Join us at the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts (1301 5th St, Coralville, IA) for performances of L’amico Fritz at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 13, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 15. Tickets are available through the Hancher box office, hancher.uiowa.edu or 1-800-HANCHER.

L’amico Fritz (1891) is the second opera of composer Pietro Mascagni. He had burst onto the operatic scene the year before with Cavalleria rusticana, the one-act opera which many consider to be the first verismo opera. (Verismo is the Italian literary and artistic movement which, influenced by the French naturalist and realist authors, seeks to portray the world with greater realism and concentrates on the lives of common people, as opposed to the nobility or mythological deities.)