Cavalleria rusticana

Mascagni entered the one-act opera for a competition run by the publisher Sonzogno in 1888, sending off the score at the last moment while working as a conductor in the provincial town of Cerignola; he was twenty-six and unknown. It won, and the premiere at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 17 May 1890 ended with some sixty curtain calls. Verga's Sicilian story of adultery and a knife fight at Easter gave Italian opera the model for verismo. Mascagni wrote fourteen more operas over forty-five years and never repeated the success.