PO VALLEY, EMILIA ROMAGNA , TOSCANA – Travel guide for opera, classical music and culture

Monteverdi, a native of Cremona, is one of the “inventors” of modern opera and was the first important composer of this art form and is one of the very great musicians of the classical era.

Cremona

Monteverdi was born in 1567, the son of a surgeon and barber. He received a thorough musical education from the renowned director of the cathedral chapel. However, no compositions have survived from his Cremonese period.

In 1690 he left Cremona for Mantua, where he brought the madrigal to its last flowering and became one of the main bearers of one of the greatest revolutions in music. In his honor the city celebrates every year the Festival Monteverdi.[/sc_fs_faq]

Mantua

Monteverdi came to the court in Mantua at the age of 23, and his stay took on an outstanding significance in music history. The court had a well-funded singers’ society and chapel, and Monteverdi became chapel master in 1601, but he had a powerful conservative opponent in Artusi. Artusi accused Monteverdi’s madrigals of modernism, disregarding the time-honored rules of polyphony, harmony, and instrumentation.

Monteverdi defended his new monodic, text-comprehensible style as Seconda Pratica, while calling the traditional polyphonic, contrapuntal (and text-incomprehensible) style Prima Pratica. This controversy became famous because it signified the gigantic break with polyphony that still dominates our understanding of music today. Monteverdi went even further by contrasting lovely harmonies with dissonances. His operatic language wanted to express people’s feelings; Monteverdi believed that music should make people cry, not discuss. The music should not follow rigid rules, but it should give space to the human condition and express it. One of the most sensational consequences was Monteverdi’s Dissonances, monstrosities that represented extreme states of the soul and triggered fierce polemics at the time (see Lasciatemi morire below).

From his experience with the now monophonic madrigal singing, Monteverdi developed the aria, the centerpiece of the new art form of opera that emerged around the century.Monteverdi probably became acquainted with Jacopo Peri’s Euridice (possibly the first opera ever written) while in Florence with his duke. Prince Francesco Gonzaga commissioned Monteverdi to write an opera. This became Monteverdi’s “Orfeo”, which in 1607 was the first work of the new genre of opera that has survived to the present day.  The opera became a great success from the very beginning

In Mantua, Monteverdi married Claudia Cattaneo, who bore him two sons but died in 1607 at the age of 18, a fact that deeply shook Monteverdi.

In 1613 Monteverdi left Mantua for Venice because of spending cuts by the court.

TO THE COMPLETE BIOGRAPHY OF MONTEVERDI

A son of Modena

Luciano Pavarotti was born in Modena in 1935 into a family of modest means. After his education, he worked as a teacher for several years. He inherited his musical talent from his father, who sang as a tenor in his spare time.

After studying in Mantua, he won a competition and was able to make his debut as Rodolfo.

He remained faithful to Modena throughout his life, but led an artist’s life with several locations. After reducing his appearances in later years, he chose Modena again as his center of life, together with his second wife, where he regularly staged the event Pavarotti & friends, among others.
He died of kidney failure on September 6, 2007, at the age of 71. Pavarotti had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2006.

With Elton John in Modena (Pavarotti and friends):

Puccini remained connected to his homeland throughout his life. As an adult he found his dream place in Torre del lago where he could pursue his favorite pastimes of hunting, driving and composing.

Lucca

Puccini was born in 1858 into a family of musicians. He grew up in Lucca and left it at the age of 22 for his education at the conservatory in Milan. He remained attached to his hometown throughout his life and built two residences outside Lucca (Chiatri and Torre di Lago). He was able to buy back his parents’ house with the money from his first successful opera “Manon Lescaut” and it still belongs to his descendants, who set up a museum in it.

After his success in Milan Puccini came back to Lucca and started an affair with his later wife Elvira, unfortunately she was married to a grocer of the village, the whole thing ended tragically, more about this in the Puccini Biography, Part: “Puccini’s affairs and his Liù”.

Torre del lago

With the small village of Torre del Lago (today Torre del Lago Puccini) and the picturesque tower on the lake, Puccini found the magical place he was looking for to let his creativity flow. He stayed in this place on Lago di Massaciuccoli until 1921. In 1921 he left the place, due to an industrial construction on the lake.

The property was turned into a museum by his granddaughter (who died in 1917), which still fascinates today. Already since 1930 the Puccini Festival takes place on the lake.

Puccini remained connected to his homeland throughout his life. As an adult he found his dream place in Torre del lago.

Viareggio

In 1921 Puccini left Torre del lago with a heavy heart because a huge industrial plant was under construction nearby. He moved to nearby Viareggio.

TO THE COMPLETE PUCCINI BIOGRAPHY

Rossini grew up in this region and spent parts of his adult life here. Unfortunately, he left the region for good in his forties because of a bitter dispute with the Garibaldi supporters.

Pesaro

Rossini is one of the few people who were born on February 29. He was the only child of two musicians, born in a troubled time of the French Revolution. Rossini spent his first 8 years in Pesaro. In 1800 Gioachino left Pesaro with his parents and returned 18 years later as an already famous 26-year-old man for a visit to inaugurate the Teatro.

The city has been intensively cultivating Rossini’s legacy for several decades, and with the Fondazione Rossini, the town has a competent steward of Rossini’s vast heritage.

Lugo

Rossini came to his father’s native town for two years when he was 10 years old. He learned the horn and harpsichord and had a beautiful voice. His uncle wanted to choose him as a castrato, but Gioachino was grateful to his mother all his life for sparing her son from the operation.

He diligently studied Mozart and Haydn in the library of an acquaintance and wrote his first works (string quartets) in Lugo at the age of 12. Two years later they moved to Bologna.

Bologna

Rossini was 12 years old when his family came to Bologna. His father, a supporter of the Revolution, came here to escape the Papal State and to give their only child a good musical education. Gioachino went on to study at what is now the Conservatorio. At 18 he had to earn money and left Bologna for Venice, where he wrote his first serious work (“La cambiale del matrimonio”).

Throughout his life, Rossini kept various houses in Bologna and lived there intermittently.

In 1822, he married the famous mezzo-soprano Isabela Colbran in Bologna (see below). They kept houses in the city (a plaque on the Strada Maggiore still commemorates it) and in the countryside.

With the assumption of responsibility for the Théâtre lyrique, the two had moved to Paris. After the end of her singing career, Colbran became erratic and addicted to gambling. In 1829 Rossini brought his wife back to Bologna, where she would henceforth live with Rossini’s parents. In letters Rossini’s father complained several times to his son, who lived in Paris, about Isabelle’s diva-like behavior, but Gioachino had already become estranged from her and separated from Colbran, who was 7 years older. He saw her only very sporadically. In 1845 she died and found her resting place in Bologna in the monumental Certosa cemetery.

Rossini met the courtesan Olympe Pélissier in Paris, but spent time and again in Bologna, as he had taken an office in Bologna in 1836 that brought him back occasionally. The highlight was the performance of his Stabat Mater, conducted by Gaetano Donizetti, but after Colbran’s death Rossini left Bologna for good, this time in anger. He was accused by some people of not supporting the Risorgimento, which infuriated him. Rossini was rather an apolitical person and it was rumored that his second wife had been a bad influence on him. A friend was able to convince him to write a freedom anthem, which was then played in the Piazza Maggiore. This was the end of the last Bolognese chapter in Rossini’s life.

TO THE FULL ROSSINI BIOGRAPHY

The theater dates back to 1821, when it was built by Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma, better known as the second wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, who, as a Habsburg, took over the duchy as ruler after the Congress of Vienna.

Today the company stages about four operas per season from mid-January to April

The theater is known for performances of Giuseppe Verdi’s works since Verdi himself staged his Nabucco in 1843. The Verdi Festival has been held annually since 2004.

The notoiuous loggionisti

The auditorium with 1,400 seats and four box tiers is crowned by a gallery for the loggionisti. The loggionists have a notorious reputation and have caused trouble with critical displeasure on many occasions in history. In the sixties, the famous tenor Carlo Bergonzi had to experience this himself when he allowed himself to sing a B-flat in the piano at the end of the aria “Celeste Aida”, as Verdi had prescribed, which was not to the taste of the audience. So he had to experience that the audience protested. He never entered that opera house again.

https://www.teatroregioparma.it/en/homepage/

A beautiful theater

The beautiful theater dates back to 1763 and was opened with an opera by Gluck, who had written it for the occasion. The horseshoe-shaped hall can seat 1084 spectators.

Richard Wagner

Bologna, with its Conservatory, has always been a proud city of music and was long considered a rival to the Milanese Opera. While the latter shone with Verdi performances, Bologna was the opera that was the first in Italy to perform Wagner works. Bologna was even given the nickname “Wagner’s city” and he was even made an honorary citizen, presented to him personally on the occasion of a visit. In 1871, even Verdi sat anonymously in a box at a performance of Lohengrin.

Arturo Toscanini

In 1931 there was a fateful performance of a concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Because the highly placed minister Ciano was present, the orchestra was to play the fascist anthem “Giovinezza” and the “Marcia Reale”. Toscanini refused and he was later slapped and pushed to the ground by a black-shirted man at the artist’s entrance. This was too much for Toscanini and he decided to leave Italy for good for the United States.

The Lucca House is a multi-scene theater in the center of Lucca. The name Giglio (lily) comes from the fleur-de-lys of the once reigning Bourbons. The Lucchese Giacomo Puccini had repeatedly supervised the adaptations of his operatic works here.

The famous performance of 1831

On the evening of September 17, 1831, an earthquake in operatic art occurred at the Teatro del Giglio in Lucca. The French tenor Gilbert Duprez sang the first C in Rossini’s William Tell from the chest, the so-called “Ut en poitrine”. Until now, the norm was to sing these top notes from the falsetto. When Rossini heard this sound for the first time, he is said to have been repulsed, saying “it sounds like the cry of a capon having its throat cut.”

Duprez’s fame grew over the next few years, and he subsequently displaced his famous rival Adolphe Nourrit as first tenor in Paris. The latter, unable to sing the C from the chest, fled to Naples, where he subsequently committed suicide.[/sc_fs_faq]

In the caricature, you can see Duprez’s distended ribcage and widened eyes when singing the high C.

Caricature of Gilbert Duprez:

https://www.teatrodelgiglio.it/it/home/

https://www.teatrodelgiglio.it/it/

http://www.bussetolive.com/en/poi/verdi-theatre/

The beautiful opera house of the city of Pesaro dates from 1818 and was opened with the “Gazza ladra” of his son, already famous at the time. The theater had a troubled past and was damaged twice by earthquakes, among other things. In 1966 it even became unusable and in 1980 it was renovated, which marked the beginning of the Rossini Opera Festival.

The festival quickly gained an excellent reputation and nowadays it is one of the most prestigious opera festivals. The performances take place during the summer months in the atmospheric Teatro Rossini and in other facilities.

The Teatro Rossini:

https://www.teatridipesaro.it/

https://www.rossinioperafestival.it/

http://www.bussetolive.com/en/poi/verdi-theatre/

The neat little theater (with 300 seats) was built during Verdi’s lifetime. Verdi donated 10,000 lire out of courtesy, but never entered the theater out of resentment against the people of Busseto (see excursus below on Traviata). Performances are rather rare, Toscanini even conducted here in honor of Verdi.

Book a guided tour in advance to see the beautiful theater.

Teatro Verdi:

http://www.bussetolive.com/en/poi/verdi-theatre/

The museum in Piazza Cittadella is Puccini’s birthplace, where he lived for over 20 years with his parents and sisters. You can find here many objects belonging to the composer, including the Steinway on which he composed, among others, “Turandot”. The museum is nicely done and informative.

Puccini monument in Piazza Cittadella:

http://www.puccinimuseum.org/it/

With the income from the “Bohème” he bought the tower, renovated it and expanded the estate into a stately residence. He composed many of his operas (Tosca, Il Trittico, La Rondine and Fanciulla del West) in this Art Nouveau villa. He maintained contact with local artists and fishermen who met regularly as a “bohemian club.” He enjoyed bike rides, speedboats and pursued his hobby of hunting wildlife such as snipe. The museum is inspiring, music sounds through the rooms and it is authentically furnished, a worthwhile destination to visitlast, and last but not least, the chapel also houses the tomb of the master.

A bus runs from Viareggio to the Museo

Torre del lago:

https://www.giacomopuccini.it/

View into the Museo Puccini:

Festival Puccini

Annually, the Puccini Festival is held on the lake during the months of July and August. Several operas of Puccini are given on a large open-air stage.

https://www.puccinifestival.it/

Verdi grew up in the hamlet of Le Roncole outside Busseto. When you visit the parental home Verdi, you notice the stately size of the house, in no way gives the impression of a mouse-poor family. The house is carefully renovated and left in somewhat original condition.

Verdi’s birthplace:

http://www.casanataleverdi.it/en/

Verdi Museum

Another good museum about Verdi. In the rooms the individual operas of Verdi are presented with theater posters, costumes, etc.

Museo Verdi:

https://www.museogiuseppeverdi.it/en/

Museo Casa Barezzi

Verdi’s beloved patron and father of his first wife was a well-off man. His house in Busseto has been made into an interesting museum and gives a great insight into the upscale country life of his time and displays many memorabilia such as pianos etc. Verdi’s.

Casa Barezzi:

http://www.museocasabarezzi.it/

Villa Verdi is an outstanding place to visit, which, although a museum, has been left as Verdi had left it in his will. It is cared for by his descendants and impresses with a wide variety of exhibits, ranging from the fortepiano to the carriage stable and the death mask. A beautiful park invites you to take a walk.

It is possible that the museum is closed for renovation when you read these lines. Please check before visiting.

Villa Verdi in Sant’Agata:

https://en.villaverdi.info/

The great Italian singer of the post-war years had a large following. Her greatest roles were from operas by Puccini, Verdi and other Italian composers. Her competition with Maria Callas was nurtured by the media and she fought with her American-Greek rival for supremacy at La Scala and the Met. There is a nice anecdote about her to the opera “Adriana Lecouvreur”: Rudolf Bing, the Met director of the sixties hated this opera. Renata Tebaldi, his star soprano with the pretty dimples on her face, was adamant about singing Adriana and threatened never to perform at the Met again if she couldn’t sing it. Bing gave in and commented later: «Renata looked innocent, but her dimples are made of iron».

A sample of her skills you can find her in the link with an excerpt from La forza del destino. In the role of Leonora and the “pace, pace” Renata Tebaldi was possibly unrivalled. Her angelic piano turns this aria into a monument and is one of the most beautiful recordings of this great singer.

«Pace, pace» aus «La forza del destino» gesungen von Renata Tebaldi :

https://opera-inside.com/la-forza-del-destino-by-giuseppe-verdi-the-opera-guide-and-synopsis/#Pace

She grew up in Pesaro and the pretty museum about her artistic life was launched in 2014.

https://www.museorenatatebaldi.it/

Verdi was always enraged by the singers’ arbitrariness in enriching their pieces to their own liking. When, at a relatively old age, he heard of a young conductor named Toscanini, he was highly impressed by his faithfulness to the works and later spoke highly of his compatriot. Toscanini subsequently became the most important Verdi conductor and left his mark on the Verdi interpretation deep into the second half of the last century. Toscanini was a headstrong and sophisticated person. A fanatic, obsessive and irascible conductor feared by all musicians.

In Parma, in the house where he was born, a small but fine museum has been set up that is absolutely worth a visit.

Arturo Toscanini in his american years:

A look into the museum:

http://www.museotoscanini.it/it-IT/home-museo-toscanini.aspx

Museo

In 2015, a museum was established in his last home in Modena. The spacious museum shows, the house furnished by Luciano himself, with many personal items, where he received his friends and cooked for them.

You can visit his make-up room, where he used to do his own make-up for the performances for Pavarotti and friends. There also hang some valuable stage costumes that he wore during his career.

Ristorante Europa 92

This restaurant near Pavarotti’s house belonged to him and he often ate there. The restaurant is still dedicated to him and you can enjoy his favorite dishes there. For example, Bono, Zucchero and Lady Di ate there the risotto all’aceto balsamico.

http://www.ristoranteuropa92.com/

https://www.casamuseolucianopavarotti.it/en/

Lugo has opened a brand new small museum, located in the old town, in the home of his grandparents. Rossini was there often during his time in Lugo, but did not live in the house. He himself lived with his parents in Via Manfredi 25.
The museum consists of 5 rooms where the work of Rossini is creatively presented to the visitor.

Casa Rossini:

https://casarossinilugo.it/

Rossini’s birthplace is now a small museum on four floors. On display are some memorabilia such as photos, etc., Rossinis travel spinet and the small kitchen of the house is impressive, it also has a book store. The furnishings are not original, but have been modernly renovated. A visit is absolutely worthwhile for Rossini fans, half an hour is enough.

The facade of Casa Rossini :

http://www.pesaromusei.it/casa-rossini/

This museum was opened recently. The quality of the exhibition is guaranteed by the Fondazione Rossini. It consists of 10 rooms where you can follow his biography and compositions with many multimedia elements.

A room of the museum:

Every evening in the Basilica of San Giovanni in the center of Lucca there is a concert with the music of Puccini and other composers from Lucca and the surrounding area (Alfredo Catalani and others). The music is of good quality and takes place in the beautiful ambience of the church.

http://www.puccinielasualucca.it/

In 1822 Rossini and Isabel Colbran were married in this beautiful baroque church. A marble plaque at the foot of the bell tower commemorates the day. The church is located outside Bologna, a few kilometers from their home in Castenaso.

Monteverdi was baptized in Cremona Cathedral in 1567. The cathedral, which dates back to the 13th century, forms an architectural unit together with the bell tower and the baptistery.  The church has a marble facade and has an elaborate portal with a large rose window. The bell tower (called Torazzo) is the highest historic church tower in Italy and is the landmark of Cremona. The Baptistery is a building with a striking octagonal dome and a red marble baptismal font, dating from the 16th century, which stands in the middle of the room.

Dom and baptistery:

Torazzo:

There are two Monteverdi monuments in Cremona. Both are recent

An older one from 1967 in Piazza Lodi:

A recent one from 2013 in Piazza di Roma:

A huge palace

This palace complex is one of the largest in Europe. Although the Gonzaga dynasty, who ruled Mantua for 400 years (Vinczeno I was Monteverdi’s prince), had only regional importance, “the brick fever” of the Gonzagas led to the addition of new buildings every generation until the whole thing became unaffordable and the family had to sell all the interiors to keep afloat. The theater where Monteverdi performed his “Orfeo” was unfortunately torn down in the 18th century, but a tour of this building is still highly recommended as a historical passage through all architectural styles from 300-400 years.

Palazzo ducale:

https://www.mantovaducale.beniculturali.it/it/

This palazzo is a 16th century jewel located outside the city walls of Mantua, in the marshes of the time on the Isola del Teieto (Te for short). Parts of the great “Rigoletto” film adaptation by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle were filmed in this palazzo. The complex is imposing, the frescoes are magnificent and the Hall of the Giants will delight you.

Palazzo del Te Blick view on the garden:

http://www.palazzote.it/index.php/it/palazzo-te

Watch an excerpt from Ponelle’s film version of “Questa o quella” by Luciano Pavarotti:

https://opera-inside.com/rigoletto-by-giuseppe-verdi-the-opera-guide-2/#Questa

This magnificent sight holds, among other things, the “Stabat Mater Hall”. The auditorium of the University of Bologna hosted Rossini’s most important artistic event in Bologna, as the name suggests, the memorable Italian premiere of his “Stabat Maters”, conducted by Gaetano Donizetti, took place here in 1842. In 1869 a commemorative plaque was placed in the hall with the famous misspelling (Donizzetti instead of Donizetti).

The Archiginnasio houses, among other things, the famous Surgery Hall (Teatro anatomico) from 1637.

Courtyard of the Archiginnasio:

http://www.archiginnasio.it/