Cavalleria Rusticana
The romanticisation of Sicily
If you are reading this, then it is safe to assume you love Sicily and all things Sicilian, and as it is Easter, then you need to watch this: the Easter hymn from the opera Cavalleria Rusticana, by Pietro Mascagni, filmed by Franco Zeffirelli.
It is a most wonderful piece of theatre, and it packs a powerful emotional punch, which is the whole point of opera, I suppose. Zeffirelli evokes Catholicism as it should be – kneeling peasants, beautiful young women crossing themselves and clouds, absolute clouds, of incense – Catholicism as it should be, but sadly has never (yet) been.
Zeffirelli takes a liberty in that he gives us a Good Friday procession on Easter Sunday morning, preceded by the Regina Caeli and followed by the procession of the statue of the Risen Christ, which is a real liturgical hodgepodge. But never mind, it makes for stunning filming. Zeffirelli, who was Florentine, gives us a beautiful and idealised picture of Sicilian rusticity, and if any land deserves to be flattered for its beauty, that land is Sicily.
Mascagni, who wrote the opera, was a native of Livorno. He is a rather sad character in that he wrote one great hit and never replicated that success, despite trying to many times. Poor man. He lived on another fifty years into the 1940’s, in the Grand Hotel on Via del Corso, Rome. Like Zeffirelli after him, he too felt the pull of the south, the place of huge raw emotion, of violent passion, which is the subject of his opera.
What his opera is not about is the Mafia. Modern productions have tended to try and pretend that it is, but it is not. True, Turiddu our hero bites Alfio on the ear to challenge him to a duel, in accordance with Sicilian tradition, but these two men are quarrelling over a girl, Alfio’s wife; it is not a quarrel about power. Moreover, the village where the action takes place is somewhere near Francofonte, which is in the east of Sicily and not known for Mafia activity. It is a pity that people want to make this a story about the Mafia when it is a perfectly exciting story already.
The opera is based on a short story by the Sicilian writer Giovanni Verga (1840-1922) who, as far as I can tell, had no real interest in the Mafia. He was, incidentally, from Catania. When he published Cavalleria Rusticana, in the year 1880, the Mafia would have been in its infancy and confined to Palermo and its environs.
That other great Sicilian work, the masterpiece The Leopard, (Il Gattopardo), by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, has also been deformed, in my opinion, by the assumption that don Calogero the mayor of Donnafugata is a Mafioso. But there is nothing in the text to support this at all. The book was published in 1958, but deals with the 1860’s, when the Mafia had barely been founded. Again, there is enough in Il Gattopardo to make it unnecessary to try and spice it up in this way. There is indeed so much in the book, that I will talk about that another time.
Literary geniuses steer clear of the Mafia, and leave it to those who write merely to entertain. In the meantime, please enjoy the video of Cavalleria Rusticana.