Pietro Mascagni: Opera Composer, Friends with the Pope
Seventy-five years ago, at 7:15 A.M., on August 2, 1945, the composer and conductor from Livorno, considered by many to be the founder of that opera style marked by a strong realism that was verismo in music, died in Rome after a long illness: Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945). In 1940, the fiftieth anniversary of his most…