WORKS
THE STRAUSS CASE
DISCOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PHOTOGALLERY
NEWS
WHO WE ARE
EVENTS
CONTACTS
PRESS RELEASE
ACT ONE - The young Vittorio Gnecchi Ruscone
From Isabella Bozzotti Francesco Gnecchi Ruscone had three children: Cesare, Vittorio and Carla.
Vittorio Gnecchi was born in Milan, in the house of via Filodrammatici, on the 17th of July 1876.
The family atmosphere was very favourable in allowing him to cultivate his musical talent; he studied with the best private music teachers of the time: Michele Saladino (teacher of Mascagni and De Sabata) and Gaetano Coronaro, becoming afterwards fellow student of Tullio Serafin, to whom he was tied by a life long sincere friendship relation.
What later on tuned out to be the first “title” of demerit of the future composer, who shall be accused by his denigrators of “ being a dilettante” , started to slowly take shape: a dilettante too well-off to “lower himself” and follow the “official” course of musical studies . And yet, this very wealth allowed him to have a wide and always updated musical library, addressed particularly to central Europe art, and to keep up to date better than others on the late nineteenth-century developments.
Debut: Virtù d’Amore (Love Virtues)
In autumn 1896 in the big wine cellar of Verderio villa, used as a theatre, the first opera of Vittorio Gnecchi, the pastorale “Virtù d’Amore”, was staged.
An event that aroused a great deal of interest, mostly for the staging sumptuousness: sketches and fashion plates drawn by the painter Adolfo Hohenstein, person in charge of the set of the Theatre alla Scala and artistic director of the Ricordi Graphic Workshop; while Antonio Rovescalli, one of the most important set decorators of the period, realized for the event the scenes at complete panorama, that is to say without wings (solution that he will adopt the following year for the first scene of Tristano at the Theatre alla Scala).
Illustrious names stood out also in the orchestra: the eighteen years old Searfin was at the piano, Russolo (later on one of the leading exponents of the futurist music) at the harmonium, Galeazzi at the cello (later on he will become the first cello of La Scala), the tenor Cannonieri in the Choir and, among the leading actors, the sixteen years old count Giuseppe Visconti di Modrone (later on father of the famous director Luchino).
On the 12 October 1896, the newspaper “Corriere della Sera” wrote: ”it was a complete success”.
The opera score was published in a very luxurious edition by the publisher Giulio Ricordi who, on the pages of the “Gazzetta Musicale” (Musical Gazette), among other things, wrote: “Vittorio Gnecchi has shown his splendid musical wits”.