Mascagni admitted in his later years that he had always been a rebel.  After escaping from Milan he intensified his activity as an orchestra director in the world of opera.  He directed some operettas at Genoa’s Politeama in 1885.

Luigi Maresca became his manager in 1886 and they together travelled around Italy until settling in Cerignola located in the region of Apuglia near Foggia. Mascagni brought his nomadic lifestyle to an end in Cerignola.  He wanted more than anything to have a stable job because he was no longer alone.  He suddenly found himself with a young lady at his side.  She was originally from Parma and she was one year older than Mascagni.  Her name was Argenide Marcellina Carbognani.

She was affectionately known by everyone as Lina. Pietro Mascagni met Lina in Parma where he had stopped to direct the operetta Cuore e Mano by Lecoque.  The young Lina joined the troupe to follow Mascagni when they were getting ready to leave.  They lived together in Cerignola under very tight economic conditions. 

They got married only after the birth of their first son in 1887.  Their son unfortunately died when he was only 4 months old.  Mascagni tells us, “we had set up house first an wrought-iron bed and a table. The fact is that the first day Lina and I saw ourselves for the first time sitting at that table which was ours with a lunch prepared by us and eaten by us, we were overcome by emotion.  Certainly in those times, all the miracles we could muster were necessary. The most scrupulous housekeeping was necessary even to put a pot on the stove.  We lived from day to day, from hand to mouth.

Lina was a rather reserved, yet volatile and possessive woman.  She lived her entire life in her husband’s shadow.  She was, however, always ready to fight at Mascagni’s side with all the force and energy she could muster.  She had a fighter's temperament.  She was the  one who ran to the post office to send in the music score of the Cavaleria Rusticana in 1889 when Sonzogno was holding his annual music competition.  Mascagni was suffering through a period of uncertainty, doubt and uncomfortableness. He did not feel up to participating in Sonzogno’s competition.

But it was his wife Lina who, unbeknown to him, took the musical score and sent it in. Pietro Mascagni wrote about his wife to a friend – “if I have remained here in Cerignola, I did it for this woman who divides with me her destiny, and her hours of boredom, gloom and pain”. Going from dire poverty to international fame in just one evening did not go to Lina’s head. Instead she always remained with both feet on the ground. 

She never changed.  She ran the household and took care of the domestic chores, always in a frugal way, as if she were still living in poverty.  She was, however, a woman of character.  She was very possessive and she would often throw fits of jealously, only to forgive Mascagni in the end. When she discovered that Mascagni had a fixed lover, she had to divide him with this other woman. 

This did not stop her from attacking her rival verbally and viciously. She had three children with Mascagni and she was a model mother.  Mascagni was always affectionate and devoted to her.

Mascagni had a very strong sense of family.  He was a very apprehensive husband and a loving father with his three children, Domenico or Mimì, Edoardo or Dino and Emilia or Emy and then, again, with his grandchildren Piermarcello (Bubi), Pietro (Pierino) and Maria Teresa (Mitì).  Lina was also very affectionate and attentive to their well-being.  Mascagni had a more open relationship with his daughter Emy. 

When they were apart he wrote her very often, telling her about everyone and everything - the family questions, friends, work. The correspondence which began in 1900, goes up to the year of Mascagni’s death in 1943.  In these letters we find paternal tenderness for his daughter and the desire Mascagni had to open up to a friend in difficult moments.  We can also see the protective attitude of a father when he knows his daughter is suffering.

Biography - His Friends - His Women - His Passions - His Tours - Portrait of an artist