The giovane scuola refers to a group of Italian composers (mostly operatic) who succeeded Verdi and flourished in the late 19th and early 20th century. The group all had close connections with the Milan Conservatory

Milan Conservatory

The Milan Conservatory is a college of music which was established by a royal decree of 1807 in Milan, capital of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. It opened the following year with premises in the cloisters of the Baroque church of Santa Maria della Passione. There were initially 18 boarders,...

 and included Puccini

Giacomo Puccini

Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...

, Mascagni

Pietro Mascagni

Pietro Antonio Stefano Mascagni was an Italian composer most noted for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece Cavalleria rusticana caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music...

, Leoncavallo

Ruggero Leoncavallo

Ruggero Leoncavallo was an Italian opera composer. His two-act work Pagliacci remains one of the most popular works in the repertory, appearing as number 20 on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide.-Biography:...

, Giordano

Umberto Giordano

Umberto Menotti Maria Giordano was an Italian composer, mainly of operas.He was born in Foggia in Puglia, southern Italy, and studied under Paolo Serrao at the Conservatoire of Naples...

, Cilea

Francesco Cilea

Francesco Cilea was an Italian composer. Today he is particularly known for his operas L'arlesiana and Adriana Lecouvreur.-Biography:...

, Catalani

Alfredo Catalani

Alfredo Catalani was an Italian operatic composer. He is best remembered for his operas Loreley and La Wally...

 and Franchetti

Alberto Franchetti

Alberto Franchetti was an Italian opera composer.-Biography:Alberto Franchetti was born in Turin, a Jewish nobleman of independent means. He studied first in Venice, then in Dresden under Felix Draeseke, and finally at the Munich Conservatory under Josef Rheinberger. His first major success...

 as well as non-operatic composers, such as Don Lorenzo Perosi, who wrote almost exclusively sacred music. Most of the operatic composers of the giovane scuola were also members of the verismo

Verismo

Verismo was an Italian literary movement which peaked between approximately 1875 and the early 1900s....

 movement. Although they also wrote more mainstream operas, many of their works focused on "the rawness of life" and the effect of poverty on society and were characterized by an emotional rhetoric influenced by Wagner and Massenet.