In the press kit delivered to the numerous journalists of national newspapers present in Torre del Lago on the occasion of the first performance of “The Maiden of the West” – staged as part of the 51st edition of “Puccini Festival” – the publication was also included “Puccini Itineraries” edited by “Giacomo Puccini Study Center”. Well, in addition to Lucca, Vicopelago, Celle dei Puccini, Chiatri, Massaciuccoli, Torre del Lago and Viareggio – these “itineraries” they also contain Bagni di Lucca. And for a very important reason, because here in 1909 – staying at the “Grand Hotel delle Terme” – during the occupation a collection center for Jews rounded up throughout the territory, and now reduced to a ruin of which only the façade remains in disastrous conditions – had to compose the music for the second act of “The Maiden of the West”.
Giacomo Puccini’s stays in Bagni di Lucca, however, did not end in 1909, but they have precedents, as we read at the beginning of the chapter “Baths of Lucca, theatre, halls, hotels”: “At the end of the 70s, even before finishing his studies, Giacomo Puccini came to Bagni di Lucca to play the piano in a dance band at the Academic Theatre, the Casino and the Sala Ducci in Ponte a Serraglio: the salary was 10 or 15 lire per evening, to save money he arrived a little before the show and had dinner at Adelson Betti’s house (for whom he composed the anthem Vexilla regis prodeunt), father of the famous violinist Adolfo” (hence – among other things – the marginal thanks addressed by the writers to the heir Massimo Betti).
However, there is also one following 1909, because – as we read again in the same publication – “in 1920 he spent more than twenty days at ‘Hotel Victoria’ where Baron Edoardo Fassini Camossi lived. Here he had the decisive meeting with Adami and Simoni for the launch of ‘Turandot’including listening to a music box brought from China by the baron, which performed three melodies later used by Puccini”.
What doesn’t appear in “Puccini Itineraries”, but what is good to know in this centenary of the Maestro’s death is that in Bagni di Lucca Giacomo Puccini frequented Ponte a Serraglio several times and therefore also the Pellegrini house, perhaps to be photographed by my grandfather Alceste – the first photographer of the Val di Lima – perhaps to play the piano of aunt Eva, the only one in the village who, in the early years of the twentieth century, was familiar with the pentagram, and therefore played the instrument with sufficient skill, even as an amateur. And in this regard it should also be noted that among the many opera scores on which my aunt practiced, those of “Manon Lescaut”, “La boheme” And “Tosca” they carried the composer’s autograph at the bottom, with dedication, and this is an obvious testimony of a more than occasional association.
Unfortunately, during the passage of the front during the last conflict, together with other important heirlooms belonging to the family – musical and otherwise – they went up in flames at the hands of the Brazilians who occupied the house after the Germans because they could not stand the cold of that winter of 1943/ 44, so only the memory of the Master’s passage into the Pellegrini house remains.
Mario Pellegrini
