Ferdinando Fontana

An Italian poet, journalist and librettist, and the writer of Puccini's first two operas. A political radical and a member of the Scapigliatura, he made his name in Milan as a poet and dramatist, wrote comedies in Milanese dialect, and as a journalist reported from Berlin and travelled across the United States. Ponchielli introduced him to the young Puccini, for whom he wrote Le villi and Edgar, and he also wrote Asrael for Alberto Franchetti and translated Lehár's Die lustige Witwe. Exiled for his part in the Milan uprising of 1898, he spent the rest of his life in Switzerland.