Life
His training took place in the heart of the Fin de siècle, an era where Verismo, Decadentism, and Symbolism intertwined, while his long mature career unfolded in a twentieth century marked by the revolution of Futurism and subsequent currents.
Alfredo Casella was born in Turin in 1883 into a family of musicians. He studied at the Paris Conservatory with Gabriel Fauré, graduating in 1903. In France, he frequented personalities such as Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky, who influenced his cosmopolitan training. In 1915 he returned to Italy and settled in Rome, assuming a central role in the dissemination of contemporary music.
He founded the Corporazione delle Nuove Musiche with Malipiero and Respighi, promoting modern performances and compositions. He was a pianist of international value, a conductor, and a tireless popularizer. In 1923 he began teaching at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, training new generations of musicians.
He composed major works, from symphonies to concertos for piano, violin, and cello, from ballets to lyrical operas. His music, at times inspired by Neoclassicism, represents one of the peaks of Italian production in the early twentieth century. He died in Rome in 1947.
Aneddoto
A formative Paris
During his Parisian years, Casella met Ravel and Stravinsky, becoming friends with the great protagonists of European musical modernity.Works
Among his principal works: the Three Symphonies (1905, 1908, 1940), the Concertos for piano, violin, and cello, the Concerto romano for organ and orchestra (1926), the ballet La giara (1924, after Pirandello), the opera La donna serpente (1932), the Pupazzetti for chamber orchestra, as well as much chamber and vocal music. Casella also wrote essays and memoirs, including I segreti della giara.
Briciole di storia
Olivetti is born: the factory of the future
While Italy was still a predominantly agricultural country, in Ivrea, Piedmont, the engineer Camillo Olivetti founded "Ing. C. Olivetti & C." in 1908, the first Italian typewriter factory. With only 20 workers and a small red brick plant, he began production of the first model, the M1, which would be presented three years later. Camillo Olivetti's vision, and later that of his son Adriano, was not just industrial. Over time, Olivetti became a unique model in the world of a factory that combined technological excellence with extraordinary attention to design, culture, social services for employees, and urban planning. In that small shed, the industrial and social dream that set an example worldwide was born.
Pubblico dominio (Commons)
