunchbacked clown Tonio delivers a sly apologia for the mayhem to come. The opera, he insists, is based on a true story, and is steeped in universal emotion. Indeed, Leoncavallo later claimed that his libretto, which tells of a jealous actor who kills his wife and her lover mid-performance, took inspirat…
SOURCE: The New Yorker at 12:00AM on May 4, 2015