To mark Puccini's centenary, the festival will stage the Cavalleria Rusticana/Gianni Schicchi diptych. Directed by Giandomenico Vaccari, Marcello Mottadelli will conduct the Orchestra and Chorus of Livorno's Teatro Goldoni. Donata D'Annunzio Lombardi will be Santuzza, Paolo Lardizzone Turiddu, while baritone Massimo Cavalletti will be Gianni Schicchi and will debut the role of Alfio. Alongside them will be the students of the Mascagni Academy. The production will be in productive collaboration between the Mascagni Festival, the Teatro Politeama Greco in Lecce and the Teatro Marruccino in Chieti.

The image chosen for the fifth edition of the Mascagni Festival is the work of illustrator Costanza Lettieri: "I tried to create an image with multiple levels of reading," she says, "the most immediate being the portrait as the icon of the Festival. However, the figure of Mascagni also becomes the container of the submerged and deep world of the opera and, last but not least, of the power of the call to the place of origin: Livorno, open to the sea like its most poetic square."