By Giorgio Di Marzo and Luisa Terzulli
We have met Dr Luigi Mammolini (LM), Attaché for Cultural Affairs Music and Cinema at the Italian Cultural Institute, and the Director of the Institute Prof Pierluigi Barrotta (PB). With them we have talked about the commitment of the Institute to the promotion of Italian music in England.
Let’s start from Napul’e’, about which we have also published an article (START Newsletter, issue # 4). How and from whom was this idea born?
LM: The idea was born on suggestion of the Italian Embassy in London. It has therefore been included in the programme of the Italian language week, that this year was dedicated to food and folk fairs, so we considered that the Neapolitan song represents the quintessential of the Italian folk festivity. It is also the best-known in the world, and moreover is folk music with cultural elements, because most of the modern Neapolitan poems – by Di Giacomo, for instance – have eventually been set to music.
We have noticed that there has been a very good response from the public: many people and not only Italians.
LM: Well, I must say that I was too busy with the organisation of the concert itself to have the time for a detailed study of the audience, so I rely on your evaluation. Definitely, there has been a very abundant audience, showing great interest for this kind of song that is not frequently represented.
About the music programme in general, how does the programming work and what is there for the future?
LM: Generally speaking we try to collaborate with the English musical institutions, should they be big institutions – like the Barbican Centre or the Royal Opera House – or festivals – like the London Jazz Festival or the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. During the past years we tried to give more importance to the most innovative aspects of the Italian music: I refer precisely to what is on stage in Huddersfield, to contemporary classic music, taking for granted that the opera is already mainstream here in London and that institutions such as the Royal Opera House already run a wide choice of Italian operas. We therefore tried to promote the less known music. Nevertheless, as it can be seen from our programme, we have just inaugurated a series entitled Night at the Opera: for example yesterday night Nuccia Focile was here, and she talked about her career and her role in La Bohème on stage at the Royal Opera House; this series will continue until February with other interviews to interpreters, conductors and other protagonists of the Italian opera. This collaboration with the Royal Opera House was born from a collaboration with the association Friends of the Royal Opera House; I repeat that it is not on the top of our priorities but at the moment we are experimenting this series of four meetings and if the audience will show a certain degree of interest we will try to keep this initiative also in the future.
Are you preparing any project to give space to the young Italian musicians living and working in London?
LM: We had for years a series called Lunch Time Concerto, focused mainly on the young Italian musicians studying here in London: at the Royal Academy of Music, at the Royal College of Music, at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama… We organised dozens of concerts here at the Italian Institute at lunch time, serving as a showcase for the young artists. This programme is currently a bit in crisis because we lack in “raw materials”. As soon as we will dispose of a new generation of Italians studying in the great conservatories of London – therefore already graduate from the Italian conservatories and here to attend a postgraduate – our intention is to maintain this initiative in order to offer a showcase to these young Italian artists. At the same time I would like to realise a more systematic collaboration with the young Italian composers working and composing soundtracks here in London, there are some and so we should pay attention to them, too. So yes, we have a practice consisting in trying to valorise the young Italian talents here in London, in the different music fields.
But have you ever considered the idea of “falling out of line”? You have so far talked about students, conservatory graduates, academies – as it is fair to be – but the Italian music is not just this. Have you ever thought about an excursus outside these parameters?
LM: We have never practised on a basis of genre, we have also supported bands playing Salento’s taranta, jazz, we have also supported concerts of Paolo Conte and other pop singers that however can be counted on the fingers of one hand: pop singers with a proper market here in London are few, and do not usually need the Italian Institute’s support. Carmen Consoli [who has played in London last June, Editor’s Note] and Paolo Conte support themselves by their own. Yet, usually the organisers with whom we collaborate ask us for a support that we, within the limits of our budget capabilities, gladly offer: we did it, for example, for Ennio Morricone when he performed with his orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall playing both soundtracks and personal compositions. In conclusion, we do not have preclusions in terms of genre; in my opinion we should try to support all the Italian music, with a limit represented precisely by the language: the young Italian bands singing in English seem to me less relevant from our point of view, because if we have as institutional aim the diffusion of the Italian culture and language, promoting the English language seems a task lying outside our reason for existence. Obviously there can also be extra-musical elements to be considered for the promotion, in a specific moment, of a singer rather than another: in this case the Embassy clearly reigns and can suggest us specific choices for a matter of opportunities. But generally speaking, as a “day-by-day policy”, the orientation of the Italian music promotion is planned together with the Institute Director, with a stress on the less known music: this is the reason why we have always supported the Italian participation to the Huddersfield Festival, because apart from being a less known sector it is also an environment where the Italian musicians have more difficulties to emerge and make a name for themselves abroad.
PLB: This is also the policy we follow in every sector: from art to literature, to cinema…
You were talking about the problem of the language. However, this is exactly the first limit to get known in England, because who normally sings in Italian has to adapt to the English market that wants to hear singing in English more than in Italian.
LM: Right, but it is also a market very open to what they call world music, that is music from all around the world like the taranta I was talking about a while ago, which is sung in Apulian dialect, not even in Italian. However this is not an obstacle, nobody has ever thought of an English translation of the taranta! We have recently been proposed to support an English version of La Traviata, but as long as it is possible to have the Italian opera in Italian I think it is preferable to support it. Encouraging with our contribution the English translation of La Traviata is something that perhaps will have to be done in 50 years, but now seems to be quite early. In literature, instead, we already support the English translation of works by Italian authors because the diversity between the two languages is such that there is no hope for the text to be read in its original version. In the opera, that is a sector with a tradition of performance in Italian, we try to preserve this same tradition also to cultivate a “favourable prejudice” towards Italy: it is always said that the Italian language is particularly suited to the singing, to the opera, so it seems fair not to discourage it. This image of the Italian language linked together with music dates back to 1700s, there is a tradition of Italian musicians at court, so I think it is a heritage that we should try to preserve.
PLB: That of the language is a very interesting topic for the Institute, not in terms of protection of the Italian language itself but as expression of a culture. The Italian language has disappeared both in business and the IT sector because the leading elements of research and culture in a wider meaning are not Italians; in other fields – like the opera but also the arts – it is us instead to export cultural terms. I will give you an example: everybody talks about Arte Povera because it is a cultural movement originated in Turin in 1960s, became popular all over the world and we have also exported the term, nobody talks of Poor Art. So, we should not see into the Italian language a competition with the English language, but simply a free expression of the Italian culture that has to be stimulated and encouraged. We have this kind of approach, it is not a protectionist attitude to impose at any cost the Italian language: we utilise it where it really is an integral part of the cultural movement. I do not agree, for example, with the disputes arisen a while ago about the elimination of the Italian language from the press conferences of the European Commission in Brussels, because it is not with the political pressure that we can promote a language but by encouraging its cultural expression.
On the other hand, the only way to deeply understand a culture is studying its language as well…
PLB: In fact this is the other side of the coin of culture: if you have an interesting culture then the study of the language necessarily follows. The people who come here to study Italian are all interested in the opera, in art, in cookery, o maybe they have a house in Italy and want to communicate with their neighbours; they are all cultural situations, and it is from there that the language eventually succeeds.
To conclude with the musical subject, what is the general response from the English public?
LM: As regards the lunch time concerts, the English audience is limited to our members: we have about 500-600 members and this is also the radius of our communication; the lunch time concerts, on the other hand, carves out a particular audience, who is free at that specific time. As for the evening concerts, instead, we usually have the halls crowded, we address to a wider public and we also try to promote these events on the specialised press. We take into account, moreover, that the Institute own a pianoforte, which represents an asset to us, so we try to utilise it by inviting some Italian pianists and the public response is good. The same can be said outside the Institute too, on the occasion of big festivals, and in some cases the musicians enjoy more success here than in Italy. This is not unusual, especially when talking about contemporary music, for which here there is a much wider audience. The Southbank or the Royal Festival Hall, moreover, usually have a very good didactical section dedicated to kids, and this is a further bond between music and audience. For example we have committed ourselves to an opera that is going to be on stage in Birmingham at the end of June 2007: it is the first opera by Nino Rota which is called The Swineherd Prince, from a tale by Andersen, and it will be performed at the principal theatre with musicians of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – one of the best orchestras in England. This opera is part of a project centred in Birmingham involving a dozen of schools, in which there will be held workshops and seminars addressed to the young students. Henceforth, it seemed to us interesting to support it exactly because of this projection outside the theatre; here in England this dimension and this relationship with the future generations are much cultivated, and there are more opportunities than in Italy, we therefore believe in the importance of supporting this kind of initiatives.
We would like to thank Prof Barrotta and Dr Mammolini for their kindness.
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