No use beating around the bush: Mascagni’s operas following Cavalleria rusticana all different from one another have been overshadowed by the fame of the first. A fate in many ways unjust given their musical quality. Iris is one of these hidden gems: first performed in 1898 it is the first example of an Italian opera set in Japan and anticipates some ideas that would soon appear in Madama Butterfly (moreover with the same librettist Luigi Illica). But unlike Puccini’s Mascagni’s Japan is idealized and completely detached from reality as befits a symbolist drama: in an idyllic place among flowers bamboo and streams two agents of evil lie in wait. The victim is a young girl whom Illica and Mascagni follow with masterful skill through the tortuous paths of her mind where dreams and memories of childhood collide with the horror of the world the abduction for the purpose of sexual abuse and finally the agony on the mysterious boundary between life and death. Their creation explores an intimate side of femininity in this case transfigured in a symbolic key. 
It falls to Erika Grimaldi who has already achieved many successes at the Regio and beyond to bring to life the complex character of the mousmé the young Iris; she is joined by the voices of Roberto Frontali Luca Tittoto and Angelo Villari recently acclaimed as Chénier. Daniele Menghini directing and Andrea Battistoni leading the orchestra complete the project on verismo begun together with Cavalleria here embracing a more pronounced openness to European musical languages.