Cavalleria rusticana it performed at the Teatro Costanzi, where it premiered on 9 April 1890. In the 1907 Sonzogno competition, Domenico Monleone submitted an opera based on the story, and likewise called "Cavalleria rusticana". The opera was not successful in the competition, but premiered later that year in Amsterdam and went on to a successful tour throughout Europe, ending in Turin. 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. Monleone changed the opera ‘beyond recognition’, setting the music to a new libretto. In this form
Bronx Opera House on stage in Pagliacci was tied by its keeper to a car parked in front of the theater. The Aborn Company was putting on Cavalleria Rusticana after Pagliacci and the keeper whose sympathies were divided between mules and music thought to slip back in the theater and hear an aria or two. When the keeper came out, the red car was gone and so was Beppo the donkey, a ten years veteran of the stage. Common Clay breaks the house record on September 4 (Labor Day) drawing $9,697. John Barrymore is back on the stage of the Bronx Opera House