Lee Pace Researches Bellini's Sicily for "Golden Age" Lee Pace The actor Lee Pace in the Sicilian fishing port town of Pozzillo. "I PURITANI," an 1835 opera set during the English Civil War, was the last work written by the Sicilian-born composer Vincenzo Bellini; he died at 33, several months after its premiere. Terrence McNally's new play "Golden Age," opening Dec. 4 in a Manhattan Theater Club production, portrays Bellini as a gifted musician stymied by self-doubt, afraid that his small-town origins will keep him from acceptance in Paris, where the opera is making its debut. For the actor and opera neophyte Lee Pace, who plays Bellini in a cast that includes Bebe Neuwirth and F. Murray Abraham, listening to recordings was only the beginning of his research. "It was really important to me to find out the roots of this person, who was very far from home, very sick, away from all of his friends in a very arch, complicated, decadent society where he didn't speak the language," Mr. Pace said. "Can you imagine being at a party and everyone thinking you're a genius and not being able to say to someone, "What did you do this afternoon?" " Mr. Pace, now in the film "Lincoln" and most recently seen on the New York stage in the 2011 Broadway revival of "The Normal Heart," got the chance to learn about Bellini during a week alone in Italy last month. He said he wanted "to fall in love with Sicily, to have some kind of relationship to Bellini that wasn't just the music or the myth about him, but to see the things he saw." The New York Times asked him to describe what he learned, with photographs he took along the way. His descriptions are in this slide show.