Pietro Mascagni resolved as a boy to compose music for the same ode; and did it at once.

Then he set to work upon a two-act opera, "Il Filanda." His uncle died, and a Count Florestan (here is another Beethovenian echo!) sent him to the Conservatory at Milan, where, like nearly all of his native contemporaries, he imbibed knowledge (and musical ideas) from Ponchielli.
After two years or so of academic study he yielded to a gypsy desire and set out on his wanderings, but not until he had chosen as a companion Maffei's translation of Heine's "Ratcliff"-- a gloomy romance which seems to have caught the fancy of many composers.

There followed five years of as checkered a life as ever musician led.

Over and over again he was engaged as conductor of an itinerant or stationary operetta and opera company, only to have the enterprise fail and leave him stranded.

For six weeks in Naples his daily ration was a plate of macaroni.