Torre del Lago, home of the Puccini Festival, lies between the Lake of Massaciuccoli and the Tyrrhenian Sea, 4 kilometres far from the magnificent beaches of Viareggio on the Tuscan Riviera, 18 kilometres from Lucca and Pisa. The Festival welcomes about 40.000 spectators every year to its open-air theatre, just a few steps from the Villa Mausoleum where Giacomo Puccini lived and worked. His mortal remains are now in a small chapel inside the Villa. Torre del Lago is a favourite destination of opera lovers and tourists who wish to visit the places where the most beloved composer of the 20th century lived.

The Puccini Festival was born in 1930 following Puccini’s wishes. “… 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…”. (Puccini in a letter to Giovacchino Forzano in November 1924, before he left to the clinic of Brussels where he died shortly after). The author of La Bohème and Madama Butterfly, “the last great poet of the Italian opera, the best composer of operas Italy and the whole world had in our century” (Roman Vlad), expressed his wish to see his creatures come to life in the extraordinary natural stage offered by the Massaciuccoli Lake.

Forzano (platwright and librettist of Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi, also director of Turandot’s first night at La Scala Theatre, Milan, on April 25th 1926) was so impressed by those words that, after Puccini’s death, he decided to realise his dream. In 1930, together with Pietro Mascagni, who had been fellow-student and room-mate to Puccini, Forzano began to carry out the first performances of Puccini’s operas on the lakeshore, in front of the Maestro’s house.

On August 24th 1930, in a provisional theatre with the stage built on piles stuck in the lake, a travelling opera company, the “Carro di Tespi Lirico”, performed La Bohème directed by Forzano and conducted by Mascagni, with Rosetta Pampanini, Margherita Carosio, Angelo Minghetti and Luigi Montesano.

The same travelling company came back to Torre del Lago in 1931: Beniamino Gigli and Adelaide Saraceni performed in La Bohème, while Rosetta Pampanini and Angelo Michetti performed in Madama Butterfly. One of the world most famous and beloved opera festivals was born.

In 1966 the Festival moved to the reclaimed land just near the small lake harbour. Here the present theatre was built, a large structure enjoying the charming background of Massaciuccoli Lake with the small villages on the opposite shore, whose flickering lights at night assure an unforgettable natural scenery to the performances taking place on the wide stage; the New Great Open Air Theatre of Giacomo Puccini’s Music Park is now under construction and it will be inaugurated in 2008 for the 150th anniversary of Maestro Puccini’s birth.

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 the great Mario del Monaco, who chose Torre del Lago to leave the stage with an unforgettable performance in Il Tabarro; Giuseppe Di Stefano, Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Josè Carreras (who received the Puccini Award in 1997), Franco Corelli, Giuseppe Giacomini, Giacomo Aragall and Luis Lima, Josè Cura, whose performance as Cavaradossi in Tosca at 1995 Puccini Festival marked the beginning of his extraordinary career, Fabio Armiliato, Marcello Giordani, Marco Berti, Roberto Aronica, Fabio Sartori, Andrea Bocelli.

Famous baritones such as Tito Gobbi, who made his debut in Torre del Lago also as director for Tosca), Ingvar Wixell, Sherill Milnes, Rolando Panerai and Giuseppe Taddei played the roles of Scarpia, Jack Rance, Gianni Schicchi and Lescaut, we remember also Juan Pons as a wonderful Sharpless in Madama Butterfly’s 100th anniversary. As for the roles of Puccini’s heroines, the performances of Giovanna Casolla, Antonia Cifrone, Daniela Dessì, Ghena Dimitrova, Maria Dragoni, Norma Fantini, Eva Marton, Francesca Patanè, Katia Ricciarelli, Renata Scotto, Olivia Stapp, Maria Pia Jonata, Raina Kabaivanska, are really unforgettable. Among the famous directors, Francesco Molinari Pradelli, Franco Mannino, Nello Santi, Oliviero De Fabritiis, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Yuri Ahronovich, Gian Luigi Gelmetti, Nicola Rescigno, Daniel Oren, Maurizio Arena, Anton Guadagno, Steve Mercurio, Andrea Licata and Alberto Veronesi, at present Artistic Director of the Festival. Apart from opera, the Grand Theatre of Torre del Lago hosted also other forms of spectacle: ballet, for instance, with important performances of Rudolf Nureyev, Carla Fracci and Georg Iancu.

In 2000, 70th anniversary of Forzano and Mascagni’s courageous initiative, the 46th edition of Puccini Festival proposed two major new productions: Madama Butterfly under the direction of Vivien A. Hewitt, with costumes by Regina Schrecker and scenes by the Japanese sculptor Kan Yasuda debuting as stage-designer and with whom the project started, and Beni Montresor’s monumental Tosca of the 100th anniversary. Then Puccini’s first opera, Le Villi, with Katia Ricciarelli, Josè Cura and Pippo Baudo’s acting voice.

Pietrasanta, the "Little Athens" where Michelangelo first based his marble cutting activities and where sculptors from all over the world come to learn a unique technique for marble and bronze has given birth to a Festival Puccini’s project called "Sculpting the Opera". Since 2000 the Puccini Festival has seen world-famous artists who have chosen Pietrasanta as their homeland in the role of opera set designers. After Madama Butterfly by Kan Yasuda, in 2002 a new production of Manon Lescaut with scenes and costumes by Polish sculptor Igor Mitoraj opened the 48th Puccini Festival. A new production of La Bohème with sets and costumes designed by Belgian painter, sculptor and illustrator Jean-Michel Folon received a huge success in Torre del Lago in Summer 2003 and gave him the Abbiati Award.

In 2004 the Puccini Festival celebrated its 50th anniversary by a successful season. Again within “Sculpting the Opera” a new production of Madama Butterfly celebrating the 100th anniversary of its première in Brescia on May 28th, 1904, conducted by Placido Domingo with Daniela Dessì and Fabio Armiliato in the leading roles of Cio-cio-san and Pinkerton.. The sets were designed Arnaldo Pomodoro. Torre del Lago hosted two performances of this opera and then a very special evening dedicated to Puccini’s Heroines presented the most beloved arias from the Maestro’s favourite characters with Placido Domingo as Maestro’s narrating voice.

The 50th Puccini Festival presented Madama Butterfly with scenes by Kan Yasuda and staging by Beni Montresor, taken up by Gaetano Miglioranzi. Again, a new staging realized by two great artists for the last masterpiece of Maestro Puccini, Turandot: Pietro Cascella, who realized a scenery full of symbolism, plastic transposition of Puccini’s music, and Cordelia von de Steinen, who designed the costumes being inspired by Terracotta Army, direction of Daniele De Plano.

For its 51st edition in Summer 2005 the Puccini Festival opened with La Fanciulla del West in a very new staging designed by U.S. painter Nall, who created also the costumes. On stage Daniela Dessì, Fabio Armiliato and Lucio Gallo, director Ivan Stefanutti;

the romantic Bohème created by Jean-Michel Folon;

the oniric Turandot by Pietro Cascella; Madama Butterfly, fruit of the cooperation between Festival Puccini and Seoul International Opera Theatre.

The 2006 Puccini Festival proposes a very interesting programme which from June to October 2006 will offer our audience seven unmissable appointments with Maestro Puccini’s music. Within the events implemented in cooperation with the National Committee for 2004-2008 Puccini Celebrations, on June 18th an extraordinary opera concert of La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Maestro Niksa Bareza will be held as Puccini Festival’s avant premiere in the great open-air theatre of Torre del Lago.

On July 21st, 2006 the 52nd edition of Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago presented by the new staging of Tosca within the Sculpting the Opera project: sets and costumes by Igor Mitoraj, director Mario Corradi, with Norma Fantini, conducted by Maestro Alberto Veronesi. Then on schedule two very successful productions by Puccini Festival, Turandot (sets by Pietro Cascella, costumes by Cordelia von den Steinen, director Daniele De Plano) and the charming La Bohème directed by Maurizio Scaparro with sets by the unforgettable poet and friend Jean Michel Folon, who died a few months ago and to whom a special tribute will be dedicated.

2006 Puccini Festival will be remembered for this unusual tribute to Japanese culture and music. In addition to the special international co-production between Fondazione Festival Pucciniano and Sakai City Opera, on stage on August 17th and 20th, with great Italian and Japanese artists, a staging of the Puccini’s masterpiece by which the Japanese director Kuriyama has presented styles and environments of the Farthest East country.

On August 3rd and 9th for the first time in Europe Puccini Festival presented Junior Butterfly. The heart-rending story of Madama Butterfly comes back to life in the opera Junior Butterfly by Japanese composer Shigeaki Saegusa on the libretto by Masahiko Shimada. It tells the story of Cio-Cio-San and Pinkerton’s son with the background of Nagasaki nuclear tragedy in 1945.


During Summer several collateral events connected to Puccini’s music and contemporary art, both distinctive features of Torre del Lago Festival, will be implemented in the most charming sites of Tuscany.