Giacomo Puccini, after having received baptism in his Birth Home with special authorization, was conducted to the Cathedral for the completion of baptismal rites.

In this same Cathedral all his ancestors had performed a considerable part of their activity, as organists, composers and conductors. It is worth remembering that the church was then equipped with two wonderful instruments, today unfortunately dismantled, of which the choirs and the front pipes are still visible, one of the 15th century by Domenico di Lorenzo in cornu epistolae – to the right as you look at the high altar – the other of the 17th century by Cosimo and Andrea Ravani in cornu evangelii – to the left.

And in this very Cathedral, for the Holy Cross in 1872, the young Giacomo made his professional debut as an assistant of the second chorus, for a fee of 3.72 liras. The programme included a Mottettone by his father Michele. With his uncle Fortunato Magi as conductor.

Despite the many demands made by his mother Albina, Giacomo was never able to obtain the office of organist, held continuously by a Puccini for 124 years – from 1740 until the death of his father Michele in 1864 – for the poor judgment of the members of a commission, to whom the Opera di S. Croce had delegated the decision.

Becoming famous and far from Lucca, Puccini always remembered his first attendances and did not lack interest in the music that was performed. He spoke precisely about those with his friend Gustavo Giovannetti and in September 1887 wrote to his brother-in-law Raffaello Franceschini, with his usual ability to mix the sacred and the profane: “Tell me what’s new in Lucca and what music will be performed for Santa Croce and tell me everything that has happened, deaths, rapes, robberies, adulteries and cuckolds”.