It is commonly said that the words with which we speak of love if you are sincere from the heart, but you could also say, with equal truth, that come from books and, in particular, from a book of seven centuries in here taught to all lovers of the West to express what they have, in fact, "in the heart". This book is the "Canzoniere" of Francesco Petrarca. But what story lies behind his extraordinary pages? In 1348 the plague raging in Europe, which will reap a third of the population. Among his victims is Laura, the woman-muse which for over twenty years dedicated Petrarch love poems. To respond to this climate of mourning and humiliation, as well as a deep inner torment, the famous poet conceives a daring project, an autobiography ideal mingling fact and fiction, and realizes it with a work that is unprecedented in panorama of medieval literature: a book of poems in the form of novel that tells the fascinating story of love between a man and a woman. The rereading of Marco Santagata, on the one hand makes us rediscover the inexhaustible beauty of a passionate love affair that has for centuries been the archetype of love poetry, the other makes us family and emphatically recognized the tormented figure who that history has partially lived and largely imagined, with a load of emotion that since the European opera has always brought with it.