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
Dialogues of the Carmelites New York City on 3 March 1966, in a staging by New York City Opera. The opera is among a comparatively small number of post-Puccini works that has never lost its place in the international repertory. Against the setting of the French Revolution, when crowds stop carriages in the street and aristocrats are attacked, the pathologically timid Blanche de la Force decides to retreat from the world and enter a Carmelite monastery. The Mother Superior informs her that the Carmelite Order is not a refuge; it is the duty of the nuns to guard the Order, not the other way