In the backstage, the clowns prepare to get on stage in "I Pagliacci."

"I Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana, passional operas, may be the best examples of this Italian process of using arts, especially music, like vectors of the search of its own soul - personal and national. Both were composed inside of an important cultural-literary movement created in Europa in the second half of 19th century: the Verismo." (Pellegrini)