Giacomo Puccini - Messa di Gloria for soloists, choir and orchestra

The long genealogical line was crowned by GIACOMO ANTONIO DOMENICO MICHELE II MARIA PUCCINI, the celebrated maestro, who highlighted the culmination in the development of the Italian opera from the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Alongside his twelve musical dramatic works, known in all opera theatres of the world, his legacy includes less famous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works, as well as church music. Among his sacred opuses, greatest popularity was attained by the early work MESSA DI GLORIA (or Messa a quattro voci) for a four-voice choir, orchestra and three soloists – tenor, bass and baritone. Created by the young composer as a diploma work for his graduation from the Giovanni Piccinni College of Music in Lucca, it had its first performance there on 12 July 1880, at the Feast of San Paolino, the patron of the bells. Although greatly acclaimed by the audience, the work gave rise to bitter controversies, as younger musicians descried it as the precursor of a new direction in sacred music, “La musica puccinis- tica”, but outraged parish councillors at the Lucca Cathedral considered it completely unliturgical did not bless its performance in a church. In Puccini’s own words, the Mass was deliberately entitled „Messa di Gloria”, because it has a glorifying, secular and not liturgical character. Even in the Qui tollis peccata mundi episode, the composer has introduced a popular Tuscan folk tune. Fragmentary material from the Mass was later used in his operas – music themes from the Kyrie appears in Edgar, and from Agnus Dei – in Manon Lescaut. As a matter of fact, the Credo had already been written and performed in 1878, originally conceived as a self-contained work. Puccini never published the full manuscript of the Messa, and although well received at the time, it was not performed again until 1952, first in Chicago and then in Naples. At the end of World War II, Fr. Dante Del Fiorentino purchased an old copy of the manuscript of the Messa from the Vandini family in Lucca, believing it to be the original score. However, the authentic autograph, which was in possession of the Puccini family, was consigned by the composer’s daughter-in-law to the Ricordi, Puccini’s official publisher. The ensuing legal battle was finally resolved by dividing the rights to the work between Ricordi and Mills Music (the publishers of the Fiorentino manuscript).