The historian Eric Hobsbawm described him as the last of the "people's bandits" (à la Robin Hood) and the first to be covered in real time by modern mass media.

Although he was a good student,[3] when his older brother Giuseppe was drafted into the Italian armed forces in 1935, he left school to help his father cultivate the family farm.

He soon tired of the drudgery of farm work, hired a substitute from the village to take his place, and began trading in olive oil, which brought additional income to the family.

[8] While Giuliano's core band was never larger than 20 men,[9] peasants from Montelepre and nearby Giardinello would join him in the mountains temporarily for the excellent pay the bandit offered.

[14][15][16] Whenever possible they were allowed a minute to pray before death and a note of responsibility was left; to warn other spies, and to make sure that neither Giuliano nor other bandits would be accused of crimes they didn't commit.

[18] Giuliano was admired for his bravery and resistance—but even more because he routinely prevailed in contests of power—the ultimate measure of worth in Sicilian culture, with its premium on individualism and settling one's own scores.

[21] In April 1945 venturing onto the larger stage of politics, Giuliano issued a public declaration of his support for MIS, the Movement for the Independence of Sicily (also referred to as Separatism).

[22] Separatism coalesced in the aftermath of the invasion, drawing on long-simmering anger at Sicily's neglect by the central government, and the sudden fluidity of the political situation.

The movement was dealt a severe blow when, for political and war strategy reasons, the Allies, who had courted, if not encouraged separatist leaders, handed control of Sicily to the Badoglio government in Rome in February 1944.

To strengthen their forces and divert attention from their army, the leaders of MIS and EVIS enlisted Giuliano, who after negotiating for substantial funding, accepted the rank of Colonel, and agreed to conduct an armed campaign in his zone.

[30] For the rest of 1946 and until his death, Giuliano's main activity and source of revenue was kidnapping, often carried out by the squad of Antonio Terranova, the bandit's most formidable and resourceful operative.

Although Giuliano identified with the peasantry and had progressive ideas for land reform close to left-wing doctrine, he was staunchly anti-Communist, based on stories of the U.S. he heard from his parents.

Giuliano's behaviour before and after the armed action indicates that he believed that he and his men would be offered pardons for their crimes if all went well on May Day, an outcome ostensibly guaranteed by some prominent Sicilian.

There were reports of four armed local Mafiosi leaving the Portella area shortly after the massacre, but when Giuliano's involvement became known, investigation of the Mafia halted, and the bandits became the inquiry's focus.

"*[40] For the remainder of 1947, Giuliano maintained a low public profile while continuing his kidnap and ransom enterprise, occasionally engaging in ambushes and firefights with the law forces as opportunities presented themselves or to assert dominance in his area of operations.

The killing of a Carabiniere colonel in October 1947 occasioned a brief incursion of 1000 law enforcers and mass arrests but failed to capture Giuliano or any member of his band.

Shortly after seeing his mother and Mariannina for what would be the last time at a June picnic in the countryside,[44] the bandit learned that, besides the broken promise of a pardon, Santo Fleres' Mafia faction was informing law enforcement of Giuliano's movements.

[45] In the first action by any Mafiosi after Fleres' death, Giuliano opted out late from a law enforcement-Mafia fake escape to Tunisia by speedboat, probably forewarned by a still friendly Mafia faction or politician.

Through audacity and luck she managed to visit, interview, and photograph Giuliano in the mountains, enhancing his notoriety throughout Europe, and giving Cyliakus her own burst of celebrity status.

The publicity from Giuliano's continued mastery over the forces of law and order caused great consternation to Italy's Christian Democratic government, and in August Minister of the Interior Scelba dispatched Colonel Ugo Luca, commander of Carabinieri in Lazio, to "observe" enforcement activity in Sicily, then overseen by Ciro Verdiani.

Aged 58 and known as the "Italian Lawrence" Luca had a stellar military record, especially distinguished in intelligence work, and had been recommended to Scelba as a possible replacement for Verdiani.

Individual arrests of bandits began in late September and on 13 October, most of Giuliano's key squad and its leader, Giuseppe Cucinella, were captured in a gun battle in Palermo.

[52] Under duress in the territory he formerly dominated, Giuliano (and sometimes Pisciotta) surrendered most of his independence, and retreated to the protection of a Mafia branch in Castelvetrano, near the south coast, headed by Nicola 'The American' Piccione, repatriated from a successful career in the United States.

The bandit's primary residence while in the Castelvetrano region was the home, in the heart of the city, of Gregorio de Maria, a childhood friend of Piccione's subordinate Giuseppe 'Pino' Marotta.

[55] To spite Luca and their mutual superiors, in December 1949 he arranged for Jacopo Rizza of Oggi magazine to interview Giuliano and Pisciotta in the countryside near Salemi.

[71] Gaia Servadio sees the bandit as a tool of the Mafia, whose notoriety and success were not the product of his personal qualities, but entirely a function of his mafioso protectors.

The one obvious fact about the men who used him and threw him away is that their conception of an independent Sicily was very different from his, which was certainly closer to that of the organized peasants whose May Day meeting he massacred at the Portella della Ginestra in 1947.

[85] Maria Lombardo shared his conception—she told Michael Stern that the three outstanding personages of history were Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and her son, Turi.

[86] Eric Hobsbawm agrees with Chandler's assessment of the bandit, emphasizing the role of the MIS leaders in persuading Giuliano see himself as a major political player.

The libretto outlines in short, graphic scenes the network of intrigue between Sicilian independence activists, Mafia and State that surrounds, and eventually destroys, the bandit hero.