I didn’t know anything about Andrea Mascagni, other than the fact that he had composed an arrangement of a folksong in homage to Berio, played on the collection of Folk Songs by Joanna Knauf and Ensemble Musica ‘900 under Maurizio Dini Ciacci on Dischi Ricordi CRMCD 1009 (1989) (with works of Betty Olivero, Carlo Galante, Zygmunt Krauze, Virgilio Savona, Salvatore Sciarrino, Claudio Ambrosini, Andrej Petrov, Luca Francesconi, Hubert Stuppner, Walter Zimmermann).
Checking on his Italian Wikipedia entry, it’s interesting to see that, besides being related to Pietro Mascagni to some degree (son of Mascagni’s cousin), the guy was both a composer and a politician. Not so frequent a combination. Paderewski, of course. Toscanini, in a way, because of his involvement in anti-facism, but he never became “a politician”. Incidentally, Mascagni also chose the good side during those years – not so frequent either.