Puccini’s “Messa di Gloria” is not the unjustly belittled opera in disguise which musicologists, for decades, have made it to be. They objected to the unbefittingly ariose “Gratias agimus,” as well as the mass’ compilatory structure. For a “Mass of Glory,” strictly speaking, only contains the Kyrie and Gloria sections; Puccini, however, adopts all five movements of mass, and {…}