The Italian composer best known for the opera L'Amore di Tre Re is shown seated in an attractive photograph that he has inscribed to Leonora Shier, a traveling secretary for the Chicago Opera Company.

Montemezzi visited the United States to conduct the American premiere of his opera La Nave in Chicago on November 18, 1919; he signed this photograph while in New York a couple of months later. Its recipient, Leonora Shier, worked for the Chicago Opera at the time. She would later serve as a rental agent and secretary for Carnegie Hall from 1925 to 1956.