Turandot Puccini's publisher Tito Ricordi II decided on Alfano because his opera "La leggenda di Sakùntala" resembled "Turandot" in its setting and heavy orchestration. Alfano provided a first version of the ending with a few passages of his own, and even a few sentences added to the libretto which was not considered complete even by Puccini himself. After the severe criticisms by Ricordi and the conductor Arturo Toscanini, he was forced to write a second, strictly censored version that followed Puccini's sketches more closely, to the point where he did not set some of Adami's text to music because Puccini had
Messa (Puccini) in 1878 and was initially conceived by Puccini 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). However, he re-used some of its themes in other works, such as the Agnus Dei in his opera "Manon Lescaut" and the Kyrie in "Edgar". 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, imagining it was the original score.