[1] In July 1888 the Milanese music publisher Edoardo Sonzogno announced a competition open to all young Italian composers who had not yet had an opera performed on stage.

They were invited to submit a one-act opera which would be judged by a jury of five prominent Italian critics and composers.

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 at the Italian Royal Naval Academy in Livorno, 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.

[2] In all, 73 operas were submitted, and on 5 March 1890, the judges selected the final three: Niccola Spinelli's Labilia, Vincenzo Ferroni [it]'s Rudello, and Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana.

[4] In the 1907 Sonzogno competition, Domenico Monleone submitted an opera based on the story, and likewise called Cavalleria rusticana.

Sonzogno, wishing to protect the lucrative property which Mascagni's version had become, took legal action and successfully had Monleone's opera banned from performance in Italy.

Following Stagno's rendition of the Siciliana behind the curtain, the audience leapt to their feet with a thunderous applause not heard for many years.

Apart from Cavalleria rusticana, only Iris and L'amico Fritz have remained in the standard repertory, with Isabeau and Il piccolo Marat on the fringes of the Italian repertoire.

[8] In 1890, following its run of sold-out performances at the Teatro Costanzi, the opera was produced throughout Italy and in Berlin.

Notably, Louis Armstrong performed and memorized the trumpet solo, coming out of the pit and mounting the stage to play it.

[11] Before the action takes place, the young villager Turiddu returns from military service to find out that his fiancée Lola had married the carter[14] Alfio while he was away.

The villagers move about the square, singing of the beautiful spring day, "Gli aranci olezzano sui verdi margini" (literally, "Oranges smell good on the green edges," rendered as "The air is sweet with orange blossoms" in the English libretto) and a hymn to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Santuzza, having slept with Turiddu and suspecting that he has betrayed her for Lola, is distraught and approaches Lucia as she comes out of her house.

Santuzza exclaims, "Voi lo sapete" ("You well know") and tells Lucia the story of her seduction by Turiddu and his affair with Lola.

Following Sicilian custom, the two men embrace, and Turiddu, in a token of acceptance, bites Alfio's ear, drawing blood which signifies a fight to the death.

Mascagni calls for a standard-sized orchestra consisting of 2 flutes, 2 piccolos, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (triangle, cymbals, bass drum, side drum, tamtam, tubular bells), 2 harps, organ and strings.

In addition to the original Italian, recordings of the work in the English, French, German, and Hungarian languages have been released.

The performance by the La Scala orchestra and chorus with Lina Bruna Rasa as Santuzza and Beniamino Gigli as Turiddu also has a spoken introduction by Mascagni.

[18] A double-bill performance of Cavalleria and Pagliacci was transmitted as the first broadcast by New York City's Metropolitan Opera on 11 December 1910.

But public receivers had been set up in several well-advertised locations in New York City, and people could catch at least an inkling of the music on earphones.

"[20]In Los Angeles, an "Italian Night" concert was heard live "in its entirety" on May 6, 1930, as the third program of the Adohr opera series over radio station KFI, featuring "A distinguished cast ... headed by Lisa Roma, noted lyric soprano ... Music lovers should not fail to tune in.

"[21] A notable use of the Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana in the United States was as the theme for a regular radio broadcast, Symphony of the Rockies, which featured "a small string group playing light classical music" in the 1930s and 1940s over Denver radio station KOA, then owned and operated by the NBC network.