The Scarecrow Press, 2007. In very good condition with minor shelfwear to the cover and spine including light scuffs. Internally very clean, seems barely read. Leoncavallo: Life and Works is the first fully documented biography of the beloved and popular composer Ruggiero Leoncavallo (1857-1919), whose credits include Pagliacci and the operatic works Chatterton, Der Roland von Berlin, Zaz, Maa, Zingari, La bohme, and the incomplete trilogy Crepusculum. Author Konrad Dryden has amassed material from hundreds of unpublished letters and photographs, creating the most complete portrait of the composer to date. This book examines various facets of Leoncavallo's history: from his youth as the son of the Naples' judge who presided over the murder trial on which Pagliacci was based to his studies with the poet Giosu Carducci, and from his sojourn in France as a caf-chantant pianist to his appointment in Egypt as music instructor to the Khedive. Careful documentation and plot synopses of Leon