According to Mario Morini, a demanding Mascagnian biographer, the Mascagni family came from an ancient Florentine branch. They first settled in San Miniato al Tedesco in the 18th century.

They belonged to the upper middle class. Paolo Mascagni (1755-1815) was a famous anatomist and professor at the universities of Pisa and Florence. Around 1950 Antonio Mascagni settled in Leghorn. His son, Domenico, born in 1834, married a Leghorn native, Emilia Reboa di Stefano.

Domenico was the owner of a bakery in Piazza delle Erbe where a brightly coloured picturesque fruit and vegetable market stood. On 7 December 1863 Pietro Mascagni was born at dawn. Pietro Antonio Stefano was the second child of Domenico and Emilia who had in all five children: Francesco, Pietro, Carlo, Maria and Paolo.

In 1873 Emilia died at the age of only 32 and for her husband Domenico it was a tragedy. He had to take care of his family alone. Domenico wanted to pass the bakery down to his oldest son Francesco while Pietro, who was called Pietrino, showed a precocious and lively intelligence. Domenico hoped that Pietrino would choose a career in law. But Pietro dreamed of becoming a musical composer.

The young Mascagni began his career with the moral and financial help of his uncle Stefano. Uncle Stefano also helped Pietro through his high school years and during the time Mascagni went to study music in spite of his father’s dreams of a law career for his son. Other than studying the piano, the young Mascagni began singing as a contralto in the Scola Cantorum in the church of San Benedetto.

Mascagni himself tells us that at thirteen he found a libretto entitled Zilia. Zilia is about one of the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Mascagni possessed only rudimentary knowledge of the keyboard. He spent hours at the piano looking for melodies to adapt to the verses. All the noise that resulted from Mascagni’s piano playing exasperated his father who ended up burning the precious libretto. Pietro succeeded in saving and hiding away the musical notes. He would later partially use these notes, according to a direct witness, in Guglielmo Ratcliff.