Puccini's Land

By spending time in this part of Tuscany during the past few months, we have learned that this year marks the 150th anniversary of Giacomo Puccini's birth. Puccini was born in Lucca on December 22nd, 1858, is the most performed composer in the world, which I suppose anyone who knows anything about opera would already know (as you may know from reading my other blog, my knowledge of opera remains somewhat limited).

Throughout the year, many concerts, lectures and other events will celebrate this anniversary in "Giacomo Puccini's Land," which encompasses Lucca, city and province, and the surrounding areas including Bagni di Lucca.


From the 1890's onwards, Puccini lived mostly in Torre del Lago, a town about fifteen miles from Lucca, where he eventually built a villa on the lake now called the Villa Museo Puccini. During his time there, he wrote his most famous operas, La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900) and Madama Butterfly (1904).

Puccini also spent time in Bagni di Lucca, and it was here that he wrote most of the opera Turondot, that remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1924. I do not know yet what specific events are planned for when we will be in the area, but hopefully we can catch some of them later this year.

The Madness of Colour

For me, choosing colours provides one of the most fun (and anxiety inducing) activities of the renovation project. I've always had an idea of the colours we wanted, but transferring what's in my head to paint samples has proved a bit tricky.

First, to find a colour for the house exterior, we walked around town with a fan of paint sample cards, trying to match the colour of buildings we liked. I'm sure we looked a bit odd going from building to building, but in the end, we found one we liked. We chose an ochre-like yellow, which should look good if we got the match right.

The interior proved more challenging. To help make the decision, we bought about a dozen different sample-size paint cans in various shades of the colours we liked. We then painted them onto several wooden boards to see what they looked like together, and also in various lighting environments.

I thought this would make the decision easier, but it actually made it more difficult - they all looked good in the various combinations, but none fit exactly right. I became convinced that I was searching for a colour that did not actually exist, somewhere between sand, straw and hay.

At one point, we found the perfect colour for the kitchen on a restaurant's dining room walls, but we could not match it to the various sample cards we tried (I suppose I did look a bit silly in the restaurant trying to inconspicuously match paint samples to the wall). We even went as far as asking the restaurant manager if he knew the colour and paint brand, but with no success.

Eventually, the moment of truth arrived: we had to make a decision in the paint store. Armed with our chips and plywood "mood board," we chose the final colours - green (Celtic Forest) for the kitchen walls, the best approximation of the non-existent colour between sand, straw and hay for the walls in the rest of the house, and olive for the shutters and doors

I'm now experiencing a terrifying fear that we've chosen all the wrong colours (I've done it before), and they will look awful once actually on the walls. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I guess we'll just wait and see. After all, it's only paint.

Now, what about the bathroom tiles. . . ?

A Work in Progress

We visited the villa at the beginning of this month to see how things have been progressing. As the pictures below will attest, much has happened. The builders have demolished and removed the existing kitchen and bathrooms, the plumber has removed the old pipes and installed the new plumbing and boiler, and the electrician has completed much of the new wiring in the kitchen and bathrooms.

It's amazing to see the thickness and composition of the stone walls when the trenches are dug for the pipes and wires. It least we can be sure that the house is sturdy!

Here are some comparisons of the house in its original state and what it looks like now. It will be fun to see the end result compared with these.

The kitchen before and now:



The ground floor bathroom:



The upstairs bathroom:



The garden (yikes!):


It looks a little scary, but we're happy that work is progressing on schedule, which does exceed my expectations. We will be back at the end of this month and should see quite a bit of progress. In fact, I'm told the builders have almost finished plastering of the walls.

Can't wait to get back and see how it's going.