LUIGI ILLICA
Librettist (1857 – 1919)

Journalist, verse writer, member of a radical group of Milanese writers and artists (scapigliatura Milanese), Luigi Illica, who was perhaps influenced by his father, a notary with radical-republican views, already demonstrated as a child a rebellious and fiery temperament. His secondary school records at Piacenza were less than exemplary, as was the time he spent attending Cremona college. When he was about 20-years-old he left his hometown of Castell’Arquato in the Province of Piacenza and embarked on a naval career. After four years at sea, during which he participated in the battle of Plevna against the Turks, he returned and settled in Milan in 1879, initially finding work with a literary newspaper owned by his cousin, Carlo Mascaretti. He later became a columnist for the Corriere della Sera. Shortly after, he moved to Bologna where, with Luigi Lodi and Giuseppe Barbanti-Brodano, he co-founded the Don Chisciotte, an ultra-radical journal inspired by Giosuè Carducci. The newspaper was suspended when Illica and Lodi were made to appear before the Correctional Tribunal of Bologna for their participation at an anti-French demonstration.

Upon returning to Milan in 1882, Illica began publishing his writing (a mixture of prose, satirical pieces and sketches), under the pseudonym of Luigi della Scorziana. Over the following years he came to prominence as the author of a number of theatrical scripts (although in reality his debut had already been made in 1875 at the Filodrammatico theatre in his hometown with the one-act play, Hassan). However, it was from 1886 onwards that he began to consolidate his reputation as a playwright culminating in 1891 in the staging of what many consider his masterpiece, L’Eredità del Felis.

In addition to his activities as a playwright, Illica is best known for his activities from 1889 as an opera Librettist. His rising success in this field was crowned in 1891 when he joined Casa Ricordi. Over the course of the following two decades Illica wrote for some of the best musicians of the era. He completed approximately 30 librettos, notably including Germania (1902) and Siberia (1903) for Giordano, Iris (1898) and Isabeau (1911) for Mascagni, and, of course, Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900) and Madame Butterfly (1904) in collaboration with Giacosa and Manon Lescaut (1891 – 1892) for Giacomo Puccini.

The Great War revived his patriotic enthusiasm and in 1915, at 58 years of age, he departed for the front, enrolling in the army as a volunteer. The following year he suffered a bad fall from a horse which forced him to return to Colombarone, a family property in the countryside near Castell’Arquato, where he died on the 16th December 1919.