ale. The words: Hanno ammazzato
compare Turiddu! (They have killed Neighbor Turiddu!) were forever
ringing in my ears. I needed a few mighty orchestral chords to give
characteristic form to the musical phrase and achieve an impressive
close. How it happened I don't know, but one morning, as I was trudging
along the road to give my lessons at Canosa, the idea came to me like a
stroke of lightning, and I had found my chords. They were those seventh
chords, which I conscientiously set down in my manuscript.

Thus I began my opera at the end. When I received the first chorus of
my libretto by post (I composed the Siciliano in the prelude later) I
said in great good humor to my wife:

"To-day we must make a large expenditure."

"What for?"

"An alarm clock."

"Why?"

"To wake me up before dawn so that I may begin to write on 'Cavalleria
rusticana.'"

The expenditure caused a dubious change in the monthly budget, but it
was willingly allowed. We went out together, and after a good deal of
bargaining spent nine lire. I am sure that I can find the clock, all
safe and sound, in Cerignola. I wound it up the evening we bought it,
but it was destined to be of no service to me, for in that night a son,
the first of a row of them, was born to me. In spite of this I carried
out my determination, and in the morning began to write the first
chorus of "Cavalleria." I came to Rome in February, 1890, in order to
permit the jury to hear my opera; they decided that it was worthy of
performance. Returning to Cerignola in a state of the greatest
excitement, I noticed that I did not have a penny in my pocket for the
return trip to Rome when my opera was to be rehearsed. 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