Giacomo Puccini and the Path the Places of Catarsini - 11

2024 marker the 100th anniversari del Giacomo Puccini Death. The Alfredo Catarsini 1899 Foundation intends to pay homage to the great composer by telling about his villas scattered along the path and providing some intriguing information with a QR code dedicated to him in each totem. Giacomo Puccini was a much-loved figure by Alfredo Catarsini and his family and the painter kept a photo of him at the Atelier in Viareggio.

HIS BIRTHPLACE IN LUCCA

Giacomo Puccini was born on December 22, 1858, at 2 a.m., in the house of San Lorenzo court in Lucca and was baptized the following day with the names of Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria. The names of his predecessors, who had given life to a dynasty of musicians, which began with his great-great-grandfather Giacomo senior, born in Celle in 1712, and which ended with another Giacomo. In the house where he was born lived his parents Albina Magi and Michele, his grandmother Angela Cerù, his sisters Otilia, Tomaide, Nitteti, Iginia, Ramelde, Macrina and Domenico Michele born in 1864, after his father’s death, and the maids Assunta Menconi and Carola Martinelli. Giacomo lived in this house until 1880, when he moved to Milan to continue his studies. But he was always very attached to his birthplace and when, after the success of “Manon Lescaut”, in 1894, the economic situation allowed him to do so, he bought back his father’s house, which had been sold in September 1889.

The Puccini family moved from Celle to Lucca, in the first half of the 18th century. He first lived in via Pozzotorelli, now Vittorio Veneto, and from around 1815, in corte San Lorenzo, after the sudden and premature death of Domenico, Giacomo’s grandfather, as the thirty-seven-year-old widow Angela Cerù wanted to reunite with her family of origin, who lived in the same building.

The house where Giacomo Puccini was born was transformed into a museum in 1979 and restored in 2011. The museum, which is located in the apartment on the second floor, houses many memorabilia including furniture, honors, autographs of youthful compositions such as La Messa a 4 voci (1880) and the Capriccio sinfonico (1883), letters sent and received by Puccini between 1889 and 1915, paintings, photographs, drafts of the librettos of “Tosca”, “La fanciulla del West” and a musical sketch of “La bohème”. Also preserved is the Steinway & Sons piano purchased by Puccini in the spring of 1911 and placed in the house in Milan. At the end of 1921, it was transported to the villa in Viareggio. He composed mainly “Turandot” on this piano. And of “Turandot” the house-museum also preserves the costume worn by the soprano Maria Jeritza at the Metropolitan in New York, in 1926, on the occasion of the American debut of the opera.

Finally, many valuable portraits. Among them those of Giacomo Puccini senior and his wife Angela Piccinini, made by the painter from Lucca Giovanni Domenico Lombardi known as “L’omino”; the portrait of Antonio Puccini, a copy of the original kept at the Civic Bibliographic Musical Museum in Bologna; the portrait of Giacomo Puccini, made on canvas by the painter from Livorno Leonetto Cappiello, with dedication and date “Paris, 11 January 1899”. On the external wall, along the Via di Poggio, there is a commemorative plaque, placed by the city of Lucca. “From a long lineage of musicians/worthy of the living tradition of the homeland/here on 22 December 1858 was born/Giacomo Puccini/who to the new voices of life/accorded witty notes of truth and grace/reaffirming with his candid agile forms/the nationality of art/in his primacy of glory in the world/the city proud of him/on the thirtieth day of his death, 29 December 1924”.

In front of the house-museum, in Piazza Cittadella, stands the bronze monument to Giacomo Puccini, by the sculptor Vito Tongiani, donated to the city by the Industrialists’ Association of Lucca in 1994.

THE OLD HOUSE AND THE PUCCINI FAMILY MUSEUM

The Puccini Museum in Celle dei Puccini, a hamlet in the Municipality of Pescaglia, has been owned by the Lucchesi nel Mondo Association since 1973. It is in the old home of the Puccini family where, in 1712, Giacomo senior was born, the forefather of future generations of Puccinis.

Born in Lucca in 1858, Giacomo spent the summer months here, in the Pedogna Valley of the Serchio Valley, with his parents and sisters, during his childhood. This happened until the premature death of his father Michele, when Albina Magi, Giacomo’s mother, was forced to sell the house and other lands, but the composer maintained, like all his relatives, a very close bond with the small village of Celle where he returned, for the last time, on 26 October 1924, a few days after his departure for Brussels (he died in the Belgian capital on 29 November of the same year), with the regret of not having come more often. The house then returned to being “the house of Puccini” with the help of the Lucchesi nel Mondo Association which transformed it into a house-museum with the precious initial contribution of some relatives of the Maestro who donated memorabilia, photos and family letters. Among the treasures of the collection you can admire the piano on which Puccini composed part of Madama Butterfly, the gramophone received as a gift from Thomas Edison and on which the only existing extract of the Maestro’s voice was recorded, the little dress in which he was baptized and the bed in which he was born as well as a rich collection of autographed letters, records, photographs and documents that retrace the life and successes of the composer.

In the summer, in the small square in front of the Museum, the Lucchesi nel Mondo Association organizes every year for the town and the territory free-entry Puccini events and opera concerts. These events are often joined by photographic, graphic and painting exhibitions for students and artists, screenings and press conferences always on Puccini themes.

In 2023, the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Celle Museum will be celebrated, which has become a Museum of Regional Interest, and the 55th anniversary of the establishment of the Association itself: it will be a year full of multiple and varied events, in Lucca and in the world, which will be joined by the Cammino I luoghi di Catarsini.

PUCCINI’S VILLA IN CHIATRI

Chiatri is a town in the municipality of Lucca about 300 meters above sea level. In 1898, after the successes of “Manon Lescaut” and “La bohème”, Puccini bought the Samminiati villa and completely renovated it. At the time, Chiatri was a small rural village, where a dozen families lived, without a road suitable for vehicles. Puccini invested a lot of money in the villa because the building materials had to be unloaded in Farneta and transported by draft animals along a four-kilometer path. According to the design of the engineer Giuseppe Nottolini, whom Puccini called “Leone”, the villa displays the Tuscan style so appreciated by the composer, with exposed brick facing and marble mullioned windows and a small marble staircase, strongly desired by the Maestro. Inside, a large study room and lounges for conversation, with Art Nouveau furnishings commissioned from the Florentine furniture makers of the Berardi and Tedeschi firm.

For Puccini, the villa represented a place of tranquility where he could work and go on his beloved hunting trips, but he stayed there only a few days, except for a few weeks in the summer of 1908 when he was composing the first act of “Fanciulla del West”, which was performed at the Metropolitan in New York on 10 December 1910.

The opposition of Elvira Bonturi, the composer’s wife, who did not like that place, too isolated and difficult to reach, certainly contributed to the lack of frequentation of Chiatri.

The villa was put up for sale by his son Antonio Puccini and in 1940-41 it was purchased by Giovanni Zammit and Giovanna Scardigli, grandparents of Antonio Parra, a professor at the University of Florence, who enriched this article with his memories.

According to Parra’s story, during the last world war the villa became a refuge for anti-fascist relatives and friends. In the summer of 1944, Alfredo Catarsini also arrived and left traces of his stay in a painting, with which the painter paid his debt for the hospitality received. The painting, which is now in Florence, depicts the donkey, remembered by Parra because it belonged to his family, and a glimpse of the landscape in front of the villa where four roads intersect: the main one led to the school and the church, one to the villa (which Catarsini did not depict in the painting, so as not to expose the guests to the risk of the place being recognized), one led to the shop and the other to the hamlet of Valli Lunghe, where the so-called Capanna was located, which Puccini used to leave his car and go up to Chiatri. The Villa was sold in 1990 and after some events it was bought by Lionel Ceresi, the current owner who, in turn, put it up for sale in 2016. The Villa di Chiatri, as it was then, stands isolated and maintains a particular charm despite its decadence.

PUCCINI AND HIS PASSION FOR CARS AND BOATS

Puccini loved engines, cars, motorboats, motorbikes, sidecars and even bicycles. He would slowly travel on the lake with small boats for his fishing and hunting trips, but also with fast motorboats: In 1895 he bought a Ricochet motorboat from the Cantieri Picchiotti in Viareggio, in 1903 a launch with an American Wolverine engine and in 1912 a 13-metre yacht which he named Cio-Cio-San.

For work he also often travelled on transatlantic ships: in 1905 he went to Montevideo and then to Buenos Aires; in 1907 he embarked for New York and described his journey to his sister Ramelde as follows: «I am writing from my magnificent cabin with bathroom and sitting room. I have 70 electric lamps. It is an enormous steamer, 25,000 tons, 40,000 horsepower, there are living rooms, small living rooms, a winter garden with flowers and real colossal palms. Two restaurants, a large beer hall, gymnasiums […]. There is a band and two small orchestras. Two newspapers are published: one in English and one in German. With Marconi telegraphy you always have news from the whole world. Hot and cold water always. Electric heating. Even the cigarette lighters are electric. There is a trumpet alarm every morning and at meals. Everything is trumpeting! The steamer is always followed by birds, especially seagulls. And to think that we are 2000 miles from the coast. Where do they rest? These poor birds worry me».

In 1910, he returned to New York for the debut of La fanciulla del West, leaving from Southampton on the transatlantic George Washington, and again he told, this time to his niece Albina Franceschini, daughter of Ramelde, «I am accommodated like a prince… fantastic lighting, rare wood furniture, carpets half a palm high, all in good English taste. It is the imperial cabin that costs £8,000 for the outward journey alone! The ship is splendid and very large […]. Today I telegraphed with Marconi to Milan to Elvira and tomorrow I will receive an answer». The return was on the transatlantic Lusitania, later sadly famous for having been sunk by a German submarine in 1915 during the First World War. Another great passion of Puccini was cars, he bought many, changing them often, all of different models that he had driven by expert drivers in his service. He bought his first car in 1901 and it was a De Dion Bouton, in 1902 the Clément Bayard arrived, this is the car with which he had the accident on Mount Quiesa returning from Lucca on the night between 25 and 26 February 1903, in 1906 it was the turn of a Sizaire et Naudin, in 1907 of a La Buire, an Isotta Fraschini arrived in 1909, then some Fiats: the Tipo 1 and the Tipo 5 with electric lighting in 1910-12 and the Fiat 501 in 1919, in 1921 the Lancia Trikappa Limousine and in 1924 the Lancia Lambda cabriolet. It was with this car that he left Viareggio for Pisa where the train was waiting for him that would take him to Brussels to have his throat operated on, at the station a group of friends greeted him warmly. Worried about his situation from the clinic he wrote: I am in serious condition! You can imagine my soul. (…) What Misery! Turandot? Oh! Not having finished this opera saddens me. Will I recover? Will I be able to finish it in time?” Unfortunately, Puccini died on November 29 and the final duet of the opera remained unfinished.

At the premiere of the opera, conducted by Arturo Toscanini and held at La Scala on April 25, 1926, after Liù’s death, Toscanini stopped the music and, turning to the audience, said in a voice broken by emotion: “Here ends the opera, because the maestro is dead”.

THE VILLA LA PIAGGETTA OF THE FRIENDS MARCHESI GINORI LISCI

In the territory of Massarosa in the locality of La Piaggetta, we find the villa of the Marquis Carlo Ginori Lisci, an important place dear to Puccini, preserved by the descendants of the marquis as in the times when Puccini frequented it. The villa was renovated with a red brick facing and white marble profiles in a neo-Gothic-Tuscan style that Puccini liked so much that he wanted a similar one for the villa in Chiatri. The beautiful park lapped with exotic essences the shores of the lake that enters directly under the villa forming a small dock for boats.

Giacomo Puccini became friends with the Marquis Carlo Ginori Lisci, owner of Lake Massaciuccoli and the villa since 1887, and in December 1895 he dedicated to him and his wife Anne Pfister “La bohème” which was performed at the Regio in Turin on 1 February 1896.

In 1899 he also dedicated to Anne the musical poem “Avanti Urania”, composed on verses by Renato Fucini, Urania was the name of the futuristic motorboat owned by the Marquis.

The Marquis had granted Puccini permission to hunt for free on the lake, his favorite prey were especially snipe and coots, which Puccini delivered to his personal cook Isola Nencetti. The composer was a regular visitor to Villa Ginori, even after the death of the Marquises, Anne in 1901 and Carlo in 1906, driven by his affection for Maria Bianca, Carlo and Anne’s daughter, and whom he considered a promising pianist.

THE VILLA OF HIS FRIEND SALVATORE ORLANDO

The neo-Gothic style villa was built in 1869 and was purchased in 1896 by Eng. Salvatore Orlando, from a powerful family of naval entrepreneurs from Livorno, later elected to the Chamber of Deputies and then Undersecretary of State. Orlando made several notifications to the villa and added buildings in the park in a romantic Gothic style, and immediately struck up a friendship with Giacomo Puccini, who had recently moved to the hamlet, sharing with him the pleasure of hunting and a love of art. The group of artists that had formed at the time in Torre del Lago and who would later be defined as “The Painters of the Lake” often frequented Villa Orlando, including: Plinio Nomellini, Francesco Fanelli, Ferruccio Pagni, Angiolo and Ludovico Tommasi, Raffaello Gambogi and others. Puccini played on the piano that is still preserved in the main hall of the villa, along with manuscripts, photos and memorabilia. The villa, which is still owned by the descendants and is now a historic residence that hosts conferences, concerts, exhibitions that attract artists and national and international audiences.

THE VILLA MUSEUM OF TORRE DEL LAGO

Giacomo Puccini arrived in Torre del Lago in 1891, together with his wife Elvira Bonturi and his son Antonio. He rented the tower house of Venanzio Barsuglia, a modest home created from an ancient watchtower, from which the town takes its name, on the shores of Lake Massaciuccoli. Originally the tower belonged to nobles from Lucca, then the Bourbon-Lorraine took over and at the time it housed the archdukes’ guard in Barsuglia. The tower house consisted of three rooms on the upper floor with a shared kitchen and a stable on the ground floor. In Torre del Lago, Puccini found his ideal environment made up of hunter friends and painters including Ferruccio Pagni, Plinio Nomellini, Francesco Fanelli and the Tommasis, who sought inspiration in that lakeside atmosphere. With them he formed a circle of art and entertainment, which would be called the “Club della Bohème”. After the success of “Manon Lescaut” (1893), Puccini found himself in a more prosperous economic situation, which allowed him to move to the larger residence of Count Grottanelli of Siena, a few meters from the future villa. It was the period in which Puccini was composing “La bohème” and began “Tosca”. In 1899, after “La bohème”, he bought the house in Barsuglia, which he restored and transformed into the current villa, where he settled permanently with his family in the spring of 1900. The demolition project of the old tower house, of which only the foundations remain, involved “various architects including myself [Puccini, ed.]” together with Luigi De Servi, Plinio Nomellini and the engineer Giuseppe Puccinelli”.

The villa has a traditional structure, on two floors, with an ornamental bow-window in glass and iron between the entrance and the garden of the villa. Carlo Paladini, a friend and biographer of Puccini, describes the villa as “beautiful, cheerful and clean, and with the pandering of the lime pulled to polish, it is so white and smooth that from afar it seems to be made of marble”. To have the garden, Puccini bought a portion of the lake from the Marquis Carlo Ginori, which he filled in and delimited with an iron gate, which still exists. The lake waters lap the driveway around the villa. The interior is quite heterogeneous. The first room is the living room and study of the Maestro, an omnibus room, as Paladini defines it, because “it is a bit of everything. Dining room, reception room, reading room, game room, study and hunting Parliament”. The coffered ceiling in red, blue and gold connects to the frieze of cupids with festoons by Nomellini and Pagni. Above the fireplace is the large ceramic panel in Art Nouveau style by Galileo Chini, in front of it is the Forster piano. In 1908, due to the humidity, the composer had the walls covered with fabric, covering the decorations of his painter friends. The second room is called the manuscript room for documents and the photographic archive. In the third room, hunting trophies and weapons used by the Maestro during his hunting activities are displayed. In a small living room, in 1926, the chapel designed by the architect Vincenzo Pilotti was created to house the remains of the composer who died in 1924. The Arezzo stone facing, above the sarcophagus, features a bas-relief “the music that mourns the maestro” by the sculptor Antonio Maraini. The stained glass windows are by Adolfo de Carolis. On December 28, 1924, this plaque was placed on the wall overlooking the street: “The people of Torre del Lago placed this stone/as a sign of devotion/in the house where the countless dream creatures/that Giacomo Puccini/drew from his immortal spirit were born”.

In the house in Torre del Lago, “Tosca”, “Madama Butterfly”, “La fanciulla del west”, “La rondine” and “Il Trittico” were born. In December 1918, the Ilva-Torbiere d’Italia company purchased Lake Massaciuccoli for peat extraction and the environment around the lake changed. The Maestro protested, but in vain. And in September 1921 he moved to his new home in Viareggio.

In 2015, his granddaughter Simonetta Puccini began the restoration of the villa, restoring the roof, facade and the composer’s bedroom on the first floor. Between 2019 and 2022, the Simonetta Puccini Foundation continued the restoration of the other rooms on the first floor and the omnibus room on the ground floor. The Ministry of Culture-Archival and Bibliographic Superintendence of Tuscany, with provisions dated 10 January 2017 and 18 February 2019, declared the Puccini archive preserved in the villa, which contains approximately 28,500 papers and 2,000 manuscript and printed volumes, a fund of historical interest.

Today the villa is a museum. In the chapel next to the remains of the composer, rest those of his wife Elvira Bonturi, his son Antonio, his daughter-in-law Rita Dell’Anna and, since 2017, the ashes of Simonetta Puccini, the last descendant of the Maestro, who dedicated her life to the memory of her great grandfather and to spreading knowledge of his works.

BELVEDERE GIACOMO PUCCINI

It is a place famous throughout the world. The incredible multitude of visitors who come every year to attend the performances organized by the Fondazione Festival Pucciniano do not miss the opportunity to take home a souvenir photo with the statue of Puccini and the entrance to his villa, an emblem of this place full of atmosphere.

In August 1925, a year after Puccini’s death, the Municipality of Viareggio accepted the donation by Torbiere d’Italia of the land and beach in front of Villa Puccini and committed to the arrangement of the square on which the placement of a statue by the sculptor Leonardo Bistolfi was planned. The newspapers of the time gave much prominence to the monument that the sculptor was supposed to have made and donated as a sign of friendship to Puccini, but the work was never realized, probably due to an eye problem that prevented Bistolfi from modeling in 1925. In its place, in the center of the square, a large octagonal marble basin will rise, later dismantled in 1948. The project promoted by the “Committee for the Honours to G. Puccini” was born precisely from the desire to create an area of ​​peace and tranquility around Villa Puccini, giving the area a dimension of meditation and sacredness. The solutions adopted in the first project by Eng. Fausto Franchini recover stylistic features of late-Liberty taste of international scope, with interpretative methods typical of the Italian culture of the time, highlighted by the concentric arrangement of the flowerbeds that branch out following the course of the gate of Villa Puccini. From the central building, branches of sinuous and circular lines start, created with simple hedges; the shore of the lake is outlined by this elegant curvilinear and sinuous trend. Small docks for the shelter of boats and a small pier are also planned. The monument was to be placed in the center of the garden. On September 15, 1925, the project was published and officially presented for the first time in the “Giornale dei Lavori Pubblici e delle Strade Ferrate”, accompanied by a very detailed description of the interventions that would be undertaken.

The project was not confined to national interest alone, but gradually acquired an international resonance, thanks also to the postcards reproducing the project of the square called “messages” signed by the engineer Fausto Franchini, printed and sent by the Committee all over the world. They became an advertising tool through which large donations arrived: a real international mobilization confirming the centrality of the figure of Giacomo Puccini in the world music scene. The bursar kept a very rigorous accounting of the sums of money received; leafing through the many receipts of the “incoming vouchers” one comes across a list of very prestigious names, including: the American inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Alva Edison, the German composer Franz Lehar, the Austrian musician and conductor Paul Felix Weingartne, the industrialist Teresio Borsalino and the Metropolitan Theatre in New York. The Government of the time also supported with a large sum of money the arrangement of the area where Puccini’s remains were to rest. Thus began the first attempts to fill in the lake and the gradual concreting of the area facing Villa Puccini, with a series of engineering works that continued until the end of the 1920s. The Piazzale was completed in 1930 with the installation of the fence along the shore of the lake, put in place by the construction company “F.lli Gemignani“ of Viareggio, which also carried out a series of works necessary for the completion of the Piazzale on behalf of the Municipality of Viareggio. The fence that still exists today roughly follows the perimeter of Franchini’s final project from 1929, in which the abandonment of late-Art Nouveau forms in favor of the new rationalist climate is evident. In August 1930, under the direction of Pietro Mascagni and Gioacchino Forzano, on the shores of Lake Massaciuccoli, the memorable Bohème of the “Carro di Tespi Lirico” was held: a rare film from the Istituto Luce documents that day.

Furthermore, the designer had understood that after the transfer of Giacomo Puccini’s body in 1926 and the establishment of the Villa museum, the area had become a major tourist attraction. After the disastrous results of the Second World War, 1949 being the 25th anniversary of the Maestro’s death, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan donated the valuable bronze sculpture by the sculptor Paul Troubetzkoy, made in 1925, still visible today on the Belvedere.

In the 1950s, in relation to an ever-increasing number of visitors, the Municipality undertook some expansion works.

PUCCINI IN VIAREGGIO

Who hasn’t met Puccini in Viareggio, during the years he lived there? Perhaps on the street in his cars, or passing in front of the garden of the villa, or at the table of the Caffè Margherita, which remembers the maestro with this plaque placed in 1949: “During the first quarter of the century/illustrious men/including/Marconi Giordano Toscanini/and dear friends of the maestro/Italians and foreigners/convened at this table/chosen by/Giacomo Puccini/as a meeting place/to recreate themselves in the simplicity of civil conversation/after the long-lasting toil/around his immortal art”.

The Art Nouveau-style venue, which stood on the Viareggio seafront, today with different forms, was also frequented by the young Alfredo Catarsini. We don’t know if the painter met the famous composer, but from the story of Elena Martinelli, Catarsini’s niece, we can discover something. When Puccini died in 1924, Alfredo Catarsini was 25 years old, married to Giuseppina Rossi and had a daughter, Mity. In 1944, in San Martino in Freddana, where the family was evacuated, Mity met the young engineer Pier Luigi Martinelli, son of two musicians from Lucca: Alfredo, a cellist and teacher at the Boccherini music institute, and Velia Landi, a concert pianist. Vincenzo Martinelli, Alfredo’s father, ran a custom-made shoe shop in Lucca and kept a piano in the back of the shop. Among his customers was Giacomo Puccini, who used to sit at the piano and play. The young Alfredo Martinelli was fascinated and discovered a passion for music. His family supported him and he attended the Conservatory of Lucca, soon starting his brilliant concert career together with his pianist wife. He founded the Boccherini string quartet and, among others, held a concert on March 9, 1940 in Viareggio, at the Hotel Continentale (now Esplanade) on the occasion of a vocal-instrumental concert which Mity Catarsini attended before even meeting his son Pier Luigi, in the summer of ’44 in San Martino in Freddana.

THE PUCCINI VILLA IN VIAREGGIO

Giacomo Puccini purchased a plot of land in Viareggio in 1915 near the pine forest, on the corner of what is now Via Buonarroti and Via Marco Polo. A few years later, in 1919, he commissioned the architect Vincenzo Pilotti (Ascoli Piceno 1872-1956), a professor at the University of Pisa, and the engineer Federigo Severini (Pisa 1888-1962) to build the villa with an outbuilding. The work was completed two years later and at the end of December 1921 Puccini was able to move to Viareggio. The villa includes a main floor and a basement where the service rooms and the Maestro’s studio are located. The main façade on Via Buonarroti boasts a forepart with a portico open to a veranda with stone pillars and wooden transennae which is accessed via a double-flight staircase. The facades have exposed brick and stone facings, which frame the doors and windows with architraves and segmental arches. The facades facing north and east are decorated, in the attic crown, with ceramic stoneware tiles depicting masks and decorative elements with musical and theatrical subjects by Galileo Chini. The interior spaces, equipped with a modern heating system with radiators, were distributed according to the Maestro’s needs: an internal wooden staircase connected the bedroom with the study in the basement, furnished with two armchairs on either side of the fireplace and, as Guido Marotti, a friend of Puccini and a daily visitor to the villa, recounts, “from a small table with green cloth, the Steinway grand piano (now located in the Birthplace Museum in Lucca) covered in damask and a lot of things… from the study, through a small door with opaque glass, you enter the living room, where red dominates: a corner sofa with red cushions and the walls upholstered in red… furniture in dark antique tones”. The garden is equipped with an artificial rain system, and characterized by holm oaks and pines, it was meant to be a sort of continuation of the pine forest. On the north side, a plaque, placed on December 7, 1924, reads: “The community of Viareggio / promises to guard / consecrated / to / Giacomo Puccini / and house and forest / that were / palace and garden / to the splendid queen Turandot.

In 2012, ownership of the villa was assigned to the Puccini Foundation of Lucca, with a transaction deed stipulated with the Azienda del Demanio in April 2012, following a ruling by the Court of Florence in 2008, which had recognized the validity of the legacy of Rita Dell’Anna’s will (Puccini’s daughter-in-law had already donated the house where he was born in Lucca), in which the bare ownership of the villa was assigned to the Puccini Foundation. And in July 2014, the Foundation took possession of the Villa Puccini of Viareggio.

The villa is accompanied by a two-story annex, including a garage and an apartment on the first floor, now owned by the Simonetta Puccini Foundation for Giacomo Puccini. Born as a chauffeur’s home, from the Seventies, the annex was inhabited by the Maestro’s granddaughter, Simonetta Puccini, when she left Milan and stayed in Viareggio.

GIACOMO PUCCINI, A LOVER OF GOOD EATING

The great composer who chose Torre del Lago as his habitual home and the lake as the ideal habitat for his passion for hunting, as a good citizen of Lucca, greatly appreciated eating, especially what he had hunted. He himself cooked at the Club della Bohème, which he created with some jolly friends where they could play cards, party, have fun and eat.

Let’s leave aside some recipes that have been likely attributed to him, the following are now codified as “Puccini’s recipes” and are: risotto with tench, coot or wood pigeon; pappardelle with hare; coot Puccini-style; thrush fillet; wild boar rack in red wine; woodcock on crouton; stewed hare; braised Massaciuccoli mallard; marzaiola di Massaciuccoli al tegame (marzaiola is a bird similar to the wild duck that was hunted during the migration period in March and cooked with oil, local aromatic herbs and pork belly).

His cook Isola Nencetti, from Casciana Terme, made him discover and appreciate the “Latte alla portoghese” which then became a typical dessert of the area, much loved and passed down also in the Catarsini household.

OTHER PUCCINI PLACES: MONSAGRATI AND BARGECCHIA

In 1898 Puccini rented Villa Mansi in Monsagrati for the summer, where between July and September he composed the first and second acts of Tosca and although he did not like Monsagrati very much because of its view too closed by woods, pines and mountains, as he wrote he also managed to orchestrate almost the entire first act, now a plaque commemorates his stay with these words:

IN THIS VILLA IN THE SUMMER OF 1898 GIACOMO PUCCINI

GUEST OF THE MARQUIS RAFFAELLO MANSI

HE LIVED AND COMPOSED THE FIRST ACT OF TOSCA

BECAUSE ART IS MADE OF DIFFERENT BEAUTIES. THE

RECONDITE HARMONIES OF THESE ROMANTIC SLOPES

PERHAPS RESONATED IN THE MIND AND HEART OF THE MASTER

IN NOTES OF SUBLIME PASSION AND GAVE THE WINGS OF THE

MASTERPIECE THE FIRST THRILLS FOR ITS IMMORTAL FLIGHT.

R.Sardi

In Bargecchia stands the Church of San Martino with a bell tower where four bronze bells send their beautiful sound into the hilly territory surrounding the small town. According to a nice tradition, this sound inspired Puccini to play the background music for the duet between Scarpia and Tosca in the first act of Tosca.

LUIGI BOCCHERINI MUSIC INSTITUTE OF LUCCA

The Boccherini Music Institute of Lucca is one of the oldest music schools in Italy. It was established by Giovanni Pacini in 1842, with the protection and consent of Duke Carlo Lodovico. In this school, Michele Puccini, Giacomo’s father, starting from the following year, carried out various functions and held various chairs, until he became a teacher of counterpoint, Composition and Director in 1862. At this institute Giacomo Puccini began his training in 1868 and concluded in 1880 with a diploma in composition. Since January 2022 it has been a Higher Institute of Musical Studies, a State Conservatory.