È la solita storia del pastore (Lamento di Federico) (Federico) (L'arlesiana)

Cilea's third opera set Daudet's play L'Arlésienne — the same text for which Bizet had written incidental music in 1872 — in a libretto by Leopoldo Marenco. It opened at the Teatro Lirico in Milan on 27 November 1897 with the twenty-four-year-old Enrico Caruso as Federico, the part that first made his name. Cilea reduced the four acts to three the following year and went on revising into the 1930s. The woman of the title never appears on stage: the opera is built around an absence, and its one durable page is the moment Federico admits he cannot forget her.