Pietro Mascagni

Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945) was born in Piazza delle Erbe, his father had a well-established bakery downstairs and was well known in Livorno. Tall, lanky, always shaved, with a boyish air, clear eyes, a cowlick, Pietro had a Leghorn, spontaneous, immediate, unsophisticated and undiplomatic soul. It oscillated between enthusiasm and despondency, euphoria and melancholy. All his life he was exuberant, fighting against sadness and bad mood.

His father was not happy when he decided to devote himself entirely to music and enrolled at the Milan conservatory, where he shared a room with Giacomo Puccini, helping to create, perhaps, the goliardic atmosphere and the environment that were the inspiration for the “Boheme”. In the conservatory he was not happy, he attended the courses with irregularities, he quarreled with the conductor Ponchielli, at the end he left and started working as a conductor around Italy until he was offered a permanent place in Cerignola.

In 1888 he enrolled in a competition, organized by the Sonzogno publishing house, for a work in a single act. He asked for the collaboration of his friends Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, who adapted a drama based on the novel “Cavalleria Rusticana” by Verga. The work was completed on the day of the competition deadline and won out of 73 participants. It was an immense success, repeated in every theater in which it was…