Introduction
Ferruccio de Bortoli
Presidente Fondazione Corriere della Sera
Participants
Claudio Orazi
Sovrintendente della Fondazione Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova
Giuseppe Gerbino
Columbia University, New York
Francesco Zimei
Università degli Studi di Trento
Harvey Sachs
Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia
Federico Freni
Sottosegretario al Ministero dell’Economia e delle Finanze
Coordination
Enrico Girardi
Music critic for Corriere della Sera
Entry to the event is free, but reservations are required
For the occasion the book is presented
Italian Opera in the United States, 1800-1850:
At the Origins of a Cultural Migration
edited by Giuseppe Gerbino and Francesco Zimei,
preface by Claudio Orazi
Lucca, Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2023
Italian Opera in the United States, 1800-1850 explores the events that led Italian opera to cross the ocean and establish itself in the United States. A series of overlooked documentary finds, including previously unexplored documents from historians, sheds new light on this phenomenon, which saw Italian artists and intellectuals emigrate to the United States over the course of the century. Episodes already known but only partially understood, including Lorenzo Da Ponte’s personal campaign to promote the Italian language in the United States and the controversial opera season of the Park Theater in New York in 1825-26, are contextualized in the light of social, cultural and policies of the period. The book also traces a map of the complex network of people who worked to give life to Italian opera in America. This network included political refugees like Filippo Trajetta and Piero Maroncelli, passionate patrons like Dominick Lynch Jr., and daring and sometimes unscrupulous theater managers like Stephen Price and Charles W. Sandford. The Italian work was greeted with admiration and suspicion, optimism and skepticism, enthusiasm and irony. Musical traditions and national identities found new meanings along the path of this first Italian migration to North America.
