Books by Siel Agugliaro
![Research paper thumbnail of Teatro alla Scala e promozione culturale nel lungo Sessantotto milanese [Teatro alla Scala, Milan and Cultural Promotion in the Long 1968]](https://a.academia-assets.com/images/blank-paper.jpg)
A chi si rivolge la musica dei teatri d’opera? Che rapporto c’è tra il pubblico dell’opera e la f... more A chi si rivolge la musica dei teatri d’opera? Che rapporto c’è tra il pubblico dell’opera e la forma che questo tipo di spettacolo ha assunto nel XX secolo? E fino a che punto i teatri lirici italiani hanno saputo rispondere all’esigenza di un accesso davvero democratico alla cultura musicale? Il mio lavoro cerca una risposta a queste domande a partire da un caso concreto: il Teatro alla Scala negli anni compresi tra le contestazioni del 1968 e la fine del decennio successivo. Questo periodo viene spesso indicato come il momento dell’apertura della Scala a tutte le classi sociali, grazie soprattutto all’avvio di una serie di iniziative che avrebbero poi avuto notevole rilievo nella letteratura storica, teatrale e musicologica: tra le altre, gli spettacoli per lavoratori e studenti, le attività sul territorio locale, i concerti nelle fabbriche. Al tempo stesso, questo ‘impegno’ culturale è stato spesso interpretato come un’improvvisa reazione alle grandi ideologie che hanno marcato la scena politica italiana di quegli anni. Per questo motivo, una volta che l’onda lunga del Sessantotto allentò la sua presa, il progressivo abbandono di queste attività da parte della dirigenza scaligera apparve un fatto naturale. A memoria di quella stagione, oltre che dei suoi protagonisti — tra gli altri, il sovrintendente Paolo Grassi e il direttore musicale (poi direttore artistico) Claudio Abbado — rimangono oggi documenti, fotografie, articoli di giornale, ricordi, che hanno contribuito nel loro insieme a formare un mito: quello di un’epoca gloriosa e irripetibile, in cui la Scala accoglieva finalmente la società fra le sue mura, e i lavoratori lottavano insieme per fare della cultura, musica inclusa, un mezzo per acquisire consapevolezza del proprio ruolo nella società.
Attraverso un approccio interdisciplinare, che integra il materiale d’archivio con le testimonianze orali di coloro che hanno vissuto — da interpreti e organizzatori, o semplicemente da spettatori — quella fase della recente storia del Teatro alla Scala, il mio lavoro si propone di indagare le ragioni poste alla base della politica culturale promossa dal teatro in quel periodo. Rileggendo la Contestazione nel quadro più ampio della storia scaligera del Novecento, sarà inoltre possibile valutare il grado di novità delle iniziative varate in quegli anni, oltre che la loro reale efficacia nel «diffondere l’educazione artistica in tutte le classi sociali».
What is the target audience of the music performed in opera houses? What is the connection between this audience and the form that opera performance has taken in the 20th Century? And to what extent have Italian opera houses been able to allow a truly democratic access to musical culture? My research attempts to answer these questions from the standpoint of the Teatro alla Scala, one of the most prestigious Italian operatic institutions, by taking into account the cultural policy promoted by the theatre in the years between the social and political protests of 1968 and the end of the 1970s. This period is often referred to as the moment of a real ‘opening’ of the theatre to all the social classes, thanks to a series of initiatives — such as the low-priced performances and concerts for workers and students at La Scala, or the special concerts in the factories and in other locations around Milan — that would later be recalled in many historical, theatrical and musicological studies. The sudden emergence of La Scala’s interest in social commitment has often been interpreted as a reaction of the theatre to the turbulent Italian political scene of those years. For this reason, once the Sessantotto ideologies started to lose their grip, the dismissal of several cultural activities appeared to many as strictly related to the political disenchantment gradually arising in the Italian society of the late 1970s. In the meantime, the many documents, articles, photos and memories related to this important season of La Scala’s recent history — and to its charismatic protagonists, among whom superintendent Paolo Grassi and musical director (and later artistic director) Claudio Abbado — have contributed to the creation of a myth: that of a glorious, unique age, during which La Scala would finally begin to receive into its walls the social classes that had been neglected up to that point, and workers would fight together to make use of culture, including music, as a means to increase their awareness of their own role in society.
Drawing on a multidisciplinary approach that merges archival research with the oral accounts or those who lived that period as performers, organizers, or simply members of the audience, my work aims to investigate the reasons underpinning the cultural policy fostered by La Scala after 1968. By integrating the many musical activities launched in the 1960s and 1970s in the broader context of La Scala’s history of 20th Century, I intend to assess the degree of newness of this initiatives, and their effectiveness in «promoting artistic education in all social classes».
Dissertations by Siel Agugliaro
University of Pennsylvania, Department of Music, 2021
In this dissertation, I argue that Italian opera, a prominent symbol of Italian American identity... more In this dissertation, I argue that Italian opera, a prominent symbol of Italian American identity, has been entangled in the United States with issues of racial difference and social subjugation. In contrast to previous scholarship that views Italian opera as a musical genre that had already defined Italians’ cultural identity in their motherland, I show that opera came to be associated with all Italian immigrants only in the United States, while being adopted by Italian Americans themselves to improve their reputation in their adoptive country. In particular, I demonstrate that the renewed visibility and audibility that the recording industry had assigned to Italian opera at the beginning of the twentieth century contributed to this twinned process of stereotyping and reappropriation, as it enhanced the potential of opera as a vessel for racial and social uplift for Italian immigrants. My research focuses on Philadelphia, a thriving operatic city and a center of opera recording that was also home to one of the largest Italian communities in the country.
The scope of the research calls for a variety of historical sources ranging from archival materials to oral interviews with descendants of Italian immigrants. I examine these materials adopting an interdisciplinary approach that borrows its methods and interpretive frameworks from media history, historical ethnography, migration studies, and critical race studies. Chapter 1 explores the cultural presence of Italian opera in American society in the late nineteenth century, and the extent to which this genre could be employed by Italian immigrants for purposes of social uplift. Chapter 2 analyzes the emergence of operatic references in popular songs about and by Italian Americans published in Philadelphia and other cities between the 1860s and the 1920s. Chapter 3 examines the new significance that recording industrialists attributed to Italian opera in the early twentieth century, and the political and racial implications of the marketing of home phonographs for Italian immigrants and record dealers living in Philadelphia. Chapter 4 investigates the use of Italian opera for the cultural assimilation of Philadelphia Italians in the years between the end of World War I and the Immigration Act of 1924.
Desidero ringraziare l'Università di Siena per avermi dato la possibilità di dedi-carmi alla rice... more Desidero ringraziare l'Università di Siena per avermi dato la possibilità di dedi-carmi alla ricerca che più desideravo compiere. Un pensiero speciale va al mio tu-tor, il prof. Andrea Chegai, che mi ha sostenuto durante tutte le fasi del mio lavoro, dai primi embrionali progetti fino alla stesura definitiva della tesi. Ringrazio anche la prof.ssa Laura Caretti, il prof. Roberto Bigazzi e il prof. Andrea Martini per aver dato fiducia alle mie idee, nonostante i molti cambi di direzione che ha subito la ri-cerca.
Articles by Siel Agugliaro
Cambridge Opera Journal, 2023
In this article I argue that the longstanding practice of depicting Italian Americans as opera lo... more In this article I argue that the longstanding practice of depicting Italian Americans as opera lovers stems from a tradition associating Italian immigrants with mechanical music devices. As a growing number of Italian unskilled labourers entered the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century, they were stereotyped as street musicians, and especially as organ grinders, in mainstream popular culture. Beginning in the 1900s, recording manufacturers strove to make home phonographs appealing to the middle class by breaking the chain of mechanical, social and racial associations that connected the phonograph with earlier musical devices such as the barrel organ, and with those who played them. Because of the prominent marketing role that record labels assigned to Italian opera, this commercial strategy had important consequences for the genre as well as for Italian immigrants, who leveraged opera's renewed visibility and audibility into an effective vessel for social and political empowerment.
Music & Letters, 2021
In 1954–5, "Porgy and Bess" appeared for the first time in Italy in an all-Black production forma... more In 1954–5, "Porgy and Bess" appeared for the first time in Italy in an all-Black production formally endorsed by the US State Department. Italian theatre administrators saw this production as an opportunity to sever any ideological connection with Fascism after decades of institutional support. At the same time, while Italian audiences and critics were often aware of the essentializing practices at the origins of "Porgy and Bess", they relied on the stereotypical image of African American culture presented by the show to project their own experiences and political aspirations onto the opera’s subject and music. Drawing on primary sources, interviews, and the analysis of the earlier European reception of "Porgy and Bess", this article argues that the success of the opera in Italy, rather than being determined by US diplomatic efforts, was a result of Italians’ need to redefine a sense of collective identity in a time of political transition.
Identità di luogo, pluralità di pratiche. Componenti sonore e modalità partecipative nel contesto urbano milanese
Book Chapters by Siel Agugliaro
Music and Resistance: From 1900 to the Present, edited by Igor Contreras Zubillaga and Helena Martín-Nieva, 2023
Phonographic Encounters: Mapping Transnational Cultures of Sound, 1890-1945, 2021
Business and communication historians have sometimes defined the 25 years between the outbreak of... more Business and communication historians have sometimes defined the 25 years between the outbreak of World War I and the beginning of World War II a period of "de-globalization" caused by the gradual abandonment of the gold standard and the economic closure of the nations involved in the two conflicts (Verde, 2017, pp. 6-7; Mishra, 2019, pp. 13-14). To an extent, changes in the global flow of capital have repercussions on the way cultural products, music included, circulate across different nations. Indeed, as scholars of ethnic records have observed (Spottswood, 1990; Kenney, 1999; Swiatlowski, 2018), the emergence in the United States of a domestic market for locally composed, performed, and recorded music in different foreign languages was largely a consequence of the closure of international borders following the beginning of the first world conflict. Physically isolated from their respective motherlands, immigrant communities used the phonograph and recorded music both to negotiate their cultural connections with their respective motherlands and to define their own place in American culture and society. Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai has discussed the impact of mass media in processes of identity formation and retention within transnational communities. "For migrants," he wrote, "both the politics of adaptation to new environments and the stimulus to move and return are deeply affected by a mass-mediated imaginary that frequently transcends national space" (Appadurai, 1996, p. 6). In this chapter, I build on Appadurai's argument to consider how the Italian community of Philadelphia adopted the phonograph as a tool for the definition of a transnational identity. In particular, I focus on record dealers of Italian descent active in the city between the late 1900s and the late 1920s. As I will show, Italian record dealers took part both in the highly centralized distribution network of American recording companies and in the local and transatlantic circuits of Neapolitan songs and other repertoires in dialect from Italy. 1 Because of this, I argue that they found themselves uniquely positioned to circulate and in some cases to produce the musical records-the vessels of the "imaginary" described by Appadurai-that they and their clientele used to craft or maintain their 11 The phonograph and transnational identity Selling music records in Philadelphia's Little Italy, 1900s-1920s Siel Agugliaro
Reviews by Siel Agugliaro
The Opera Quarterly, 2023
Notes, the Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association, 2020
Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, 2019
Rivista Italiana di Musicologia , 2016
Talks by Siel Agugliaro
In the early 1910s, the U.S. recording industry sought to expand its consumer base by tapping int... more In the early 1910s, the U.S. recording industry sought to expand its consumer base by tapping into a new market: public schools. Recording companies such as Victor Talking Machine and Columbia created special educational departments intended to increase the presence of phonographs in American schools. After World War I, schools employed phonographs especially in two areas: music appreciation classes and Americanization classes. For the first activity, recording companies recommended selections of operatic and symphonic music; for the second, folk songs from each country were preferred, in order to keep “the newcomers happy and satisfied during the process of assimilation.”
In this context, the musical identity of thousands of first- and second-generation Italians attending public schools was mapped onto a clearly defined cultural hierarchy. At the top of it, Italian opera was presented as a respectable music to which every American citizen should be exposed. At the bottom, so-called “ethnic” Italian songs such as Funicolì Funicolà or Santa Lucia were desirable only to the extent to which they led Italian students to eventually embrace the culture of the host society.
In this paper, I examine this double standard of musical Italianness through the example of Philadelphia, home to one of the largest Italian communities in the U.S. Building on archival resources, contemporary press, and secondary literature on early recordings and Italian folk songs, I suggest that this double standard, while born in response to precise commercial and political needs, eventually laid the musical foundations of a distinctive Italian-American culture.
In the second half of the 19th century, Italian street musicians began to appear in the streets o... more In the second half of the 19th century, Italian street musicians began to appear in the streets of large and small U.S. urban centers during the warmest months of the year. While some middle-class Americans praised their work as propagators of the music performed in the often inaccessible theaters and concert halls, others perceived Italian barrel organ players, harpists, singers, and other street musicians as noisy, dirty, and crime-affiliated, particularly as waves of unskilled workers from Italy flocked to the poorest U.S. neighborhoods in the following decades. In centers such as New York City and Philadelphia, home to large Italian communities, the association between street musicians and Italian identity in general became increasingly criticized by local Italian leaders, who sought to redeem the image of Italy and Italian culture, including music, in the eyes of their American hosts.
In this paper, I draw upon contemporary press, archival resources, and scholarly literature (Zucchi, Alliegro, Graber, Hamberlin) to examine the complex and conflicting representations and functions of Italian street musicians. At the same time, I will show that Italian street musicians continued to survive in the U.S. as a racial stereotype into the twentieth century, despite their declining numbers. It was these musicians’ lingering presence in the collective memory of both Americans and Italian immigrants that confirmed the “natural” musicality of all Italians, regardless of their class, and indirectly helped the popular success of opera stars such as Caruso and Tetrazzini and other compatriots, especially with the advent of recording technologies.
This paper puts in conversation two apparently irreconcilable worlds. The first is that of George... more This paper puts in conversation two apparently irreconcilable worlds. The first is that of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (1935), a “folk opera” reminiscent of black minstrelsy racial stereotypes, and indebted to the Romantic conception of Volk as it had been applied to the U.S. context by two generations of musicians and scholars, from Antonin Dvořák and Frederick Henry Koch to John and Alan Lomax. The second is that of Roberto Leydi, one of the scholars responsible for the foundation of Italian ethnomusicology after World War II. An admirer of Porgy and Bess, Leydi developed in his youth a strong interest for American black music, which to his mind provided an example of those “folk roots” he was looking for as an alternative to the official culture promoted by fascism. In the late 1950s, Leydi began collecting folk music materials from Italian rural areas, and organized special shows featuring the “authentic” interpreters of such traditions. Based on archival material and scholarly literature (Radano and Bohlman 2000, Crawford 2006, Stoller 2009, André 2018, Ferraro 2015), this paper pursues a twofold goal. On the one hand, I aim to problematize the history of Italian ethnomusicology by placing it in a longer historical trajectory of racial representation. On the other, I argue that precisely this narrative, despite its burden of misunderstandings and cultural appropriations, allowed Leydi and his collaborators to carve out for themselves a new identity in their own country, while giving national visibility to previously neglected folk musical genres and practices.
In 1873, the Philadelphia police arrested dozens of Italian men and women responsible for smuggli... more In 1873, the Philadelphia police arrested dozens of Italian men and women responsible for smuggling in the country children to be employed as street musicians. Though they often came from a specific area in southern Italy, those children did not play the traditional music of their region. Rather, they were taught a generic “Italian” musical repertoire, resonating with the idea of Italy cultivated by their foreign clientele. In that repertoire, a prominent role was reserved to Italian opera, a genre that had become increasingly popular among the American upper classes during the 19th century, and which found in Philadelphia one of its major centers in the U.S. The prestige of Italian opera grew also in the following decades, to the advantage of the local Italian community. In 1901, while a massive wave of unskilled workers was immigrating from Italy, a group of Italian leaders in Philadelphia raised funds to erect a bust of composer Giuseppe Verdi, thus reminding Americans “of the glories of a country [Italy] which is excelled by none in the eminence, and talents, and virtues of its sons”.
Music scholars and historians (Ceriani, Luconi) have discussed the efforts of Italian prominenti to rehabilitate the image of their community through opera at the beginning of the 20th century. In my paper, I focus on Philadelphia, home of one of the largest Italian communities in the U.S., to put this process into historical perspective. Drawing on contemporary press, archival resources, interviews, and additional scholarly literature (Leydi, Zucchi, Hamberlin), I suggest that the idea of opera as a marker of Italian identity, already propagated in nationalist sense during Italian Risorgimento, became a racial stereotype in the American context, which in turn would be (re-)appropriated by the local Italian community in response to an increasingly hostile social environment. By doing so, I will show that opera, while being part of the “sonic color line” (Stoever) that gradually emerged in the U.S. to both describe and discriminate against Italian immigrants, was also a strategic tool used by that same community to survive, and carve a space for itself, in an alien society.
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Books by Siel Agugliaro
Attraverso un approccio interdisciplinare, che integra il materiale d’archivio con le testimonianze orali di coloro che hanno vissuto — da interpreti e organizzatori, o semplicemente da spettatori — quella fase della recente storia del Teatro alla Scala, il mio lavoro si propone di indagare le ragioni poste alla base della politica culturale promossa dal teatro in quel periodo. Rileggendo la Contestazione nel quadro più ampio della storia scaligera del Novecento, sarà inoltre possibile valutare il grado di novità delle iniziative varate in quegli anni, oltre che la loro reale efficacia nel «diffondere l’educazione artistica in tutte le classi sociali».
What is the target audience of the music performed in opera houses? What is the connection between this audience and the form that opera performance has taken in the 20th Century? And to what extent have Italian opera houses been able to allow a truly democratic access to musical culture? My research attempts to answer these questions from the standpoint of the Teatro alla Scala, one of the most prestigious Italian operatic institutions, by taking into account the cultural policy promoted by the theatre in the years between the social and political protests of 1968 and the end of the 1970s. This period is often referred to as the moment of a real ‘opening’ of the theatre to all the social classes, thanks to a series of initiatives — such as the low-priced performances and concerts for workers and students at La Scala, or the special concerts in the factories and in other locations around Milan — that would later be recalled in many historical, theatrical and musicological studies. The sudden emergence of La Scala’s interest in social commitment has often been interpreted as a reaction of the theatre to the turbulent Italian political scene of those years. For this reason, once the Sessantotto ideologies started to lose their grip, the dismissal of several cultural activities appeared to many as strictly related to the political disenchantment gradually arising in the Italian society of the late 1970s. In the meantime, the many documents, articles, photos and memories related to this important season of La Scala’s recent history — and to its charismatic protagonists, among whom superintendent Paolo Grassi and musical director (and later artistic director) Claudio Abbado — have contributed to the creation of a myth: that of a glorious, unique age, during which La Scala would finally begin to receive into its walls the social classes that had been neglected up to that point, and workers would fight together to make use of culture, including music, as a means to increase their awareness of their own role in society.
Drawing on a multidisciplinary approach that merges archival research with the oral accounts or those who lived that period as performers, organizers, or simply members of the audience, my work aims to investigate the reasons underpinning the cultural policy fostered by La Scala after 1968. By integrating the many musical activities launched in the 1960s and 1970s in the broader context of La Scala’s history of 20th Century, I intend to assess the degree of newness of this initiatives, and their effectiveness in «promoting artistic education in all social classes».
Dissertations by Siel Agugliaro
The scope of the research calls for a variety of historical sources ranging from archival materials to oral interviews with descendants of Italian immigrants. I examine these materials adopting an interdisciplinary approach that borrows its methods and interpretive frameworks from media history, historical ethnography, migration studies, and critical race studies. Chapter 1 explores the cultural presence of Italian opera in American society in the late nineteenth century, and the extent to which this genre could be employed by Italian immigrants for purposes of social uplift. Chapter 2 analyzes the emergence of operatic references in popular songs about and by Italian Americans published in Philadelphia and other cities between the 1860s and the 1920s. Chapter 3 examines the new significance that recording industrialists attributed to Italian opera in the early twentieth century, and the political and racial implications of the marketing of home phonographs for Italian immigrants and record dealers living in Philadelphia. Chapter 4 investigates the use of Italian opera for the cultural assimilation of Philadelphia Italians in the years between the end of World War I and the Immigration Act of 1924.
Articles by Siel Agugliaro
Book Chapters by Siel Agugliaro
Reviews by Siel Agugliaro
Talks by Siel Agugliaro
In this context, the musical identity of thousands of first- and second-generation Italians attending public schools was mapped onto a clearly defined cultural hierarchy. At the top of it, Italian opera was presented as a respectable music to which every American citizen should be exposed. At the bottom, so-called “ethnic” Italian songs such as Funicolì Funicolà or Santa Lucia were desirable only to the extent to which they led Italian students to eventually embrace the culture of the host society.
In this paper, I examine this double standard of musical Italianness through the example of Philadelphia, home to one of the largest Italian communities in the U.S. Building on archival resources, contemporary press, and secondary literature on early recordings and Italian folk songs, I suggest that this double standard, while born in response to precise commercial and political needs, eventually laid the musical foundations of a distinctive Italian-American culture.
In this paper, I draw upon contemporary press, archival resources, and scholarly literature (Zucchi, Alliegro, Graber, Hamberlin) to examine the complex and conflicting representations and functions of Italian street musicians. At the same time, I will show that Italian street musicians continued to survive in the U.S. as a racial stereotype into the twentieth century, despite their declining numbers. It was these musicians’ lingering presence in the collective memory of both Americans and Italian immigrants that confirmed the “natural” musicality of all Italians, regardless of their class, and indirectly helped the popular success of opera stars such as Caruso and Tetrazzini and other compatriots, especially with the advent of recording technologies.
Music scholars and historians (Ceriani, Luconi) have discussed the efforts of Italian prominenti to rehabilitate the image of their community through opera at the beginning of the 20th century. In my paper, I focus on Philadelphia, home of one of the largest Italian communities in the U.S., to put this process into historical perspective. Drawing on contemporary press, archival resources, interviews, and additional scholarly literature (Leydi, Zucchi, Hamberlin), I suggest that the idea of opera as a marker of Italian identity, already propagated in nationalist sense during Italian Risorgimento, became a racial stereotype in the American context, which in turn would be (re-)appropriated by the local Italian community in response to an increasingly hostile social environment. By doing so, I will show that opera, while being part of the “sonic color line” (Stoever) that gradually emerged in the U.S. to both describe and discriminate against Italian immigrants, was also a strategic tool used by that same community to survive, and carve a space for itself, in an alien society.
Attraverso un approccio interdisciplinare, che integra il materiale d’archivio con le testimonianze orali di coloro che hanno vissuto — da interpreti e organizzatori, o semplicemente da spettatori — quella fase della recente storia del Teatro alla Scala, il mio lavoro si propone di indagare le ragioni poste alla base della politica culturale promossa dal teatro in quel periodo. Rileggendo la Contestazione nel quadro più ampio della storia scaligera del Novecento, sarà inoltre possibile valutare il grado di novità delle iniziative varate in quegli anni, oltre che la loro reale efficacia nel «diffondere l’educazione artistica in tutte le classi sociali».
What is the target audience of the music performed in opera houses? What is the connection between this audience and the form that opera performance has taken in the 20th Century? And to what extent have Italian opera houses been able to allow a truly democratic access to musical culture? My research attempts to answer these questions from the standpoint of the Teatro alla Scala, one of the most prestigious Italian operatic institutions, by taking into account the cultural policy promoted by the theatre in the years between the social and political protests of 1968 and the end of the 1970s. This period is often referred to as the moment of a real ‘opening’ of the theatre to all the social classes, thanks to a series of initiatives — such as the low-priced performances and concerts for workers and students at La Scala, or the special concerts in the factories and in other locations around Milan — that would later be recalled in many historical, theatrical and musicological studies. The sudden emergence of La Scala’s interest in social commitment has often been interpreted as a reaction of the theatre to the turbulent Italian political scene of those years. For this reason, once the Sessantotto ideologies started to lose their grip, the dismissal of several cultural activities appeared to many as strictly related to the political disenchantment gradually arising in the Italian society of the late 1970s. In the meantime, the many documents, articles, photos and memories related to this important season of La Scala’s recent history — and to its charismatic protagonists, among whom superintendent Paolo Grassi and musical director (and later artistic director) Claudio Abbado — have contributed to the creation of a myth: that of a glorious, unique age, during which La Scala would finally begin to receive into its walls the social classes that had been neglected up to that point, and workers would fight together to make use of culture, including music, as a means to increase their awareness of their own role in society.
Drawing on a multidisciplinary approach that merges archival research with the oral accounts or those who lived that period as performers, organizers, or simply members of the audience, my work aims to investigate the reasons underpinning the cultural policy fostered by La Scala after 1968. By integrating the many musical activities launched in the 1960s and 1970s in the broader context of La Scala’s history of 20th Century, I intend to assess the degree of newness of this initiatives, and their effectiveness in «promoting artistic education in all social classes».
The scope of the research calls for a variety of historical sources ranging from archival materials to oral interviews with descendants of Italian immigrants. I examine these materials adopting an interdisciplinary approach that borrows its methods and interpretive frameworks from media history, historical ethnography, migration studies, and critical race studies. Chapter 1 explores the cultural presence of Italian opera in American society in the late nineteenth century, and the extent to which this genre could be employed by Italian immigrants for purposes of social uplift. Chapter 2 analyzes the emergence of operatic references in popular songs about and by Italian Americans published in Philadelphia and other cities between the 1860s and the 1920s. Chapter 3 examines the new significance that recording industrialists attributed to Italian opera in the early twentieth century, and the political and racial implications of the marketing of home phonographs for Italian immigrants and record dealers living in Philadelphia. Chapter 4 investigates the use of Italian opera for the cultural assimilation of Philadelphia Italians in the years between the end of World War I and the Immigration Act of 1924.
In this context, the musical identity of thousands of first- and second-generation Italians attending public schools was mapped onto a clearly defined cultural hierarchy. At the top of it, Italian opera was presented as a respectable music to which every American citizen should be exposed. At the bottom, so-called “ethnic” Italian songs such as Funicolì Funicolà or Santa Lucia were desirable only to the extent to which they led Italian students to eventually embrace the culture of the host society.
In this paper, I examine this double standard of musical Italianness through the example of Philadelphia, home to one of the largest Italian communities in the U.S. Building on archival resources, contemporary press, and secondary literature on early recordings and Italian folk songs, I suggest that this double standard, while born in response to precise commercial and political needs, eventually laid the musical foundations of a distinctive Italian-American culture.
In this paper, I draw upon contemporary press, archival resources, and scholarly literature (Zucchi, Alliegro, Graber, Hamberlin) to examine the complex and conflicting representations and functions of Italian street musicians. At the same time, I will show that Italian street musicians continued to survive in the U.S. as a racial stereotype into the twentieth century, despite their declining numbers. It was these musicians’ lingering presence in the collective memory of both Americans and Italian immigrants that confirmed the “natural” musicality of all Italians, regardless of their class, and indirectly helped the popular success of opera stars such as Caruso and Tetrazzini and other compatriots, especially with the advent of recording technologies.
Music scholars and historians (Ceriani, Luconi) have discussed the efforts of Italian prominenti to rehabilitate the image of their community through opera at the beginning of the 20th century. In my paper, I focus on Philadelphia, home of one of the largest Italian communities in the U.S., to put this process into historical perspective. Drawing on contemporary press, archival resources, interviews, and additional scholarly literature (Leydi, Zucchi, Hamberlin), I suggest that the idea of opera as a marker of Italian identity, already propagated in nationalist sense during Italian Risorgimento, became a racial stereotype in the American context, which in turn would be (re-)appropriated by the local Italian community in response to an increasingly hostile social environment. By doing so, I will show that opera, while being part of the “sonic color line” (Stoever) that gradually emerged in the U.S. to both describe and discriminate against Italian immigrants, was also a strategic tool used by that same community to survive, and carve a space for itself, in an alien society.
Based on archival resources and newspaper accounts from both sides of the At-lantic Ocean, as well as on the literature recently published on this subject by historians and music scholars (Noonan, Allen, Crist, and von Eschen, among others), my paper focuses on the Venetian and Milanese performances of the 1952-56 world tour of Porgy and Bess. The scope of my work is twofold. On the one hand, I intend to assess the efficacy of the opera as a vessel of U.S. propaganda in the Italian context. On the other, I will examine the way local critics and audiences received the racial implications of Porgy and Bess, one of the first American operas ever performed in the country, against the backdrop of the prestigious history of the genre: a supposedly cosmopolitan, high culture product born in Italy, which found in venues such as the ones considered in this paper – the Teatro la Fenice in Venice and the Teatro alla Scala in Milan – some of its most prestigious temples.
Drawing on interviews, archival resources and newspaper accounts, my paper investi-gates the cultural policy adopted by La Scala in the Seventies and aims to evaluate the role that this distinguished theatre played in fostering a democratization of opera music in late 20th Century Italy.
Se la collaborazione tra Scala e Teatro del Popolo si mantenne assai vitale fino agli anni della seconda guerra mondiale, i rapporti si diradarono dopo il conflitto, interrompendosi del tutto nel 1956. Da un lato, gli elevati costi di gestione rendevano poco conveniente il coinvolgimen-to della Scala nella stagione musicale del Teatro del Popolo. Dall’altro, la Società Umanitaria si era resa conto che la forma tradizionale del concerto aveva ormai perso la sua presa sui ceti meno abbienti, e che sarebbe stato necessario adottare nuovi e più efficaci strumenti per promuovere presso un pubblico ‘popolare’ una vera diffusione della musica d’arte. A partire dallo studio del materiale conservato presso gli archivi storici del Teatro alla Scala e della So-cietà Umanitaria, il mio intervento si propone di chiarire quali furono le dinamiche che porta-rono all’interruzione dei rapporti tra questi due enti, e di mettere in luce le strategie che la Scala approntò negli anni successivi per proseguire nel suo compito di «diffondere l’educazione artistica in tutte le classi sociali».