Riccardo Zandonai was an Italian composer of the late Romantic and early modern periods, born in Borgo Sacco near Rovereto, then part of Austria-Hungary, and trained at the Pesaro Conservatory under Pietro Mascagni. He worked chiefly in Milan and elsewhere in Italy as an opera composer before returning to Pesaro in 1935 to direct the Rossini Conservatory until his death. His output centers on opera, most notably Francesca da Rimini (1914), along with orchestral, choral, and vocal works. He died in Trebbiantico, near Pesaro, in 1944 following gallstone surgery.

Zandonai is remembered chiefly for Francesca da Rimini, which has never fully left the operatic repertoire and continues to be staged and recorded, representing a late flowering of Italian verismo-adjacent opera in the shadow of Puccini. His standing among contemporaries was such that Puccini and Toscanini considered him a candidate to complete Puccini’s unfinished Turandot, a task that ultimately went to Franco Alfano, and as conservatory director he also contributed to the revival of Rossini’s works, though most of his broader catalogue is rarely performed today.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riccardo_Zandonai