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| Tina Picotes visits Lucca, Tuscany |
During the travel from Pistoia to Lucca, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 17).
More information: Work and Study
Lucca is a city and comune in Tuscany, on the Serchio, in a fertile plain near the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital of the Province of Lucca. It is famous for its intact Renaissance-era city walls.
Lucca was founded by the Etruscans, there are traces of an earlier Ligurian settlement in the 3rd century BC called Luk meaning marsh in which the name Lucca originated, and became a Roman colony in 180 BC. The rectangular grid of its historical centre preserves the Roman street plan, and the Piazza San Michele occupies the site of the ancient forum. Traces of the amphitheatre may still be seen in the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro.
At the Lucca Conference, in 56 BC, Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus reaffirmed their political alliance known as the First Triumvirate.
Frediano, an Irish monk, was bishop of Lucca in the early sixth century. At one point, Lucca was plundered by Odoacer, the first Germanic King of Italy. Lucca was an important city and fortress even in the sixth century, when Narses besieged it for several months in 553.
Under the Lombards, it was the seat of a duke who minted his own coins. The Holy Face of Lucca or Volto Santo, a major relic supposedly carved by Nicodemus, arrived in 742.
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| Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, Lucca |
During the eighth-tenth centuries Lucca was a center of Jewish life, the community being led by the Kalonymos family, which at some point during this time migrated to Germany to become a major component of proto-Ashkenazic Jewry.
Lucca became prosperous through the silk trade that began in the eleventh century, and came to rival the silks of Byzantium. During the tenth–eleventh centuries Lucca was the capital of the feudal margraviate of Tuscany, more or less independent but owing nominal allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor.
After the death of Matilda of Tuscany, the city began to constitute itself an independent commune with a charter in 1160. For almost 500 years, Lucca remained an independent republic. There were many minor provinces in the region between southern Liguria and northern Tuscany dominated by the Malaspina; Tuscany in this time was a part of feudal Europe.
Dante’s Divine Comedy includes many references to the great feudal families who had huge jurisdictions with administrative and judicial rights. Dante spent some of his exile in Lucca.
In 1273 and again in 1277, Lucca
was ruled by a Guelph capitano del popolo, captain of the people, named
Luchetto Gattilusio. In 1314, internal discord allowed Uguccione della
Faggiuola of Pisa to make himself lord of Lucca. The Lucchesi
expelled him two years later, and handed over the city to another
condottiero, Castruccio Castracani, under whose rule it became a leading
state in central Italy.
More information: Città di Lucca (Italian version)
Lucca rivalled Florence until Castracani's death in 1328. On 22 and 23 September 1325, in the battle of Altopascio, Castracani defeated Florence's Guelphs. For this he was nominated by Louis IV the Bavarian to become duke of Lucca. Castracani's tomb is in the church of San Francesco. His biography is Machiavelli's third famous book on political rule.
In 1408, Lucca
hosted the convocation intended to end the schism in the papacy.
Occupied by the troops of Louis of Bavaria, the city was sold to a rich
Genoese, Gherardino Spinola, then seized by John, king of Bohemia.
Pawned to the Rossi of Parma, by them it was ceded to Mastino II della
Scala of Verona, sold to the Florentines, surrendered to the Pisans, and
then nominally liberated by the emperor Charles IV and governed by his
vicar.
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| Visiting Chiesa San Michele, Lucca |
Lucca managed, at first as a democracy, and after 1628 as an oligarchy, to maintain its independence alongside of Venice and Genoa, and painted the word Libertas on its banner until the French Revolution in 1789.
Lucca had been the second largest Italian city state, after Venice, with a republican constitution comune to remain independent over the centuries. In 1805, Lucca was conquered by Napoleon, who installed his sister Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi as Princess of Lucca.
From 1815 to 1847 it was a Bourbon-Parma duchy. The only reigning dukes of Lucca were Maria Luisa of Spain, who was succeeded by her son Charles II, Duke of Parma in 1824. Meanwhile, the Duchy of Parma had been assigned for life to Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma, the second wife of Napoleon.
More information: Discover Tuscany
In accordance with the Treaty of Vienna (1815), upon the death of Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma in 1847, Parma reverted to Charles II, Duke of Parma, while Lucca lost independence and was annexed to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. As part of Tuscany, it became part of the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1860 and finally part of the Italian State in 1861.
The walls encircling the old town remain intact, even as the city expanded and modernized, unusual for cities in the region. Initially built as a defensive rampart, once the walls lost their military importance they became a pedestrian promenade, the Passeggiata delle Mura Urbane, a street atop the walls linking the bastions.
The town includes a number of public squares, most notably the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, site of ancient Roman amphitheater.
More information: Tuscany Beautiful Everywhere
Whatever a guidebook says,
wether or not you leave somewhere
with a sense of the place is entirely
a matter of smell and instinct.
Frances Mayes
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (22 December 1858-29 November 1924) was a Tuscan opera composer who has been called the greatest composer of Italian opera after Verdi.
Puccini's early work was rooted in traditional late-19th-century romantic Italian opera. Later, he successfully developed his work in the realistic verismo style, of which he became one of the leading exponents.
Puccini's most renowned works are La bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), Madama Butterfly (1904), and Turandot (1924), all of which are among the important operas played as standards.
Puccini was born Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini in Lucca, Tuscany in 1858. He was one of nine children of Michele Puccini and Albina Magi.
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| Giacomo Puccini |
The Puccini family was established in Lucca as a local musical dynasty by Puccini's great-great-grandfather -also named Giacomo (1712–1781).
Puccini wrote an orchestral piece called the Capriccio sinfonico as a thesis composition for the Milan Conservatory. Puccini's teachers Ponchielli and Bazzini were impressed by the work, and it was performed at a student concert at the conservatory on 14 July 1883, conducted by Franco Faccio.
Puccini's work was favorably reviewed in the Milanese publication Perseveranza, and thus Puccini began to build a reputation as a young composer of promise in Milanese music circles.
After the premiere of the Capriccio sinfonico, Ponchielli and Puccini discussed the possibility that Puccini's next work might be an opera. Ponchielli invited Puccini to stay at his villa, where Puccini was introduced to another young man named Ferdinando Fontana.
More information: Opera Tours Italy
Puccini and Fontana agreed to collaborate on an opera, for which Fontana would provide the libretto. The work, Le Villi,
was entered into a competition sponsored by the Sozogno music
publishing company in 1883, the same competition in which Pietro
Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana was the winner in 1889. Giulio Ricordi, head of G. Ricordi & Co. music publishers, was sufficiently impressed with Le Villi and its young composer that he commissioned a second opera, which would result in Edgar.
On commencing his next opera, Manon Lescaut, Puccini announced that he would write his own libretto so that no fool of a librettist could spoil it. Ricordi persuaded him to accept Ruggero Leoncavallo as his librettist, but Puccini soon asked Ricordi to remove him from the project.
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| Giacomo Puccini |
Four other librettists were then involved with the opera, as Puccini
constantly changed his mind about the structure of the piece. It was
almost by accident that the final two, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe
Giacosa, came together to complete the opera.
Puccini's next work after Manon Lescaut was La bohème, a four-act opera based on the 1851 book by Henri Murger, La Vie de Bohème. La bohème
premiered in Turin in 1896, conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Within a few
years, it had been performed throughout many of the leading opera
houses of Europe, including Britain, as well as in the United States. It
was a popular success, and remains one of the most frequently performed
operas ever written.
Puccini's next work after La bohème was Tosca (1900), arguably Puccini's first foray into verismo, the realistic depiction of many facets of real life including violence.
More information: English National Opera
Puccini had been considering an opera on this theme since he saw the play Tosca by Victorien Sardou in 1889, when he wrote to his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, begging him to get Sardou's permission for the work to be made into an opera: I see in this Tosca the opera I need, with no overblown proportions, no elaborate spectacle, nor will it call for the usual excessive amount of music.
On 25 February 1903, Puccini was seriously injured in a car crash during a nighttime journey on the road from Lucca to Torre del Lago. The accident and its consequences slowed Puccini's completion of his next work, Madama Butterfly.
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| Giacomo Puccini |
The original version of Madama Butterfly, premiered at La Scala on 17 February 1904 with Rosina Storchio in the title role.
It was initially greeted with great hostility, probably largely owing to inadequate rehearsals. When Storchio's kimono accidentally lifted during the performance, some in the audience started shouting: The butterfly is pregnant and There is the little Toscanini. The latter comment referred to her well publicised affair with Arturo Toscanini. This version was in two acts; after its disastrous premiere, Puccini withdrew the opera, revising it for what was virtually a second premiere at Brescia in May 1904 and performances in Buenos Aires, London, the USA and Paris.
It was initially greeted with great hostility, probably largely owing to inadequate rehearsals. When Storchio's kimono accidentally lifted during the performance, some in the audience started shouting: The butterfly is pregnant and There is the little Toscanini. The latter comment referred to her well publicised affair with Arturo Toscanini. This version was in two acts; after its disastrous premiere, Puccini withdrew the opera, revising it for what was virtually a second premiere at Brescia in May 1904 and performances in Buenos Aires, London, the USA and Paris.
In 1907, Puccini made his final revisions to the opera in a fifth version, which has become known as the standard version.
Today, the standard version of the opera is the version most often performed around the world. However, the original 1904 version is occasionally performed as well, and has been recorded.
After 1904, Puccini's compositions were less frequent. In 1906 Giacosa died and, in 1909, there was scandal after Puccini's wife, Elvira, falsely accused their maid Doria Manfredi of having an affair with Puccini.
Finally, in 1912, the death of Giulio Ricordi, Puccini's editor and publisher, ended a productive period of his career
More information: CMuse
Inspiration is an awakening,
a quickening of all man's faculties,
and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.
Giacomo Puccini
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