Turiddu, a young villager, is the son of Lucia, and the lover of Lola, (who is the wife of Alfio; having married the latter during Turiddu's prolonged absence in military service). Turiddu wins the affections of Santuzza, whom he wrongs; while, in the meantime, he is intimate with Lola. On Easter morning, (the opening of the opera), Alfio is incidentally informed, by Santuzza, of his wife's unfaithful actions. He challenges Turiddu (biting the ear, as was the rustic Sicilian custom). Turiddu, though regretting his past evil course, accepts the challenge and is killed by Alfio.

The first full-length study of the last great era of Italian opera

Follow Leoncavallo's Italian along with English with this line by line translation of the original Pagliacci libretto. The line by line translation is literal, enabling the reader to understand the exact meaning of the words being sung, which is what the opera goer wants. This is a must for any lover of Leoncavallo's great classic,

An illustrated introduction to twenty-six operas.

The first systematic attempt to focus on the instrumental role of silent cinema in early twentieth-century conceptualizations of the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East. It is located at the intersection of film studies, classics, Bible studies and cultural studies.

(Amadeus). Opera's most enduring tragic double bill of verismo masterpieces, Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci share many common features, most noticeably their direct language, plot simplicity, common-folk characters, and themes of adultery, betrayal, revenge, and murder. Written within two years of each other, and both set in villages in southern Italy, they feature dramatic confrontations, turbulent emotions, and gritty realism. Cavalleria rusticana takes place on Easter in a Sicilian village, where Turiddu, after returning from the army to find his beloved Lola married to the carter Alfio, found solace with the peasant girl Santuzza but ultimately betrayed her and ruined her reputation. When Turiddu goes back to Lola, Santuzza seeks revenge, with tragic results. In Pagliacci , a troupe of traveling commedia dell'arte players is torn apart when its leader, Canio, discovers that his wife, Nedda, has taken a lover. In the ensuing "play within a play," the actors struggle to go on with their performance as the line between theater and reality collapses, leading to an explosive climax.

In 1887 Gustav Mahler (1860 1911) came upon what would be for him a great treasure: "Des Knaben Wunderhorn: alte deutsche Lieder" (The Youth's Miraculous Horn: Old German Songs), an anthology of more than 700 folk songs and poems (named for the first piece in the collection) that had been published in the early 1800s by the German poets Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano. For the next 14 years Mahler made use of this anthology for all but one of his song texts. The first 10 of these 15 celebrated songs come together here both in the original German and in English translations: "Der Schildwache Nachtleid" (The sentinel's nightsong), "Verlone Muh'"(Labor lost), "Trost im Ungluck" (Solace in sorrow), "Wer had dies Liedel erdacht?" (Up there on the hill), "Das irdische Leben" (Earthly life), "Lied des Verfolgten im Turm" (Song of the persecuted man in the tower), "Wo die Schonen Trompeten blasen" (Where the beautiful trumpets blow), "Lob des hohen Verstandes" (In praise of lofty intelligence), "Rheinlegendchen" (little legend of the Rhine), and "Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt" (Antonius of Padua's fish sermon). This volume, rich in exceptional music reprinted from authoritative sources, is sure to delight Mahler devotees as well as all lovers of art songs."