Giovanni Verga in the Fields"), including ""Fantasticheria"" ("Daydreaming"), ""La lupa"" ("The She-wolf"), ""Jeli il pastore"" ("Jeli the Shepherd"), ""Pentolaccia"" ("The Plaything"), and "Rosso Malpelo", most of which were about rural Sicily, came out. It also included ""Cavalleria rusticana"" ("Rustic Chivalry"), which he adapted for the theatre and later formed the basis for several opera librettos including Mascagni's "Cavalleria rusticana" and Gastaldon's "Mala Pasqua!". Verga's short story, ""Malaria"", was one of the first literary depictions of the disease malaria. He then embarked on a projected series of five novels, but only completed two, "I Malavoglia" and "Mastro-don Gesualdo" (1889), the second of which
Cavalleria rusticana in Chicago on 30 September 1891. The opera premiered in New York on 1 October 1891, with two rival performances on the same day: an afternoon performance at the Casino, directed by Rudolph Aronson, and an evening performance at the Lenox Lyceum, directed by Oscar Hammerstein. The opera received its first performance at the Metropolitan Opera on 30 December 1891 in a double bill with a fragment of Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice", and has since received over 700 performances there. Before the action takes place, the young villager Turiddu had returned from military service to find that his fiancée Lola