Here’s Gianni Schicchi as you’ve never seen him before.
(Under)worlds away from Giacomo Puccini’s quick-witted, charming scapegrace, the Schicchi of Dante’s “Inferno” is condemned to hell for the very reason we cheer him in the opera – for impersonating Buoso Donati, in whose guise he alters Donati’s will, much to his own advantage.
Of course, Dante’s wife happened to be a descendant of Donati, so you might say he had something of an axe to grind. Also, the celebrated poet being of noble ancestry, he would have had been predisposed to finding the peasant Schicchi’s behavior reprehensible.
What would Lauretta think of her “babbino caro” now?
Schicchi exhibiting some downright vampiric tendencies in William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s “Dante and Virgil,” 1850