Pietro Mascagni: Cavalleria rusticana – Intermezzo, A most beautiful 3 minutes of music

Mascagni (center) with his librettists, Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti (left) and Guido Menasci. The other image is from an early edition of Giovanni Verga’s short story Cavalleria rusticana, on which the opera is based.

I would like to share one of my favourite music piece – short but beautiful, it’s Pietro Mascagni: Cavalleria rusticana (Rustic Chivalry) – Intermezzo accompanied by a footage of the lovely picturesque Italian country side (Tuscany ?) which I got from youtube. For those interested, Pietro Mascagni rushed in with his composition for a competition in 1888 open to all young Italian composers who had not yet had an opera performed on stage. 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 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, and Mascagni’s piece won the competition out of 73 operas submitted. The piece was also used in the end of the movie- The Godfather III. Enjoy this wonderful music.

Credit to Romi M. Panlilio who share this on youtube.  Thanks a lot.