Cavalleria rusticana of "The Godfather Part III", which also featured a performance of the opera as a key part of the film's climax. Cavalleria rusticana Cavalleria rusticana (; Italian for "rustic chivalry") is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from an 1880 and subsequent play by Giovanni Verga. Considered one of the classic "verismo" operas, it premiered on 17 May 1890 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Since 1893, it has often been performed in a so-called "Cav/Pag" double-bill with "Pagliacci" by Ruggero Leoncavallo. In July 1888 the Milanese
Mala Pasqua! his attention to composing his first opera, "Fatma", an opera-ballet in four acts. However, he set the project aside in 1888 when the music publisher Sonzogno announced a competition for one-act operas, open to all young Italian composers who had not yet had an opera performed on stage. The three winners (selected by a jury of prominent critics and composers) would be staged in Rome at Sonzogno's expense. Gastaldon decided to enter with an opera based on "Cavalleria rusticana". His librettist, Giovanni Domenico Bartocci-Fontana, a lawyer by training and a poet by inclination, wrote to Verga asking permission to adapt