External links
- Mario Zafred at IMDb
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Mario Zafred (2 March 1922 Trieste – 22 May 1987 Rome) was an Italian composer, music critic, and opera director. He also served as the president of various Italian music conservatories including the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
Zafred began his music studies in Venice under Gian Francesco Malipiero before attending the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. After graduating in 1944 with a diploma in music composition he continued to study further under Ildebrando Pizzetti. In 1947 he moved to Paris where he continued to study composition for two years.
After returning to Italy in 1949, Zafred began a successful career as a music critic, working first for L’unità (1949–56) and La Giustizia (1956–63). [1] In 1966 he became artistic director of the Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Verdi in Trieste. He left that house in 1968 to become the artistic director of the Rome Opera where he stayed until he became the director of the Teatro Lirico Sperimentale, Spoleto in 1974. In 1973 he was appointed president of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, where he stayed until he became president of the Sindacato Nazionale Musicisti in 1983. In 1985 he was appointed honorary president of both the Fondazione Arts Academy and the Istituzione Sinfonica di Roma.
Zafred enjoyed a considerable amount of success as a composer in Italy, winning numerous prizes for composition including the Premio Marzotto (1956), the Sibelius prize (1959) and the City of Treviso prize (1963). His career focused mostly on writing symphonic works, including seven symphonies, three large works for chorus and orchestra, and numerous concertos and sinfoniettas. He also composed a moderate amount of chamber music works including four string quartets, three piano trios, three sonatas, a wind quintet, and a serenata, among others. His output for solo instrument is confined to only a few pieces for the piano. Although, Zafred did not compose much vocal music he did create two fairly successful operas, Amleto (1961) and Wallenstein (1965). His other vocal works consist of a handful of art songs for solo voice and piano with the exception of one piece for voice, piano, and flute.
Zafred’s musical language developed from an early avant-garde manner to something increasingly simple and accessible. His vast, generally uniform output is rooted in counterpoint (sometimes 12-tone), the free use of classical forms, and the avoidance of an excessively intellectual approach in favour of fluid musical argument. A personal style of solid craftsmanship reveals the influences of Pizzetti, especially in the early works and the operas, and of Bartók in the elaboration of Istrian folk melodies in his mature works.
Zafred's compositions are published by Ricordi, Boccaccini & Spada and Suvini Zerboni.
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Ottorino Respighi was an Italian composer, violinist, teacher, and musicologist and one of the leading Italian composers of the early 20th century. His compositions range over operas, ballets, orchestral suites, choral songs, chamber music, and transcriptions of Italian compositions of the 16th–18th centuries, but his best known and most performed works are his three orchestral tone poems which brought him international fame: Fountains of Rome (1916), Pines of Rome (1924), and Roman Festivals (1928).
Gian Francesco Malipiero was an Italian composer, musicologist, music teacher and editor.
Ildebrando Pizzetti was an Italian composer of classical music, as well as being a musicologist and a music critic.
Azio Corghi was an Italian composer, academic teacher and musicologist. He composed mostly operas and chamber music. His operas are often based on literature, especially in collaboration with José Saramago as librettist. His first opera, Gargantua, was premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin in 1984, his second opera, Blimunda, was first performed at La Scala in Milan in the 1989/90 season, and his third opera, Divara – aqua e sangue, was premiered in 1993 at the Theater Münster, Germany. He taught composition at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, among other academies. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
The Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia is an Italian symphony orchestra based in Rome. Resident at the Parco della Musica, the orchestra primarily performs its Rome concerts in the Sala Santa Cecilia.
Lorenzo Ferrero is an Italian composer, librettist, author, and book editor. He started composing at an early age and has written over a hundred compositions thus far, including twelve operas, three ballets, and numerous orchestral, chamber music, solo instrumental, and vocal works. His musical idiom is characterized by eclecticism, stylistic versatility, and a neo-tonal language.
Riccardo Brengola was an Italian violinist and professor. He was associated with early Italian chamber music and with the performance of contemporary Italian classical music. For several decades, he was the Professor Emeritus of chamber music at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, and from 1939 to 1966, he was the leader of the only piano quintet ensemble, the Quintetto Chigiano. His influence as a teacher also spread beyond Siena, through courses or classes at other major Italian Conservatories and to Ireland, Argentina, Spain and Japan. He maintained his career as a concert violin soloist and as an orchestral conductor, and was awarded the status of Commendatore of the Italian Republic in 1982.
Mauro Maur, OMRI is an Italian trumpeter and composer. He has collaborated alongside musicians such as Ennio Morricone, Placido Domingo, Uto Ughi, Riccardo Muti, Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, and Pierre Boulez.
Bruno Bettinelli was an Italian composer and teacher.
Virgilio Mortari was an Italian composer and teacher.
Felix Ayo Losada was a Spanish-born Italian violinist. He was a founder of the Italian ensemble I Musici and of the Quartetto Beethoven di Roma. He played in major concert halls of the world as a soloist and especially as a chamber musician. In a career that spanned more than fifty years, he was a prolific recording artist, and an academic teacher.
Gil Shohat is an Israeli classical music composer, conductor, pianist and lecturer.
Elena Barbara Giuranna was an Italian pianist and composer.
Lucio Gregoretti is an Italian composer. He composed operas, symphonic and chamber music, electroacoustic music, as well as incidental music for theatre plays, musical comedies, and film scores.
Józef Świder was a Polish composer and music teacher.
Vito Palumbo is an Italian composer. He has had pieces performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, the Gävle Symphony Orchestra, the Athenäum-Quartett Berliner Philharmoniker and the RAI National Symphony Orchestra.
Franco Venturini is an Italian musician based in Paris. From the earliest age he demonstrated an uncommon attitude towards classical music, which led him to pursue a musical career. He started as a pianist, later devoting himself to composition mainly in the fields of contemporary classical music and electronic music.
Fabio Mengozzi is an Italian composer and pianist.
Guido Guerrini was an Italian composer, violinist, violist, conductor, music educator, academic administrator, and music critic. He began his career as a violinist, violist, and conductor in Bologona in the 1910s. After serving in the Italian Army during World War I, he taught on the faculties of several music conservatories in Italy and was the longtime director of the Florence Conservatory from 1928 to 1947. His work in Florence was interrupted during World War II when he was imprisoned in an Italian fascist concentration camp in 1944–1945. While there he composed his opera Enea which was later staged at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma in 1953. He also served as director of the Bologna Conservatory (1947–1949) and the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia (1950–1960). At the time of his death in 1965 he was president of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
