Cavalleria rusticana on stage. They were invited to submit a one-act opera which would be judged by a jury of five prominent Italian critics and composers. The best three would be staged in Rome at Sonzogno's expense. Mascagni heard about the competition only two months before the closing date and asked his friend Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, a poet and professor of literature at the Italian Royal Naval Academy in Livorno, to provide a libretto. Targioni-Tozzetti chose "Cavalleria rusticana", a popular short story (and play) by Giovanni Verga, as the basis for the opera. He and his colleague Guido Menasci set about composing the
Luis Lima led by Bernard Haitink, and "Carmen" with Maria Ewing, Leontina Vaduva, and Gino Quilico, conducted by Zubin Mehta. Luis Lima Luis Lima (born 12 September 1948 in Córdoba, Argentina) is an Argentine operatic tenor, who studied in Buenos Aires under Carlos Guichandut and in Sicily under Gina Cigna. He made his opera debut in 1974, in Lisbon, in "Cavalleria rusticana", and since then sang in seventy-seven performances at the Metropolitan Opera (from 1977 to 2001) in nine different roles, starting with Alfredo Germont in "La traviata". He has also sung with the New York City Opera (1978–79, debuting in "Madama