Newly discovered letters show that the composer Giacomo Puccini had a secret love child the year before he died, a documentary film-maker has claimed.

Paolo Benvenuti said Puccini had a relationship with the family maid, Doria Manfredi, a liaison previously thought to be a figment of his wife Elvira’s imagination. Doria, 23, poisoned herself in 1909 when scandal erupted after Elvira accused her of the affair.

But it appeared the composer also had an affair with Doria’s cousin, Giulia, Mr Benvenuti said. In 1923 she gave birth to a son, Antonio, but refused to say who the father was. Puccini died in 1924. He said that “hundreds” of “family letters” found in a trunk at the Pisa home of Antonio Manfredi’s daughter, Nadia, 61, indicated that Puccini was Antonio’s father.

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