Trivia / Pagliacci

• All-Star Cast: As Canio, Nedda, Tonio, and Silvio...
  • Audio Recordings:
    • 1953, conducted by Renato Cellini: Jussi Björling, Victoria de los Ángeles, Leonard Warren, Robert Merrill.
    • 1959, conducted by Francesco Molinari-Pradelli: Mario Del Monaco, Gabriella Tucci, Cornell MacNeil, Renato Capecchi.
    • 1964, conducted by Nello Santi (live from the old Metropolitan Opera House, New York): Franco Corelli, Lucine Amara, Anselmo Colzani, Calvin Marsh.
    • 1967, conducted by Lamberto Gardelli: James McCracken, Pilar Lorengar, Robert Merrill, Tom Krause.
  • Video Recordings:
    • 1982, conducted by Georges Pretre: Plácido Domingo, Teresa Stratas, Juan Pons.
    • 1994, conducted by James Levine (live from the Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center): Luciano Pavarotti, Teresa Stratas, Juan Pons.
• Money, Dear Boy: The reason Leoncavallo wrote the opera. He was struggling to come up with a hit, and his publisher didn't have much confidence in his skills as a composer (though his skills as a librettist were evident enough). Then Leoncavallo saw the public was eating this verismo stuff up, and so he decided to jump on board.
• Referenced by...: A weirdly large number of Superhero works. Granted, that's where one of fiction's premier Monster Clowns was born, but some of these have nothing to do with him.
  • The oldest-known was Batman (1966)'s first Joker story, "The Joker Is Wild/Batman Is Riled", where the Clown Prince of Crime disguises himself as Canio to rob a ritzy opera house.
  • That said, arguably the most famous instance, from Watchmen, has nothing to do with the Joker or even the opera proper.
    "Heard joke once. Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says, "But doctor... I am Pagliacci."
  • Batman: The Animated Series shakes things up a little further by staging the show in "Birds of a Feather", a Penguin episode. This may actually be the most thematically apropos of the bunch, as the Penguin is indeed playing a sort of self-delusional Sad Clown role for his new high-society "friends".
  • Batman: Hush has Harley Quinn be the one impersonating Canio, also intending to rob the opera patrons (and also bait Bruce into thinking the Joker had killed Tommy Elliott).
  • The Batman: "Strange Minds" has the show as Joker's obsession-of-the-day, and it's ultimately the key to finding where he kidnapped Detective Yin to: the basement of the opera house.
  • In the Hey Arnold! episode "What's Opera, Arnold?", during Arnold's opera-themed dream sequence, Harold appears dressed as Canio, sobbing and singing "I'm a big, ugly clowno!" to the melody of "Vesti la giubba." For the rest of the series, any time Harold has an emotional meltdown, an instrumental version of "Vesti la giubba" plays as background music.