His former students met for the musical commemoration, sponsored by the Angelo Masini Foundation, last Sunday evening in the Basilica of San Mercuriale, hosted by the parish priest Don Antonino Nicotra. To commemorate Leonello Godoli, their cello and double bass teacher who died twenty years ago, after having been a teacher at the “Angelo Masini” music institute in Forlì for over thirty years, about fifteen former students came from far away : from Milan Giuseppe Ettorre, first double bass of the Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, from Austria Davide Zavatti, cellist and composer of Ave Maria Magdalena in 2022, and the others from Padua, Bologna and other cities in Romagna.
The former students do not all live off music, but the musical education they received from Godoli remained fundamental in their lives, because “he did not say that music was important, but above all he was an absolutely credible witness to the values he believed in: he was a Maestro who embodied the love of music. And in a time of crisis in teaching in many of its forms, there is a particular need for teachers”, explain the former students in a note.
Also in San Mercuriale – on the occasion of Christmas 1989 – the “Gian Battista Cirri” cello ensemble, founded by Leonello Godoli in 1978, contributed with a concert to raising funds for the restoration of the bell tower. Furthermore, this year marks the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Cirri from Forlì, a cello virtuoso who was particularly appreciated in his time also in Scotland and England, as well as a very talented composer, who on this anniversary deserves a special memory from the community and the institutions locals. In a passage of witnesses between the generation of sixty-year-olds and that of teenagers, who today have Matteo Montanari as an educator and cello teacher in the “Angelo Masini” Foundation, these promising students also contributed to making the evening full of emotions and a living testimony of how real music can help offer reasons for hope.
Thanks to maestro Godoli, who during the war had played in the orchestra of the Eighth Army and then in Switzerland, at the Fenice in Venice and later in the orchestra of the Teatro Comunale of Bologna, the young cellists’ ensemble performed numerous concerts, as well as and in Italy, also in Scotland, Greece and France, also obtaining the recognition of the invitation from the President of the Republic Sandro Pertini for a concert at the Quirinale in June 1980. The repertoire has always been very broad, ranging from eighteenth-century compositions to contemporary music.
