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From the Second World War to Judith
The years between the War and Vittorio Gnecchi’s death, which took place in 1954, are years dominated by the offence and the discouragement, due to the perpetrated silence to which Italy had condemned him.
Something actually had happened during said period.
On the 6th of June 1932 Gnecchi entered at last La Scala theatre doors, with the heroic Poem conducted by Willem Mengelberg. On the 21st of March 1940 the “Cantata Biblica” was performed again at La Scala, conducted by Franco Ferrara, then another run in the following May, always at La Scala, this time conducted by Alberto Erede and with the very famous Stella Roman and Francesco Valentino. On the 23rd of April 1942 “La Rosiera” (Prelude; Danza Campestre) reached the Theatre of “La Fenice” in Venice, conducted by Francesco Mander, while on the following 21st of April (forse errore di stampa perchè la data che precede è il 23 aprile) at Rome Opera Theatre, Gnecchi music was listened to in Italy for the last time: ironically, were the thundering notes of Cassandra to resound., conducted by Oliviero de Fabritiis. From then it was oblivion.
To account for the continuous attempts of Gnecchi to solve his case, there is also a letter of Giulio
Andreotti dated May 1949, at that time deputy-minister at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, who, after being asked, answered: “It really hurts me to hear you are so grieved for what you think is being done to your music. But it does not appear to me that the non performance of the operas is to be ascribed, without doubts, to an on principle or preconceived hostility towards you.
Rather, it will depend on circumstances which make fashionable in certain times some compositions rather than others, according to criteria of choice that cannot be censured by this Office.
In any case, I have reported to the General Director for Shows the content of your letter, praying him to satisfy your wishes, within the limits of the modest faculty of good offices, reserved to the Services of the Presidency towards the Autonomous Theatre Bodies “.
In December 1952, Austria will give him again , at Salzburg Mozarteum, the first performance in form of a concert (but with considerable cuts ) of the great musical drama in three acts, Judith , commenced in the first decade of the century , shortly after Cassandra, on a libretto of Illica too , and left silent at Verderio villa for more than forty years – true revenge of Gnecchi, who succeeded at last in having his forth lyrical opera performed in Salzburg, obtaining a huge personal success, even if this shall happen only after Strauss death.
It is a choral opera made of a big orchestral part, and it has an extraordinary modernity in writing, owing to a preparation of almost forty years.
After Cassandra, Judith is the real great opera of Gnecchi which waits to be staged again.
When Vittorio Gnecchi left the stage, silently in February 1954, his death was mourned only beyond the Alps. The 8th of February, therefore three days after his death, on the German and Austrian newspapers different deeply felt obituary notices appeared. To write the commemoration on the newspaper “ Tiroler Tageszeitung” was the famous musicologist Albert Riester.
In the entire Austrian Tyrol the death of Gnecchi was felt as a national mourning, and it was the Italian Institute of Culture to account of the intensity of the honour granted to the musician in a letter to the Italian General Consulate in Innsbruck, dated 15th of February 1954. In the same day in Jakobkirke, Innsbruck Cathedral, a solemn requiem mass for Gnecchi was celebrated, at the presence of the Italian Consul.
The 15th of July of the same year, Radio Innsbruck dedicated an hour of programmes and a portray of Gnecchi, prepared by Riester too.
In the radio conference the musicologist lingered mainly over the importance and the exceptional role of Gnecchi in the Italian musical panorama of the first part of the Nineteenth century, remembering how the musical critics, in 1905 when Cassandra was published, had welcomed the coming of a opera style without precedents; the fusion of the melodic invention of Italian tradition – in particular of Lombard tradition - with the overabundant timbre of Strauss orchestra, passing with diplomacy over the old and embarrassing vicissitudes. More confirms of the persistent interest and high artistic esteem.
In recent times only two articles have been written on the composer figure: Vittorio Gencchi and Richard Strauss: history of a supposed plagiarism, written by Quirino Principe, published in 1990 on the “Rivista Illustrata del Museo Teatrale la Scala”, and Vittorio Gnecchi: a Carneade to be recovered , by Ottavio De Carli issued in more instalments, between 1997 and 1999, on the review “Bresciamusica”.