Vittorio Gnecchi

The uproar caused by the article curbed the circulation of Cassandra in Italy, while abroad there were several performances until 1933 (including at the Wiener Volksoper, in Philadelphia and in numerous German theatres).

It then arrived in 2011 at the Teatro Massimo Bellini, with performers Giovanna Casolla (Clytemnestra), John Treleaven (Agamemnon) and Maria Pentcheva (Cassandra) and conductor Donato Renzetti.

The composer, whose style is characterised by the use of post-wagnerian chromatic harmonies within classical forms,[3] came late to the honours of the Salzburg Festival, in which some of his works were performed, including the Missa Salisburgensis (1933), the Cantata Biblica (1934) and the opera Giuditta (1953), also as Cassandra with a libretto by Illica, the composition of which had begun almost forty years earlier, in 1914.

The work, after achieving good success abroad (Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Philadelphia, Stockholm), arrived in Italy at the Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi in Trieste on 25 January 1931 and was also seen in Ravenna the following year.

The opera, "rich in colour, very elegant in the development of the themes and in the harmonisation"[5] is set at the end of the 18th century and tells the story of the love of two sisters for the same man, Baron Perdicano.