Luigi Illica (1857-1919) was contracted in 1894 to create a libretto for the composer Alberto Franchetti focusing on the Japanese legend of the flower lover. Franchetti changed his mind about the opera, and after three years, Illica offered the book to Mascagni, who agreed to take on the project if it were to be published by Giulio Ricordi, the man who foolishly had turned down Cavalleria rusticana a few years earlier.

The success of Cavalleria weighed heavily upon Mascagni, who tried to remove himself from the style of his most popular offspring. In Iris he found the opportunity to expand his orchestral palette and make the most of the exotic imagery afforded by Illica's libretto, which demonstrates a genuine knowledge of Japan. Beginning in June 1896, Mascagni worked very slowly and deliberately on the score. He wrote that he had never before been so possessed by a work, and that he intended to compose "real music, not...some buffoonery of oddities and scenes over a contrabassoon or bass pedal." It quickly became his most widely accepted work aside from Cavalleria, playing at La Scala in Milan, with slight revisions, two months after its premiere in Rome on November 22, 1898. By 1902 the opera had been given throughout Europe and South America and staged in New York, under Mascagni's baton.

Musically, Iris is breathtaking. Mascagni's orchestration, including gongs, celesta, glockenspiel, and chimes, made a strong impression on Puccini, as you can hear in Madama Butterfly. Iris opens with an impressive prologue depicting the sunrise that betrays the influence of Wagner in the gradually rising thematic material in the orchestra, culminating in a moving choral hymn to the sun. Osaka's serenade in Act One, "Apri la tua finestra," is a true test of vocal mastery in its high tessitura and key changes. Aside from Iris' "Ho fatto un triste sogno," it is the best-known number from the opera. Music for all-female ensembles predominates, two examples of which are the chorus of laundresses, who sing while Iris tends to her garden in the first act, and the chilling, non-texted passages for the geisha at the beginning of the second act. Throughout the opera, Mascagni creates an "exotic" atmosphere his contemporaries would have associated with Japan. A harp conveys the delicate sound of the samisen Iris plays in Act Two while modal passages in the strings sound during the puppet show in Act One. Mascagni flavors the score with whole-tone scales, an exoticism that is a fundamental characteristic of Debussy's music, also influenced by Eastern sounds.

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