Pietro Mascagni

Pietro Mascagni's opera recorded in 2009. Conductor Stefano Ranzani leads the orchestra and chorus of the Zurich Opera House, with performances by Argentinian tenor Jose Cura and soprano Pauletta Marrocu.

Plácido Domingo accomplishes the rare feat of singing both leads on the same night at the Met in 1978 on opera's most popular double-bill.

In Pietro Mascagni's tragic opera, a soldier returns home from war to reclaim his former fiancée, only to find that she's married someone else in his absence, leading to jealousy, betrayal, and murder.

Following the runaway success of Cavalleria rusticana in 1890 at the age of 27, Mascagni did not rest on his laurels. In just a few years, he completed five operas, including Iris, premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome in 1898. Mascagni might well have taken for his own Puccini's famous quip, “Against everything and everyone, make a work from melody”. And in Iris it is melodic invention which shows the composer's genius at its greatest. A melody by Mascagni is usually long, smooth and Italian-sounding; and Iris is full-on melody all the way, particularly in such crowd-pleasers as Jor's Serenade, the “Hymn of the Sun” or the duet in Act II “Oh come al tuo sottile corpo s'aggira”, which includes the famous “Piovra”. Furtheremore, with a little effort listeners can identify what would be the various musical “numbers”. In Iris, Mascagni is almost obsessively attentive to recitative and his exemplary flexibility at times recalls the sublime "conversation style" "invented" by Puccini.