About the work
Iris is a three-act opera by Pietro Mascagni to a libretto by Luigi Illica, their first collaboration. The story draws on a Japanese legend, set in an imaginatively exoticised Japan. It was premiered on 22 November 1898 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, with the composer himself conducting.
Plot
The naive Iris is abducted from her home by the wealthy Osaka, who is fascinated by her purity, and taken to a brothel that she mistakes for a palace. When her blind father finds her there and publicly disowns her, believing her fallen, Iris throws herself in despair into a sewer. As she dies, she glimpses a vision of peace in the rising sun while sunflowers grow from her grave.
Cultural significance
With its exoticised image of Japan, Iris is an early instance of Japonisme in Italian opera, preceding Puccini's Madama Butterfly by six years. Its prelude, the Hymn to the Sun, is still often performed as a stand-alone concert piece.