Pietro Mascagni Pietro Mascagni Pietro Antonio Stefano Mascagni (; 7 December 1863 – 2 August 1945) was an Italian composer most noted for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece "Cavalleria Rusticana" caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the "Verismo" movement in Italian dramatic music. While it was often held that Mascagni, like Leoncavallo, was a "one-opera man" who could never repeat his first success, "L'amico Fritz" and "Iris" have remained in the repertoire in Europe (especially Italy) since their premieres. Mascagni said that at one point, "Iris" was performed in Italy more often than "Cavalleria" (cf.
Paulo Szot studied at Jagiellonian University in Poland. He began singing professionally in 1990 with the National Song & Dance Ensemble "Śląsk". Later, he made his professional opera debut in a production of "Il barbiere di Siviglia" at the Municipal Theatre of São Paulo in 1997. Since then, he has performed with the New York City Opera, the Palm Beach Opera, the Canadian Opera Company, Opéra de Marseille, and Vlaamse Opera, among others, in such operas as "L'elisir d'amore", "La bohème", "Don Giovanni", "Cavalleria rusticana", "Pagliacci", "Carmen", "Così fan tutte", "Le nozze di Figaro" and "Maria Golovin". In March 2010 he made