Cavalleria rusticana

In 1883 Italian publisher Sonzogno announced a bold new initiative: a competition to discover new operatic talent. Composers were invited to submit one-act works; the best three would then be staged in Rome, at Sonzogno’s expense. The competition may have rejected Puccini, and who today has heard of Niccola Spinelli’s Labilia or Vincenzo Ferroni’s Rudello? But the third winner of the 1888 competition is a different story. Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, premiered in 1890, launched a new style of opera that would define a generation, culminating in the triumphs of Puccini’s La Bohème and Tosca. Author Giovanni Verga had caused a sensation in 1880 with his story (later play) Cavalleria rusticana. This compact tragedy—a love triangle set in a Sicilian village on Easter Sunday, where tangled lives and passions eventually lead to seduction, infidelity and murder—swapped aristocratic aspiration and flowery prose for realism, brutal and direct. Mascagni took this philosophy, along with the plot, and created the first verismo (realist) opera. Melody is the driving force of a piece that smudges the line between raw emotion and song, opening in Sicilian folk music and reaching its climax in the soaring orchestral “Intermezzo”, with strings insisting on the wordless hymn’s ever-swelling theme. Other highlights include heroine Santuzza’s confessional outpouring of an aria “Voi lo sapete” and her beloved Turiddu’s charged farewell to his mother, “Mamma, quel vino è generoso”.