Puccini writes to impresario Luigi Broglio: Nothing true of the words -- it will rain -- still so much before you come…I shall be quite happy that you come for the baptism. He concludes with a remark that a man called Taliano is always the boss.

In September 1902, Puccini was very happily working away on the first act of Madama Butterfly. It is unclear what he means here by "baptism", though it is possible he refers to a first performance of one of his operas. As Howard Greenfeld notes in his biography, the composer always spent the period following the premiere of his latest opera seeing that it was successfully launched in Italy and throughout Europe. Just a few weeks after this note, in fact, Puccini attended the Dresden premiere of Tosca.

The recipient, Luigi Grabinski Broglio, was the director of Milan's Teatro Manzoni. He published a book on Italian theaters in 1907 (I teatri d’Italia e le principali piazze teatrali estere), served as co-editor of a special illustrated edition marking Verdi's centennial in 1913, and knew Puccini's publisher, Ricordi.