On a grey, drizzling day in late November 1924, 80,000 people lined the streets of Brussels for ‘the passing of a triumphant hero’. Among the many wreaths borne upon Puccini's coffin were an immense bouquet of chrysanthemums and lilies bearing the name Benito Mussolini and a wreath of orchids from the king of Italy. When the coffin later arrived in Milan, those waiting to meet the train included Puccini's librettists Simoni and Adami, Toscanini – reportedly ‘almost petrified with sorrow’ – and the composers Montemezzi and Pizzetti, the latter presumably repenting his attack on Puccini ten years earlier. An overnight vigil was held in the Church of San Fedele before the coffin was moved to the Duomo the following day. The sober candelabras that surrounded Puccini's coffin were placed in an arrangement identical to that which had been used for another national icon, Vittorio Emanuele II.

To read Puccini's obituaries, his status as national hero would seem to be beyond challenge. Although he had been widely criticised for losing his way during the 1910s, this was not alluded to in the grandiose tributes paid to him following his death. In a sixty-page tribute, the Ricordi journal Musica d'oggi recounted every stage of Puccini's demise in graphic detail, under such headings as ‘First symptoms of the illness’, ‘The operation’, ‘The catastrophe’, although even at the very end of his life Puccini's physical vigour was emphasised (‘Puccini enjoyed very good health; with the exception of his minor diabetic condition, his health was not undermined by physical frailty in the slightest’).