Pietro Mascagni: Intermezzo, from Cavalleria Rusticana

In the field of music, verismo is an Italian opera style that forged its beginnings in 1890 hand in hand with Cavalleria Rusticana by the Italian composer Pietro Mascagni, reaching its highest expression in the early twentieth century. This new style is going to abandon the historical or mythical themes of romanticism focusing on a realistic portrait of everyday life, especially that in which the poorest classes subsist – peasants and workers.

Composed on the occasion of a contest called by an Italian editor, Cavalleria Rusticana was the winning work out of 70 works submitted. Its premiere, in May 1890 in Rome, was a resounding success. That night, its young author, 27, had to go out more than forty times to receive the public's greeting. The following year it was released in London, and shortly thereafter its representations would follow in Philadelphia, Chicago and New York. At the death of Mascagni in 1945, the work had enjoyed a number close to fourteen thousand performances in Italy alone.

Pietro Mascagni (1863 - 1945)

A single act opera, Cavalleria Rusticana (something like "rustic chivalry", in free translation) is located in Sicily, during the Easter feast. His characters are villagers and peasants who deal with unrequited love and a non-sancta woman punished by a prude society.

The most popular fragment of the work is a prelude or Intermezzo, sung by the orchestra at the time when the characters have left the plaza where they were gathered to enter the church.

The Intermezzo, and of course, the complete work, are both still very popular today. Numerous film versions have been made of it and scenes of its representation were included in the movie The Godfather III, by Coppola. Likewise, in Raging Bull, by Martin Scorsese, an important part of the soundtrack is based on Intermezzo.

The video shows scenes of a terrace, desolate (like the plaza, in the play), on the seaside. This is the Terrazza Mascagni, located in Livorno, Italy, rebuilt after the Second World War and then renamed in tribute to Pietro Mascagni, a native of Livorno.