CHAPTER IX.
"CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA" Having neither the patience nor the inclination to paraphrase a comment on Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" which I wrote years ago when the opera was comparatively new, and as it appears to me to contain a just estimate and criticism of the work and the school of which it and "Pagliacci" remain the foremost exemplars, I quote from my book, "Chapters of Opera" [Footnote: "Chapters of Opera," by H.E.Krehbiel, p.223] "Seventeen years ago 'Cavalleria Rusticana' had no perspective.
Now, though but a small portion of its progeny has been brought to our notice, we nevertheless look at it through a vista which looks like a valley of moral and physical death through which there flows a sluggish stream thick with filth and red with blood.

Strangely enough, in spite of the consequences which have followed it, the fierce little drama retains its old potency.

It still speaks with a voice which sounds like the voice of truth.

Its music still makes the nerves tingle, and carries our feelings unresistingly on its turbulent current.

But the stage-picture is less sanguinary than it looked in the beginning.