Signor Sonzogno helped me out of my embarrassment with a few hundred francs.
Those beautiful days of fear and hope, of discouragement and confidence, are as vividly before my eyes as if they were now.

I see again the Constanzi Theatre, half filled; I see how, after the last excited measures of the orchestra, they all raise their arms and gesticulate, as if they were threatening me; and in my soul there awakens an echo of that cry of approval which almost prostrated me.

The effect made upon me was so powerful that at the second representation I had to request them to turn down the footlights in case I should be called out; for the blinding light seemed a hell to me, like a fiery abyss that threatened to engulf me.
It is a rude little tale which Giovanni Verga wrote and which supplied the librettists, G.Targioni-Tozzetti and G.Menasci, with the plot of Mascagni's opera.

Sententious as the opera seems, it is yet puffed out, padded, and bedizened with unessential ornament compared with the story.

This has the simplicity and directness of a folk-tale or folk-song, and much of its characteristic color and strength were lost in fitting it out for music.