Festival Puccini produced the first performances of a Puccini opera on the lake shore, in front of the Maestro's house. In a provisional theatre, the "Carro di Tespi Lirico" with its stage built on piles stuck in the lake, a travelling opera company performed "La bohème" directed by Forzano and conducted by Mascagni. The same company came back in 1931 when Beniamino Gigli and Adelaide Saraceni performed in "La bohème", while Rosetta Pampanini and Angelo Michetti performed "Madama Butterfly". This was the beginning of what was to become a major opera festival. However, in the years before 1949, due to the political
The Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical) Puccini charged in a lawsuit that a recurring two-bar passage in "Music of the Night" closely resembled a similar phrase first heard in the aria "Quello che tacete" from Puccini's opera "Girl of the Golden West". The litigation was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. In 1990 a Baltimore songwriter named Ray Repp filed a lawsuit alleging that the title song from "Phantom" was based on a song that he wrote in 1978 called "Till You". After eight years of litigation – including an unsuccessful countersuit by Lloyd Webber claiming that "Till You" was itself a plagiarism of