100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses by Henry W. Simon Page A

getting ready to watch the great Escamillo perform in the arena at Seville. A large and impressive parade of dignitaries enters the theater—all of it duly described by the chorus. Finally, in comes the toreador himself,and on his arm is Carmen, dressed in such finery as only a successful bullfighter could afford. They sing a brief and rather banal love duet, and then Escamillo disappears into the theater, everyone except Carmen following him. She is warned by her friends, Frasquita and Mercédès, that Don José has been lurking about. Defiantly she remains outside alone, saying she does not fear him.
    Then Don José comes on, tattered and ragged, a pitiful contrast to Carmen in her holiday best. Pitifully he pleads to be taken back, but she shows him only contempt. The more pressingly he pleads, the more contempt she shows; and finally she throws the ring he had given her directly in his face. Off-stage the chorus is cheering the toreador, José’s successful rival. Maddened by this and by Carmen’s behavior, he threatens her with his knife. Desperately she attempts to rush past him into the theater; but just as the crowd shouts that Escamillo is victorious, he plunges the knife into his lost beloved. The crowd pours out, while Don José, brokenly cries: “You can arrest me … Oh, my Carmen!”

CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA
    (Rustic Chivalry)
    Opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni with
libretto by Guido Menasci and Giovanni
Targioni-Tozzetti based on a play by Giovanni
Verga which is in turn based on his own prose
tale of the same title
SANTUZZA , a village girl
Soprano
TURIDDU , a young soldier
Tenor
MAMMA LUCIA , his mother
Contralto
ALFIO , the village teamster
Baritone
LOLA , his wife
Mezzo-soprano
    Time: an Easter Day in the late 19th century
    Place: a village in Sicily
    First performance at Rome, May 17, 1890
        The title Cavalleria rusticana is usually translated as Rustic Chivalry . This is half ironic, as the behavior of most of the characters is anything but chivalrous. In fact, as Giovanni Verga originally wrote the story, it is downright barbarous—far more violent than in Mascagni’s opera.
    It is this quality—stark, naked passion, expressed in unabashed violence—that may partly account for the immediate success of the work. It is essentially, of course, a literary quality. Verga’s novelette is regarded as a minor literary classic, and Duse and other actresses used to have great success with the tale given as a spoken drama. It was one of the first and most prominent successes, in both literature and music, of the school of verismo —“the theory that in art and literaturethe ugly and vulgar have their place on the grounds of truth and aesthetic value,” to quote Webster.
    The little work was the first of three winners in a prize contest held by the publisher Sonzogno, and it catapulted its completely unknown composer, then aged twenty-seven, into overnight fame. It was not a local fame. Even in New York there was a bitter fight for its premiere performance. Oscar Hammerstein, years before he built his great Manhattan Opera House, paid $3000 for the rights only to be anticipated by a rival manager named Aronson, who gave a so-called “public rehearsal” of the work on the afternoon of October 1, 1891. Hammerstein’s performance took place the same evening. That was less than eighteen months after its Roman premiere. But before that all Italy had heard it, not to mention Stockholm, Madrid, Budapest, Hamburg, Prague, Buenos Aires, Moscow, Vienna, Bucharest, Philadelphia, Rio de Janeiro, Copenhagen, and Chicago, in the order named.
    For well over half a century Mascagni lived on the fame and royalties won by this little masterpiece. He never composed another opera remotely approaching the success of Cavalleria , but he died in 1945 full of fame and honors.
    PRELUDE
    The story takes place in a Sicilian village at the end of the last century. The time is Easter Sunday, and the prelude begins with