Villa Puccini In the
year 1891, after a summer holiday spent at the home of a
certain Andreozzi family, Giacomo Puccini rented two
rooms from Venanzio Barsuglia, "a gamekeeper of Don
Carlos of Bourbon", so Puccini tells us. These were
in a modest tower-house on the Lake of Massaciuccoli:
three simple rooms on the first floor together with a
communal kitchen and a stable on ground level.From then on Torre del Lago represents a symbolic moment in Puccini’s life, a place of refuge that inspired the greater part of his most famous operas. Around the lake and in Torre del Lago the composer established a reciprocal relationship with a ‘little world’ made up of simple things, love of the hunt, affection for his hunting friends, pranks with his artist-friends – Ferruccio Pagni, Plinio Nomellini, Francesco Fanelli, the Tommasi brothers. This coterie of ‘art and pranking’, later called "Club della Bohème" would find in the lakeside scenary an ideal setting, a source of inspiration for various artistic personalities. After the success of Manon Lescaut Puccini moved to the nearby residence of the count Grottanelli, where he would remain until the completion of the villa Puccini, which took place in the spring of 1900. In a letter of 22 February of that year Puccini informs his friend Pagni: "...On the 15th I shall come with my family to Torre del Lago to settle there definitely". Puccini describes Torre del Lago in a famous letter of that same year to his friend Alfredo Caselli: " ... supreme joy, paradise, Eden, empyrean, turris eburnea, vas spirituale, palace ... 120 inhabitants, 12 houses. Quiet village, luxuriant, extraordinary sunsets ... " When the works at Chiatri were already under way, Puccini had had the opportunity of buying the old tower-house. The plan to demolish the old building, retaining merely the foundations of the ancient tower, was the fruit of a collaboration between Puccini ("various architects including myself") and Luigi De Servi, Plinio Nomellini and the engineer Giuseppe Puccinelli.  The villa presents a traditional structure, cubic
in volume and shaped symmetrically with a clear division
of its functions. An ornamental bow-window of glass and
iron forms the linking element between the entrance to
the villa and the garden that surrounds it. Carlo
Paladini, the composer’s biographer, describes it
thus: "The villa is really beautiful, gay, spick and
span and with the allure of a coating of lime mortar it
is so smooth and white that from a distance it seems
built of marble."Typical of the taste of the time, the garden, which was originally lapped by the waters of the lake, follows an irregular design marked out by flowerbeds ornamented with peculiar stones, by palm trees and hedges that screen and define wonderful effects of perspective. "A secret harmony, a misterious affinity between the artist’s house and the countryside" - once again in Paladini’s words. In contrast to the severity of the architectural structure, the interior is planned with an eclecticism that was the fruit of a collaboration between Puccini, De Servi, Nomellini and Galileo Chini.  The
first room is the living-room and the Master’s study , a ‘sala-omnibus’
which – again in Paladini’s words –
"is a little bit of everything. Dining-hall,
reception room, a place for reading, playing games and
working, a canine Parliament". The variety of the
décor is astonishing: the lacunar ceiling in red, blue
and gold surrounded by a frieze depicting cupids with
garlands, the work of Nomellini and Pagni; the fireplace
designed by Galileo Chini framed by floral decorations on
pink and white ceramic tiles from the Fornaci Chini in
Borgo San Lorenzo. Directly opposite is the Förster
piano and beside it the work-table. In a letter of March
1900 Puccini writes about the room decorated by
Nomellini: "... I can foresee the effect on me of
that room into which the gentle Tuscan. Genoese painter
has put so much of himself". Admittedly, in 1908 the
composer decided because of the dampness to cover the
walls with fabric, concealing the decorations of his
painter friends beneath a surface which is still visible
to-day. The fittings from Bugatti and Tiffany, the
valuable screen donated to the Master by the Japanese
government and the various items of furniture in
different styles all bear witness to the eclectic tastes
of the owner.The second room is known as the ‘manuscript room’ from the documents and the photographic arrchives that are kept in it. In the third room all Puccini’s rifles and hunting trophies are in show, bearing witness to his passion for blood sports. The Chapel, converted from a sitting room, was designed by the architect Vincenzo Pilotti to house the tomb containing the Master’s remains in 1926. The facing of Arezzo stone carries above the sarcophagus a marble bass-relief inscribed "Music mourning the death of the Master", and placed symmetrically on the opposite wall a chair in marble with the words, "Music that outlives the Master", carried out by the sculptor Antonio Maraini. The glass panels are by Adolfo de Carolis. On 28 December 1924 a memorial tablet was placed on the North wall, which faces the road: The people of Torre del Lago
placed this stone
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The first performance of a Puccini
opera by the lake goes back to the year 1930. This was La
bohème, intended by Giovacchino Forzano to realise a
wish expressed to him by Puccini himself ("...I
always come out here and then go hunting snipe in a boat
....But one day I’ld like to come out here and
listen to one of my operas in the open air..."). It
was conducted by Pietro Mascagni. From then on, first in
a temporary theatre built on piles, then in the so-called
‘Theatre of Four Thousand's, there has been a
succession of more than forty Puccini Festivals.