IVREA. A book that pays homage to an extraordinary musician, Giulio Franzetti, born in 1930, former concertmaster at La Scala and teacher at the Conservatory, a book born after a chance meeting at a dinner more than 10 years ago. It’s called “Hero’s Life. Italy seen from La Scala” (Delta 3 Edizioni, Prospettive sonore series) is a novel which tells the story of Giulio Franzetti, in the background some references to the History of Italy from the Second World War to the 1990s and episodes of some of the main musicians of the last century.
For the first presentation of the book, a very prestigious venue, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. The appointment is Friday 21 June, 6 pm, in the foyer of the Toscanini boxes. With the author, the Ivrea journalist Andrea Sicco, there will be the maestro Giulio Franzetti. The journalist Susanna Franchi and the theater director Paolo Bosisio, who wrote the preface, will participate. The actor Oreste Valente will read some passages.
The idea for the book was during a dinner. The year was 2012. «I was at the Ravenna festival – says Sicco – at a concert directed by Riccardo Muti. The concert was followed by a dinner, to which I was invited by a friend of mine, Carla Delfrate, also a friend of Franzetti.” The dinner was amiable, maestro Franzetti told extraordinary stories and anecdotes: «He spoke of people he knew and had dealings with in his life, except that their names were Claudio Abbado, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Riccardo Muti, Luciano Berio, with who was in the Conservatory together.” Sicco is a professional journalist and could not fail to grasp “the news”: «Those stories cannot be lost. I threw it out there to Maestro Franzetti: she has an extraordinary life, why don’t we make a book?”.
The real work began years later. In the meantime, Maestro Franzetti and his wife had moved from Milan to Genoa. «In 2019 we established a series of meetings: one afternoon a month I went to Genoa – says Sicco -, he told stories and I recorded».
When the pandemic arrived, the work wasn’t done yet. Of necessity there was a stop. And then he continued. «When I found myself placing all these stories – explains Sicco – I gave life to a huge scheme that took up the entire table. Italy was in those stories.” Sicco wrote a novel, the stories told are all true, he only used a narrative device consisting of the presence of a student who, in fact, listens to the teacher. Ideally, is there something of Sicco in that student? Perhaps.
Andrea Sicco is a journalist who deals with corporate communications, but, as he says, “this is my third life”. There is a second as a law graduate and a first, with a piano diploma from the Conservatory. «For the good of humanity – he jokes – I didn’t become a pianist. But the love for music is there.” He is a great and cultured user of it, in Ivrea he deals with the communication of the youth symphony orchestra of Piedmont, he began his studies at the music high school: «Music has given me a method that is useful in everything: studying and facing with perseverance, but fragmented: as they say the elephant eats one morsel at a time».
