A dazzling one-act opera, a journey into the psyche of a betrayed woman, consumed by rage and abandonment—feelings that awaken ancient, blood-soaked codes of honour. If Giovanni Verga’s eponymous novella has, over time, shaped the imagination of all Sicilian dramas of jealousy, this is also due to the music of Pietro Mascagni: direct, immediate, rough, with a special luminosity in evoking the landscape of the small town of Vizzini and a sudden violence in the eruption of passions. The emotional impact on the listener has endured since, to quote Sciascia, “the cry ‘they have killed compadre Turiddu’ for the first time sent a shiver down the spine of opera lovers.”

Cavalleria rusticana

Teatro Regio di Torino

When Courtesan Violetta and nobleman Alfredo meet, it does not take them long to give in to love. Their whirlwind romance takes them from the bustling social salons of Paris into the quiet French countryside. She leaves a life of luster and riches behind. He angers his father by living in sin with an impure woman. After a visit by Alfredos father, Violetta realizes, that them being together is destroying Alfredo’s life and his family’s reputation. She returns to her former life and is confronted by an angry Alfredo, who thinks she has used him. Some time passes by, and Violetta is on her deathbed. Tuberculosis has struck her down. Poor and alone, she awaits death. When Alfredo learns the reason why Violetta left him and that she is dying, he comes to her. They plan to leave Paris, but there is no time left.

After Alexandre Dumas’ The Lady of the Camellias Verdi composed an opera full of undying melodies, beginning with the famous drinking song “Libiamo ne ‘liete calici” via Violettas heart-wrenching aria “Estrano…Af fors’e lui” to Violetta and Alfredo’s hopeful, yet sad Duetto “Parigi, o cara”. It is no wonder, that La Traviata is one of the most played operas.

La Traviata

Olavinlinna

Claudio Tolcachir and Cristiana Morganti have come together to write and bring to life a story that begins with autobiographical reflections and insights, but is also inspired by the stories of classical theater characters, archetypes of the female condition within the family and society.

The forest

Teatro Biondo Stabile

No use beating around the bush: Mascagni’s operas following Cavalleria rusticana all different from one another have been overshadowed by the fame of the first. A fate in many ways unjust given their musical quality. Iris is one of these hidden gems: first performed in 1898 it is the first example of an Italian opera set in Japan and anticipates some ideas that would soon appear in Madama Butterfly (moreover with the same librettist Luigi Illica). But unlike Puccini’s Mascagni’s Japan is idealized and completely detached from reality as befits a symbolist drama: in an idyllic place among flowers bamboo and streams two agents of evil lie in wait. The victim is a young girl whom Illica and Mascagni follow with masterful skill through the tortuous paths of her mind where dreams and memories of childhood collide with the horror of the world the abduction for the purpose of sexual abuse and finally the agony on the mysterious boundary between life and death. Their creation explores an intimate side of femininity in this case transfigured in a symbolic key.

Nika Campisi

Events

Upcoming events

Oct 13 - Nov 21, 2026

Cavalleria rusticana · Teatro Regio Torino

Oct 31 - Nov 8, 2026

The forest · Teatro Biondo

5 - 18 Nov, 2026

Iris · Teatro Regio Torino

Past events

Oct 13 - Nov 21, 2026

Cavalleria rusticana · Teatro Regio Torino

27 - 31 Jul, 2026

La Traviata · Savonlinna Opera Festival

About

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