Preservation and Promotion of Opera Cultural Heritage: The Experience of La Scala Theatre

This paper focuses on music and music-related cultural heritage typically preserved by opera houses, starting from the experience achieved during the long-lasting collaboration between La Scala theater and the Laboratory of Music Informatics of the University of Milan. First, we will mention the most significant results achieved by the project in the fields of preservation, information retrieval and dissemination of cultural heritage through computer-based approaches. Moreover, we will discuss the possibilities offered by new technologies applied to the conservative context of an opera house, including: the multi-layer representation of music information to foster the accessibility of musical content also by non-experts; the adoption of 5G networks to deliver spherical videos of live events, thus opening new scenarios for cultural heritage enjoyment and dissemination; deep learning approaches both to improve internal processes (e.g., back-office applications for music information retrieval) and to offer advanced services to users (e.g., highly-customized experiences)

Milan 1790-1802: Music, society and politics in the city of many regimes

Between the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the following one, the Napoleonic wars caused the whole of Northern Italy to live an unstable political era, the old absolutist regimes being replaced by republican states strongly subjected to France. In the case of Lombardy and its capital city Milan, for almost a century a part of the Habsburg Monarchy, this era was particularly intense and problematic: following the alternate outcome of the war, the government changed repeatedly from monarchy to republic over rather short time span. In a situation as such, rather unique in the history of the city, the various governments made a programmatic use of the arts and especially music for propaganda and control purposes. In Milan, a prominent venue for operatic performances already during the second half of the eighteenth century, musical theatre was identified as the primary vehicle for the dissemination of the rapidly changing political and social values and the monitoring of public opinion: La Scala opera house, at the very centre of Milan’s both musical and social life already in the Habsburg years, became the centre of diffusion of new cultural policies and social mechanisms. In addition to a carefully conceived and implemented plan of intervention within the theatre, new occasions were also found for the performance of appositely composed music outside the theatrical buildings in the city’s public spaces, i.e. the great republican feasts, rather complex events mixing music, visual arts, celebrative elements and popular entertainment. Cultural and more specifically musical phenomena taking place both inside and outside the theatre also played a major part in shaping Milan’s cultural environment and defining its role in the following Risorgimento years. Drawing on both dedicated literature and an extensive research based on archival and primary sources, the present thesis aims at reconstructing the unique historical context of these years and its consequences on the Milanese society and cultural production, also analysing the effect that the repeated government changes had on Milan’s musical environment not only in terms of repertoire, but also in the complex links established between politics, society and music. Traditionally overlooked, these years represent not only a complex transition between two very different historical and cultural contexts, but also a highly creative and vibrant period that had undeniable consequences on the following years

A Web-Oriented Multi-layer Model to Interact with Theatrical Performances

This paper presents an innovative approach to online fruition of theater performances. Web applications like traditional viewers are already available for the wide audience of Internet users. Our proposal aims at adding both interactivity and multi-layer fruition, and a way to manipulate and create new media. The premise to reach these goals is digitizing a number of heterogeneous materials in order to describe a single performance comprehensively, e.g. different video and audio-takes from different perspectives, and a number of related materials such as scripts, fashion plates, playbills, etc. The format we adopt to encode such information is based on the XML international standard known as IEEE 1599. Finally, an advanced Web player supporting search and play functions for synchronized materials must be designed. This work describes the whole process, from the acquisition of materials directly on the stage to their publishing on a Web portal

Occupational markers and pathology of the castrato singer Gaspare Pacchierotti (1740\u20131821)

Following the birth of modern opera in Italy in 1600, the demand for soprano voices grew up and the prepuberal castration was carried out to preserve the young male voice into adult life. Among the castrati, Gaspare Pacchierotti was probably one of the most famous. The remains of Pacchierotti were exhumed for the first time in 2013, for a research in the reconstruction of his biological profile, to understand the secrets behind his sublime voice and how the castration influenced the body. All the findings discovered, through anthropological and Computed Tomography analyses, are consistent both with the occupational markers of a singer and with the hormonal effects of castration. The erosion of cervical vertebrae, the insertion of respiratory muscles and muscles of the arms can be an effect of the bodily position and exercise during singing. The hormonal effect of castration were related to osteoporosis and to the disorders of spine

A List of Verdi\u27s Music, Librettos, Production Materials, Nineteenth-Century Italian Periodicals, and Other Research Materials

A descriptive catalog of the microfilm holdings of the American Institute for Verdi Studies as of November 1982. The purposes of the catalog are to to inform the Verdi community and others about the holdings of the Verdi Archive at New York University and to invite readers to assist in the Archive\u27s growth by reporting the location of materials not listed here