Every year the Festival accommodates 40,000 spectators in its open theatre, little distance from the Mausoleum Villa where the composer Giacomo Puccini lived and worked and where now, in one small crypt, his mortal remains are preserved. Torre del Lago is a renowned destination for lyric music lovers and for the tourists who wish to visit the places of the most appreciated composer of the twentieth century.

The Festival took place for the first time in 1930 according to Puccini's own desire "But once I would want to go listening to one my work in the open here... " (Puccini to Giovacchino Forzano in November 1924, before leaving for the clinic in Brussels where little after he died). Bohème and Madama Butterfly's composer, "the last great poet of the Italian melodrama, the greatest opera composer that Italy and the world have had in our century" (Roman Vlad), expressed therefore the desire to play her "creatures" in the incredible natural stage of Lago di Massaciuccoli.

Those words remained therefore carved in Forzano's heart (playwright and librettista, director among others of the first performance of Turandot at La Scala theatre in Milan, 25 April 1926) who after the death of the Master wanted to realize such dream. In 1930, with Pietro Mascagni, Puccini's room and study mate in the years of the Conservatory, Forzano began to put on stage the first masterpieces on the lake shores, in front of the Master's house.

On 24 August 1930, in a temporary theatre with the stage built on pile dwellings in front of the Villa, a company of itinerante work, performed Bohème directed by Forzano with Pampanini, Carosio, Minghetti and Luigi Montesano, director was Pietro Mascagni.

Next year they returned to Torre del Lago to perform Bohème with Beniamino Gigli and Adelaide Saraceni, Madama Butterfly with Rosetta Pampanini and Angelo Michetti, directed by Edoardo Vitale marking therefore the beginning of one of the most famous and loved lyric festivals from the audience.

In 1966 the theatre was built on the firm land north of the little harbour in Torre del Lago. Here it is still now with the evocative background of the lake in the nocturnal lights of the small villages situated on the opposite shore, they are currently working at the construction of the New great open air theatre in Giacomo Puccini's music park, which will be opened 2008 during the celebrations for the 150 years from the composer's birth.