Curiosities and Delights of Tuscany

Carla Geri Camporesi- Barbara Golini

The Buccellato of Lucca, common in the district, is a simple household dessert. A type of bread enriched with raisins and flavoured (flavored)with anise, it has a compact consistency that goes well with Vinsanto, coffee, and other beverages. A particularly gluttonous native of Lucca is Giacomo Puccini. His large house, Torre del Lago (The Lake Tower), manifests his immeasurable passions, which included music, women, and hunting. His immortal and ardent operas inspire dreams. Puccini’s music is dressed in the daily sentiments of a poor, Parisian seamstress or a small geisha in Nagasaki. His music involves simple stories whose melodies convey precious and surpassing harmonic innovations that reveal a profound orchestral knowledge. The “maestro at Torre del Lago” was inspired by small, day-to-day joys: the smells of home and the preparation of Buccellato. After a long hunt waiting in the foliage by the lake, Puccini liked to come home with his friends to a nice fireplace, a glass of Vinsanto in one hand, and a fat slice of Buccellato in the other.