This performance won the Emmy Award (1985)

Based on a production of these two seemingly inseparable operas at La Scala Milan from 1981, both movies were taped in 1982

For Pagliacci, director Franco Zeffirelli was honoured with an Emmy as best director in the category of classical music programming in 1985

Cavalleria Rusticana was filmed in the Sicilian village of Vizzini, the home town of writer Giovanni Verga on whose original story the opera is based

Both productions feature the brilliant Plácido Domingo at the very height of his vocal abilities – Teresa Stratas gives a captivating performance as his counterpart in Pagliacci