Maestro Gianandrea Gavazzeni‘s death 27 years ago, on Feb. 5, 1996, is an occasion to renew his memory. The appointment for an almost familiar remembrance, without the trappings of officialdom, is set for tomorrow at 5:45 p.m. at the Library Room in Via Rocca, 5.
Conducting the meeting will be Mimma Forlani, author of the book “I luoghi di Gianandrea Gavazzeni” (2006), renewed, expanded and republished in 2021 at the Lubrina Bramani publishing house, at the initiative of Fondazione Polli Stoppani and the Gavazzeni Archives, In tomorrow’s meeting, enriched by readings by Diego Bonifaccio and Aide Bosio, Forlani will make known some fragments of the unpublished correspondence entertained by Maestro Gavazzeni with the painter Renato Guttuso, which lasted from 1961 to 1980, and with the publisher Alberto Mondadori.
Click here to read the full article from L’Eco di Bergamo
Biography: Gianandrea Gavazzeni from treccani.it
Musician, died in Bergamo on February 5, 1996. Having abandoned compositional activity since 1949, he devoted himself in his later years mainly to opera conducting, bringing numerous modern revivals of 19th- and early 20th-century melodramas to the stage. Gavazzeni’s critical and interpretative work has imparted a fundamental impetus to the recovery of these pieces and their reinsertion in the repertoire, as well as to the comparison with contemporary operatic literature. The careful work of analysis and research, aimed at overcoming the limits of the conventions accumulated over the years on the musical and dramaturgical text and at the same time favoring a rendering faithful to historical and cultural needs, has in fact accompanied and constantly marked his commitment as an interpreter. A charismatic figure and yet free from divine temptations, Gavazzeni was able to grasp and assume the complexity of the role required in the 20th century of the conductor-particularly in the field of opera-as the central and ‘demiurgic’ element of an articulated constellation of artistic personalities that contribute to the construction of the performance.
Artistic director of La Scala from 1965 to 1968, and then several times a guest of the Milanese theater, he also conducted in the world’s major theaters, while continuing his interpretation of the symphonic repertoire, with particular attention to German symphonism. From 1986 he was a national member of the Accademia dei Lincei.
Recordings include: Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore (1967); Verdi’s Jerusalem (1963) and Simon Boccanegra (1973); and Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana (1977).
Gavazzeni’s critical and musicological efforts had also continued with writings such as Trent’anni di musica (1958); I nemici della musica (1965); Non eseguire Beethoven e altri scritti (1974); La bacchetta spezzata (1987); Quaderno del musicista (1988); Il sipario rosso. Diary 1950-1976 (1992).
Gianandrea Gavazzeni: a video memory
