In the Heat of the Sun accepted to Beijing Film Academy) and became successful actors. The Chinese version of the Soviet song "Moscow Nights" features prominently in the film, as does Pietro Mascagni's music for his opera "Cavalleria Rusticana". The film was commercially successful in China. In contrast to the Cultural Revolution-set films of Chinese 5th-generation filmmakers (Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang) which put the era into a larger historical setting, "In The Heat Of the Sun" is mellow and dream-like, portraying memories of that era with somewhat positive and personal resonances. It also acknowledges, as the narrator recalls, that he might have misremembered parts
Mala Pasqua! his attention to composing his first opera, "Fatma", an opera-ballet in four acts. However, he set the project aside in 1888 when the music publisher Sonzogno announced a competition for one-act operas, open to all young Italian composers who had not yet had an opera performed on stage. The three winners (selected by a jury of prominent critics and composers) would be staged in Rome at Sonzogno's expense. Gastaldon decided to enter with an opera based on "Cavalleria rusticana". His librettist, Giovanni Domenico Bartocci-Fontana, a lawyer by training and a poet by inclination, wrote to Verga asking permission to adapt