Puccini

Puccini, composer of La Boheme, Tosca and Turandot among others, was born in Lucca in 1858.  They love him here: you can visit the house in which he was born, go to daily concerts in the church in which he was baptised and postcards and pictures of him abound.  But it was not always so.  As he gained fame in the late 1800s the blinkered bourgeois Lucchese society did not readily accept a rising star from the lower middle class, a situation made worse by Puccini’s own – for the time – rebellious and lively character.  Consequently, despite his love for Lucca, Puccini had a villa built some miles north of the city in which to live and although he visited the place of his birth often it is said he never stayed a night here from that time.  When he died in 1924 Lucca seemed to happily let his links with the city fade into history.   It seems to have all changed on the 80th anniversary of his death in 2004 when a series of daily concerts were started and still run each week day and every week of the year (so they say).