An opportunity for comparison between musicologists and scholars from all over the worldopen to public participation, to investigate with a new gaze the musical civilization of Lucca and, in particular, that eighteenth century of the Puccini family of which Giacomo himself felt heir for artistic reasons even before dynastic ones. Everything is ready for Puccini’s eighteenth century, Puccini’s eighteenth centurythe two-day international conference which will open on Friday (24 May) at 10am in Sala Ademollo in Ducal Palace and which represents the contribution offered by the Luigi Boccherini Study Center to the Puccini centenary, in collaboration with the Giacomo Puccini Study Center and the Luigi Boccherini Conservatory of Music.
Friday’s morning session features a in-depth study on the state of Boccherini’s sourcesrecently enriched by the discovery of a new autograph of the composer. The digital collection of manuscripts and prints of music by will be presented Boccherinicreated byLucca photographic archive (Afl) based on reproductions made over half a century ago by Yves Gérardand the computerized catalog of that same collection will be illustrated, the result of the work of the Study Center and soon available online.
It will open i jobs the intervention of Marco Mangani of the University of Florence, president of the Luigi Boccherini Study Center; they will speak later German Labrador of the Universidad autónoma de Madrid, Loukia Drosoupolou, music curator of the British Library; Marco Gallengamusicologist, teacher and violinist of the Tuscany Regional Orchestra and, finally, Francesca Concioni, scientific coordinator of the AFL.
There afternoon session of the conference will focus on Puccini’s eighteenth century: at the center of the interventions, which will resume from 3pm, that eighteenth-century Lucca music which marked the rise of the Puccini family and saw the young Boccherini as the protagonist in the years of his training and his first important compositions. Speakers in this session will be Gabriella Biagi Ravenni of the University of Pisa, president of the Giacomo Puccini Study Center; the musicologist Fabrizio Guidotti, Paula Molina of the Universidad de Salamanca and, again, Marco Gallenga.
The conference will continue the following morning (Saturday 25 May), starting at 10am, with Puccini’s eighteenth centurythird and final session entirely dedicated to the presence of images, themes and eighteenth-century stylistic features in the works of Giacomo Puccini: the Age of Enlightenment was in fact not only a past to be cultivated, but also a world fantasized and evoked, in the works of the post-Verdi era, for its charm as ambiguous as it was stimulating. Speakers will include Virgilio Bernardoni of the University of Bergamo; Nicholas Baragwanath of the University of Nottingham; Giorgio Pagannone of the University of Chieti-Pescara and, finally, Matteo Giuggioli of the Roma Tre University.
The initiative is part of the broader Puccini Boccherini program which will continue with tributes to Boccherini until Tuesday (28 May), the day on which the anniversary of his death occurs. The events are organized in collaboration with the Puccini Museum and the Province of Lucca, with the contribution of the Ministry of Culture, the Municipality of Lucca with ViviLucca, the Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca Foundation and the Giacomo Puccini Foundation.
