Vesti la giubba
aria from the opera Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo
"Vesti la giubba" (Italian: [ˈvɛsti la ˈdʒubba], "Put on the costume", often referred to as "On With the Motley", from the original 1893 translation by Frederic Edward Weatherly) is a tenor aria from Ruggero Leoncavallo's 1892 opera Pagliacci. "Vesti la giubba" is sung at the conclusion of the first act, when Canio discovers his wife's infidelity, but must nevertheless prepare for his performance as Pagliaccio the clown because "the show must go on".
The aria is often regarded as one of the most moving in the operatic repertoire of the time. The pain of Canio is portrayed in the aria and exemplifies the entire notion of the "tragic clown": smiling on the outside but crying on the inside. This is still displayed today, as the clown motif often features the painted-on tear running down the cheek of the performer.
Enrico Caruso's recordings of the aria, from 1902, 1904 and 1907, were among the top selling records of the 78-rpm era and reached over a million sales.
This aria is often used in popular culture, and has been featured in many renditions, mentions, and spoofs.
Libretto
In popular culture
The aria is heard in the accident scene of the movie Urban Ghost Story (1998).
Both the melody of the aria and dramatic points of the opera from which it comes are referenced by Homer and Jethro in the 1953 Spike Jones song "Pal Yat Chee" on RCA Victor
The melody is set to lyrics about Kellogg's Rice Krispies breakfast cereal in an American television commercial for that product, circa 1970.
In a Sesame Street sketch from 1982, José Carreras performs an English version of "Vesti la giubba" with rewritten lyrics about Ernie losing his Rubber Duckie, while Ernie mimes along.
“Vesti la giubba” enters the record as aria from the opera Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Vesti, giubba and aria can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q645543. The Library of Congress control number is n81146509. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1893, 1892, 1902 and 1904.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vesti la giubba” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.