On today's date in 1892, at Italy's premiere opera house, La Scala in Milan, Arturo Toscanini conducted the first performance of a new one-act opera by Ruggero Leoncavallo. The opera was titled "Pagliacci," and would rapidly become an international hit, and Leoncavallo's one, undisputed masterpiece.

Leoncavallo's father was an Italian magistrate, and from him the composer heard of a true story: a sordid tale of infidelity and murder that occurred among a troupe of traveling show-biz people—literally a bunch of clowns. The contrast between the painted smiles of the professional entertainers and the murderous private passions they masked appealed to the opera composer's sense of drama. "Pagliacci" was the result—and one of those rare occasions when everything clicked, and the timing was just right.

Two years earlier, Leoncavallo's slightly younger contemporary, Pietro Mascagni, had scored a hit with another one-act opera titled "Cavalleria Rusticana," also dealing with a lower-class murder. The two operas made up a perfect double-bill, and as "Cav and Pag," "Cavallieria Rusticana" and "Pagliacci" became well-nigh inseparable partners for the next 100 years. Their tabloid-like dramatic style was dubbed "verismo," and has proven effective for hundreds of other operas written ever since.

In all, Leoncavallo wrote over a dozen other operas, ranging from Wagnerian epics to comic operettas, but they are rarely if ever revived—and, ironically, the same can be said for Pietro Mascagni.