To bring audiences closer to the two masterpieces that make up the lyrical diptych La voix humaine and Cavalleria rusticana, the LAC is offering a film festival in collaboration with Lugano's Cinema IRIDE. An opportunity to explore, through the language of cinema, the universal themes of love, loneliness and abandonment that run through the two operas.

The second event of the festival is dedicated to Cavalleria rusticana, a famous opera by Pietro Mascagni based on the novella by Giovanni Verga. The opera, a symbol of Italian verismo, tells a tale of extreme passions, jealousy and revenge, set in an archaic Sicily deeply tied to codes of honor and tradition.
Offering an intense and cinematically refined transposition is Franco Zeffirelli, who in 1982 signed a television version of extraordinary visual and dramatic power, made in collaboration with RAI and the Metropolitan Opera of New York. Shot in Sicily, the film reprises the La Scala production of that same year, paired with Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, and features a cast of internationally renowned artists: Plácido Domingo as Turiddu, Elena Obraztsova as Santuzza, and Renato Bruson as Alfio.
Zeffirelli's direction is distinguished by his ability to combine the emotional intensity of the music-the score is conducted by Georges Prêtre with the Chorus and Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan-with a vibrant visual realism charged with pathos. The Tuscan director, a master in building grandiose images and directing melodrama, restores all the rawness and humanity of the story, enhancing the emotional fabric of the opera through an evocative use of light, faces and Sicilian landscapes. The cinematic dimension does not attenuate but rather enhances the tragic tension of the work, transporting the viewer to the beating heart of a peasant community where every look, every gesture, is charged with meaning.

The screening is preceded by an in-depth discussion with journalist and film critic Lorenzo Buccella.