Pietro Mascagni

Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945) was born in Livorno in Tuscany and began his musical studies there at thirteen. He went on to the Milan Conservatory but left without finishing his studies to tour as a conductor with operetta companies, and then settled as a music teacher in the small town of Cerignola in Apulia. In 1889 he entered the Milan publisher Sonzogno’s competition for one-act operas with Cavalleria rusticana, which won; its premiere in Rome in May 1890 made him internationally famous at the age of twenty-six and launched the verismo movement in Italian opera. He wrote fifteen operas in all, among them L’amico Fritz and Iris, and had a long career as a conductor, but none of his later works matched the success of his first.