Guido Menasci

“Mom, that wine is generous, and sure

today I’ve gulped too many glasses …

I go out in the open.

But first I want you to bless me

like that day I left as a soldier …

And then … mom … listen …

if I … did not return … you will have to be

as a mother to Santa, whom I had sworn

to lead to the altar. “

Almost everyone knows Guido Menasci (1867–1925) as librettist, together with his friend Targioni Tozzetti, of Pietro Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana”.

Melancholy, poor in health, we remember the story of the booklet finished writing on the last day of the competition’s expiration, then won by Mascagni’s work — in which the social theme of the Vergian text is diluted and becomes only folklore. The success of the work decreed the fame of the two librettists who still collaborated on other works by the composer from Livorno.

Not everyone knows, however, that Menasci was an all round man of letters. His father, Councilor for Education of the Municipality of Livorno, was one of the first Italian translators of Heine, a German poet halfway between romanticism and realism. These works infused Menasci’s love for especially foreign literature. He knew French so well that he gave orations in Paris and was a fine Goethian literary critic. He wrote prose, children’s books and melancholy verses inspired by our marine landscapes.