Cavalleria Rusticana is a tragic opera in one act by the Italian composer Pietro Mascagni . The title means “Rustic chivalry.” The libretto (text) in Italian was written by Guido Menasci and Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and based on the story and play Cavalleria Rusticana by the Italian author Giovanni Verga. The opera was completed in 1889 and won a competition, organized by the Italian music publisher Edoardo Sonzogno, to find a new one-act opera. It received its first performance in Rome on May 17, 1890.
The action in Cavalleria Rusticana takes place during Easter in a Sicilian village in about 1880. Turiddu, a soldier, has seduced Santuzza, a village girl. But, as the opera opens, Turiddu has already tired of the relationship and has gone back to his former sweetheart Lola, who is now the wife of the local carter Alfio. Santuzza makes a final but futile appeal to Turiddu to return to her. She curses him with the words, “May you have a bad Easter.” Rejected and humiliated, she tells Alfio the whole story. Alfio’s angry reaction makes plain the meaning of the opera’s title, for “rustic chivalry” refers to the villagers’ code of honor. According to this code, Alfio must seek vengeance for the wrong done to both him and Santuzza. During a drinking party following the Easter service, he challenges Turiddu to a duel and shortly afterwards kills him.
The opera’s atmosphere has fleeting moments of calm, notably the famous intermezzo, generally played with the stage empty. An intermezzo is a short orchestral piece inserted into an opera. In addition, Santuzza leads a stately, dignified prayer early in the opera. There are also powerful and intense scenes. They include the meeting between Santuzza and Turridu in which she begs him to return to her; the tense confrontation between Turridu and Alfio, which leads to their duel; and Turridu’s desperate farewell to his mother, followed a few moments later by the voice of a villager crying out offstage that Turridu has been killed.
Loading the player...Intermezzo by Pietro Mascagni
Cavalleria Rusticana is usually performed with the Italian composer Ruggero Leoncavallo’s two-act opera, Pagliacci (1892). Opera lovers often refer to the two operas as Cav and Pag. The passion, realism, and violence of both works make them the most celebrated early examples of verismo (realistic) opera.
