"We are verist by design". Galli, Mascagni and the genesis of Cavalleria rusticana

Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana is one of the most successful of Italian operas, recognised also as having launched the stylistic movement of verismo in music. Other famous works were also part of this movement, such as Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. The artistic success of Mascagni’s opera is principally due to the use of elements of local colour grounded in the deprived social setting of the plot, in both the dramatic elements, such as characters from rural Sicily, and in the music, such as the use of traditional forms. Bizet’s Carmen served as a model for these techniques. This article demonstrates that Mascagni’s use of specific dramatic and musical devices in Cavalleria rusticana was not a chance event. It was also no coincidence that Mascagni wrote the work specifically for a competition organised by the publisher Sonzogno: the competition that launched the masterpiece in 1890. The thesis that the work was composed ‘by design’ is supported by the reconstruction of the critical debate on verismo in music that emerged in Italy over those years, in which the figure of Amintore Galli appears central, and by the examination of letters written by Mascagni while he was composing the opera.