[[Listen]]
A highly dramatic phrase, already heard in the prelude, occurs at "La tua Santuzza piange e t'implora" (Lo! here thy Santuzza, weeping, implores thee).
Turiddu repulses her. She clings to him. He loosens her hold and casts her from him to the ground. When she rises, he has followed Lola into the church.
But the avenger is nigh. Before Santuzza has time to think, Alfio comes upon the scene. He is looking for Lola. To him in the fewest possible words, and in the white voice of suppressed passion, Santuzza tells him that his wife has been unfaithful with Turiddu. In the brevity of its recitatives, the tense summing up in melody of each dramatic situation as it develops in the inexorably swift unfolding of the tragic story, lies the strength of "Cavalleria Rusticana."
Santuzza and Alfio leave. The square is empty. But the action goes on in the orchestra. For the intermezzo—the famous intermezzo—which follows, recapitulates, in its forty-eight bars, what has gone before, and foreshadows the tragedy that is impending. There is no restating here of leading motives. The effect is accomplished by means of terse, vibrant melodic progression. It is melody and yet it is drama. Therein lies its merit. For no piece of serious music can achieve the world-wide popularity of this intermezzo and not possess merit.
[[Listen]]
Mr. Krehbiel, in A Second Book of Operas, gives an instance of its unexampled appeal to the multitude. A burlesque on this opera was staged in Vienna. The author of the burlesque thought it would be a great joke to have the intermezzo played on a hand-organ. Up to that point the audience had been hilarious. But with the first wheezy tone of the grinder the people settled down to silent attention, and, when the end came, burst into applause. Even the hand-organ could not rob the intermezzo of its charm for the public!
What is to follow in the opera is quickly accomplished. The people come out of church. Turiddu, in high spirits, because he is with Lola and because Santuzza no longer is hanging around to reproach him, invites his friends over to his mother's wineshop. Their glasses are filled. Turiddu dashes off a drinking song, "Viva, il vino spumeggiante" (Hail! the ruby wine now flowing).