The great advantage of studying the famous Venetian composer Vivaldi, an Oxford professor of music once told me, was that you needed to visit Venice frequently. Once there, it was necessary to drink lots of local wine — vital preparation for long stints researching in damp and dusty libraries.

So was it similarly necessary to go to the lovely Italian city of Lucca to research into the Puccini family? A question for Janet Lincé, who with her Oxford-based choir Choros, is about to give the UK premiere of a Requiem by Giacomo Puccini — not the famed composer of La Bohème and Madam Butterfly, but his great-great-great grandfather.

“I would love to go to Lucca, and just get an atmosphere,” Janet told me. “But actually it was nothing like that at all! What happened was that way back in, I think, 2001, a friend of mine, Ghislaine Morgan, came up to Oxford to sing the Handel Dixit Dominus with the OUP choir, which I was then conducting. After the night-before rehearsal, she thrust this score into my hand and said, ‘I thought you’d like to know what I’ve just been recording. It’s by Puccini the elder, and it’s an amazing Requiem. I sung one of the solos, and it was exhausting.’.”

“I flipped through it, and thought it looked quite interesting,” Janet continued. “But then it ended up on the shelf. Every couple of years I would see it there, and think, ‘hmmm, wonder if I could ever do that?’. Eventually I decided that I wanted to do the Dixit Dominus with Choros, and remembered the occasion Ghislaine had been here to sing it with the OUP choir. I thought, ‘hang on, the Requiem is the same orchestration, same soloists, similar period, to Dixit Dominus. Let’s see if we can put them together.’.”

And so the idea of giving the UK premiere of Puccini the elder’s Requiem in Oxford was born. “The recording of the Requiem was done in Saarbrücken,” Janet explained. “The guy who edited the score comes from there. I think a couple of movements were also run through in one of the British music colleges, but apart from that it’s never been done anywhere else. So I thought, ‘why not?’.”

Opera composer Puccini is naturally well remembered in Lucca. Today his birthplace is open as a museum, featuring a bronze statue of the great man in the centre. The Puccini Festival is held in an open-air theatre in nearby Torre del Lago.

But the family was already long established when he was born: four previous generations of Puccinis were all directors of music at Lucca Cathedral. Legend has it that his widowed mother, left in difficult financial circumstances, was not best pleased when young Giacomo showed more interest in the opera house than the organ loft — although he did apparently enjoy improvising Verdi opera tunes on the organ. In earlier generations, however, nepotism had plainly reigned supreme.

“Absolutely,” Janet laughed. “But in those days you simply handed a job on to your son, and he handed it on to his son. But the Puccinis were all highly competent apparently — there’s no question, looking at the score of the Requiem, that the composer knew exactly what he was doing. He had all the techniques of polyphony, counterpoint, and everything.

“The Requiem Puccini was also director of the town band, which meant having to do all the civic services and festivals with a small group. But we don’t know very much more about him than that: I’ve done as much research as I can, and have only discovered that he studied in Bologna, then became organist at Lucca.”

Janet Lincé describes the Requiem as “stylistically adventurous”. Is that code for difficult?

“I wouldn’t say it’s difficult, but it might be worth explaining why I described it as adventurous. There are basically two different types of music that are going on throughout this piece. There is music for double choir, which is found at the very beginning, in the opening introit, interspersed throughout the Dies Irae, then finally in the whole of the Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei, and Lux Aeterna. The music is as good as Lassus, Palestrina, or Schütz. In between, there are lots of 18th-century opera-style arias and duets, with intricate string writing –— all totally different in their mood, and in the way that they portray the text. It’s masterly writing, it’s so exciting!”

  • Choros will give the UK premiere of Giacomo Puccini’s Requiem, along with Handel’s Dixit Dominus in St Mary the Virgin Church, High Street, Oxford, on November 14. Tickets on 01865 305305 or at oxfordplayhouse.com