Venerdì 1 dicembre, alle 18.30, presenterò a Napoli il libro Tradizioni popolari napoletane, di Claudio Corvino. Appuntamento alla libreria Mondadori Bookstore, piazza Vanvitelli.
Lunedì 27 alle ore 17, nell’Auditorium dell’ ICBSA di via Caetani a Roma, presenterò, insieme a Ignazio Macchiarella (Università di Sassari) e a Massimo Privitera (Università di Palermo), il volume sulla canzone siciliana di Consuelo Giglio. Seguirà concerto. Non mancate se siete in zona!
Sabato 18 novembre presenterò “Spettabili tutti” al Festival Fantasiologico di Caiazzo (CE).
La Repubblica di Napoli mi ha chiesto un’analisi dei riti del sangue che si svolgono ogni sette anni a Guardia Sanframondi in onore della Madonna Assunta. Per chi fosse interessato questa è la pagina, uscita il 29 agosto 2017, con il mio articolo sulla destra:
29 agosto 2017, I “battenti” e la verità dimenticata del corpo, pag. X della cronaca di Napoli
On 13 June great American musicologist Philip Gossett passed away in Chicago. Gossett was one of the architects of what was a real revolution in the world of opera, that of the so-called ‘critical edition’, namely the reworking , based on the sources, of the operas of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi. A work which brought to a new way of reading and performing the great operas of the Italian tradition, abandoning sedimented and improper performing habits and rediscovering the original text of the author. Whether such a method (brilliantly discussed in Divas and Scholars, The University of Chicago Press, 2006) is accepted or not, nobody can deny the genius of the man, his rigour, the exceptional skills that brought him to collaborate with the most important world directors and with the most prestigious productions. I met such an extraordinary figure in the years of my doctorate in musicology at the University of Rome and I have a great memory of him: that of a generous and available person. We became friends and we saw each other frequently until, getting worse, he retired in Chicago. Still then, we kept in touch via mail (our last contact dates back to March and still he was prodigal of advice for me). I want to remember him here as one of the best and important people I have met in the last years together with Sheila Whiteley, who taught popular music at the University of Salford (another person to whom I owe a lot and who died too soon some years ago). In my imagery they are connected, although they did not know each other, as representative of that open Anglo-Saxon mentality, devoid of provincialism and favouritism, oriented towards the real development of the knowledge and not to the consolidation of positioning and nepotism. Fare Thee Well, Philip.