Although today Alberto Franchetti’s name is only familiar to a handful of music lovers, at the turn of the 20th century, he was something of a newsreel star: a talented composer, a fashionable member of Italian high society, a car enthusiast (he was one of the founders of the Italian Automobile Club, of which he also served as president), a mountaineer, and a lover of cinema, luxury and good food – like Rossini, he enjoyed cooking as well as fine dining. To say he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth would be an understatement.

He was in fact born in Turin on 18 September 1860 into a very wealthy Jewish family: his father was Baron Raimondo Franchetti and his mother was Luisa Sara Rothschild, of the renowned Viennese banking dynasty. Having begun his musical education in Turin and then Venice, after the family moved there, he continued his composition studies in Germany, initially with Rheinberger in Munich, then with Draeseke and Kretschmar in Dresden, from whose conservatory he graduated in 1885.

Turning his attention to the opera house: he was a member of the so-called Giovane Scuola (lit. ‘Young school’) – those composers who shared a desire to breathe new life into Italian opera, drawing inspiration from the achievements of Wagner and Meyerbeer (a feeling particularly strong in the German-educated Franchetti). He was offered membership of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia and an appointment as director of the Florence Conservatory (1926–28). By the time Mussolini promulgated his racial laws, Franchetti had retired from public life, although between 1939 and 1941 he did write one last opera, Don Bonaparte. Franchetti died in Viareggio in 1942, already forgotten by the music world.