This new release from the Opera Discovery label presents Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana.

In July 1888 the music publisher Edoardo Sonzogno announced a competition open to all young Italian composers who had not yet had an opera performed on stage. They were invited to submit a one-act opera which would be judged by a jury of five prominent Italian critics and composers. The best three would be staged in Rome at Sonzogno's expense.

Mascagni heard about the competition only two months before the closing date and asked his friend Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, a poet and professor of literature at the Italian Royal Naval Academy in Livorno, to provide a libretto. Targioni-Tozzetti chose Cavalleria rusticana, a popular short story (and play) by Giovanni Verga, as the basis for the opera. He and his colleague Guido Menasci set about composing the libretto, sending it to Mascagni in fragments, sometimes only a few verses at a time on the back of a postcard.

The opera was finally submitted on the last day that entries would be accepted. Cavalleria rusticana won and opened on the evening of 17 May 1890 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome with Gemma Bellincioni as Santuzza and Roberto Stagno as Turiddu and the orchestra conduced by Lepoldo Mugnone. It was a sensation, with Mascagni taking 40 curtain calls.

The opera's premiere in 1890 was a tremendous success, which Mascagni built on the following year with L'amico Fritz. He became increasingly prominent as a conductor and in 1892 conducted his opera I Rantzau around Europe. He was director of the Liceo Musicale in Pesaro 1885-1902. Pietro Mascagni died in Rome on 2 August 1945.

Cast:
- Santuzza: Silvia Dalla Benetta (soprano)
- Turiddu: Fabio Armiliato (tenor)
- Compar Alfio: Alberto Mastromarino (baritone)
- Lola: Giulia De Blasis (soprano)
- Mamma Lucia: Camilla Antonini (mezzo-soprano)