Zanetto translation by Emilio Praga of François Coppée's play "Le passant" (The passer-by) in which the young Sarah Bernhardt had won fame in the "en travesti" role of Zanetto. "Zanetto" represented a return by Mascagni to the one-act format of his first opera "Cavalleria rusticana", which had premiered in 1890. However, the Renaissance setting of "Zanetto" was a far cry from the gritty contemporary story he used for "Cavalleria rusticana", the work that made him famous. By 1893, Mascagni was simultaneously working on three operas: "Vistilia", based on a novel by Rocco de Zerbi set in ancient Rome; "Guglielmo Ratcliff", 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