When librettist Leopoldo Mareneo approached Francesco Cilea with his L'Arlesiana libretto, the composer had not worked on an opera for over five years. Instead, he had been pouring his efforts into his position as a professor of piano in Naples and teacher of counterpoint at the Reale Instituto Musicale in Florence. From that moment on, Cilea fell into a pattern of composing an opera every five years. Unlike his later Adriana Lecouvreur, L'Arlesiana has never been successful outside Italy. It is a verismo opera, especially in its musical identification of its pastoral setting, but it is not innovative within that style. It is not quite popular music, but also not very sophisticated. Although it features a few French folk melodies (appropriate for its location, Provence) it does not reach back in time in search of a style. The voice of L'Arlesiana is fluid and clear, born in the simple, expressive, Italian melodic tradition Cilea inherited.

Cilea recognized the weaknesses of L'Arlesiana. In 1898, he condensed the original four acts to three and in 1910 he added the excellent aria for Rosa Mamai, "Esser madre è un inferno," and made further changes. In 1937, he attached a new prelude. Today, most critics attribute its weak effect to the mediocre libretto, which tells the tale of a family of Provençal farmers, one of whom falls in love with an Arles woman, whom he discovers to have been another man's mistress. Despite the love of another woman, the man is driven insane by jealousy and commits suicide.

Cilea's L'Arlesiana is often described as plebian and "folk-like," the very opposite of his Adriana Lecouvreur of 1902, which is blatantly sophisticated and mannered and the only one of Cilea's works performed today. From L'Arlesiana we occasionally hear the aria, "E la solita storia del pastore," adored by tenors wishing to display their dynamic range and dramatic capabilities. This aria is occasionally referred to as the "Lamento di Federico." The success of the opera on its opening night had more to do with Caruso's interpretation of this aria than with the Cilea's score and Mareneo's libretto. What is most memorable about Cilea's L'Arlesiana are several emotional, powerful arias. To the two already mentioned Baldassarre's "Come due tizzi" in the first act must be added.

It was at the premiere of Cilea's L'Arlesiana that Enrico Caruso, in the part of Federico, had his first great success. Cilea himself had chosen the young tenor for the part and coached him before the first performance, on November 27, 1897, at the Teatro Lirico in Milan. The success of L'Arlesiana prompted the publisher Sonzogno to place high hopes on the 31-year-old Cilea.

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