Festival Puccini
The
Festival Puccini (
Puccini Festival) is a summer
opera festival based in
Torre del Lago,
Italy, a town located between the Lake of Massaciuccoli and the Tyrrhenian Sea, 4 kilometres from the beaches of
Viareggio on the Tuscan Riviera and 18 kilometres from
Lucca and
Pisa.
The Puccini Festival was started in 1930 following Puccini's wishes in a letter to
Giovacchino Forzano, one of his librettists, in November 1924: "….I always come out here and take a boat to go and shoot snipes … but once I would like to come here and listen to one of my operas in the open air". The composer was thus expressing the hope that his operas would be performed in the extraordinary natural stage offered by the Massaciuccoli Lake.
The Festival attracts about forty thousand spectators every year to its open-air theatre, quite close to the Villa Mausoleum where Puccini lived and worked. His remains lie in a small chapel inside the Villa.
On
24 August 1930, together with
Pietro Mascagni, who had been fellow-student of Puccini's, Forzano produced the first performances of a Puccini opera on the lakeshore, in front of the Maestro's house. In a provisional theatre, with the stage built on piles stuck in the lake, a traveling opera company performed
La bohème directed by Forzano and conducted by Mascagni. The same company came back in 1931 when
Beniamino Gigli and
Adelaide Saraceni performed in
La bohème, while Rosetta Pampanini and Angelo Michetti performed
Madama Butterfly. This was the beginning of a major opera festival.
In
1966 the Festival site was moved to the reclaimed land just near the small lake harbour. The present theatre, quite a large structure, was built there and it took advantage of the background of Massaciuccoli Lake, with its small villages on the opposite shore, whose flickering lights at night provide unforgettable natural scenery to complement the performances taking place on the stage.
During the over seventy years of the Festival, the stage of Torre del Lago has hosted the most famous and acclaimed names of world opera. Among them was
Tito Gobbi, who also debuted as director in
Tosca;
Mario del Monaco, who chose the Festival as his farewell to the stage in
Il Tabarro; and many others who began or ended extraordinary careers.
In 2000, 70th anniversary of Forzano and Mascagni's initiative, the 46th Puccini Festival presented two major new productions,
Butterfly and
Tosca. Also, the programme included Puccini's first opera,
Le Villi, in concert, with the performances by
Katia Ricciarelli and
Josè Cura. In 2004 the Puccini Festival celebrated its 50th anniversary by a season featuring two great events: one was a new production of
Madama Butterfly celebrating the Centenary of its première in Brescia on
May 28,
1904, conducted by
Plácido Domingo with
Daniela Dessì and
Fabio Armiliato in the leading roles. The second was a special evening dedicated to Puccini's heroines presented the most beloved arias from the Maestro's favorite characters, with Plácido Domingo narrating as Puccini.
The 2006 season is unique in that a production of
La fanciulla del West will be presented rather later in the traditional season with follow-up performances in
Monaco in October.
Many productions originating at the festival have gone on to appear in opera houses throughout the world.
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Puccini Festival offical website
