ROME - This year marks the 100th anniversary of the death of legendary Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, but according to one expert in an interview with Il Fatto Quotidiano, the centenary celebrations, which finish on Friday, were disappointingly unambitious. 

 Professor Virgilio Bernardoni is a Puccini enthusiast. He is, amongst other things, a renowned musicologist, lecturer at the University of Bergamo and member of the scientific group dedicated to the study of Puccini's music.

 To celebrate 100 years since the death of the great opera composer, Bernardoni would have expected a plethora of ambitious, innovative and interesting events. Yet, according to him, committees responsible for the celebrations misdirected and overdistributed their resources, instead of focussing on a larger objective shared between various smaller projects. 

 The composer lived a varied artistic life, excelling not only in opera but also in photography, poetry, philosophy and other musical genres. For Bernardoni, the celebrations largely failed to capture this variety, with too much focus on 'cliché' topics such as 'Puccini and women'.

 Events were also concentrated too much within certain towns related to Puccini's life (Lucca, Viareggio), whilst publishing projects focussed more on reproducing well-known works than printing new material and research. Concerts performed all the typical repertoire and new musicalogical research was not given much foreground.

 Whilst Bernardoni expressed his disappointment in the centenary to Il Fatto, he highlighted some positives, such as the exhibition of Puccini's photographs, which garnered much critical acclaim and even toured outside Italy. 

 There's still much more to be discovered about the life and work of the great composer, according to Bernardoni. 'Puccini has not finished surprising us yet'. 

 dabj