Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] 83

Faenza.

City in Emilia-Romagna, in the province of Ravenna, Italy. The courtly entertainments of the Manfredi family, which ruled the city from 1313 to 1501, included music, dancing and elaborate pageantry. Most of the early manuscripts held in the cathedral archives, the Biblioteca Comunale and the Biblioteca Cicognani were produced for the churches of Faenza; the oldest date from the early 14th century. The Faenza Codex (c1420 or earlier), the most important source of early instrumental music, originated elsewhere but was transferred to Faenza between 1868 and 1889. There were small cappelle at the Servite church, S Francesco and S Maria foris Portam by the end of the 13th century. The cappella of the present cathedral, S Pietro, was established in 1496 with Pietro da Firenze as maestro. A small positive organ was built there in 1517 and a larger one added in 1562; a choir school was established in the early 16th century. Brass instruments were added to the cappella from the mid-16th century, and strings from the mid-17th. Paolo Aretino was maestro di cappella from 1545 to 1548. Among his 17th-century successors were Gabriele Fattorini, G.C. Fattorini, Pietro di Biendrati (or Biendrà), Cristofano Piochi and Orazio Tarditi. Antonio Colonna (‘Dal Corno’) built an organ for S Francesco (1632) and one for the cathedral (1639). Maintenance for the city's organs was provided mostly by the Fabbri family during the 17th century and most of the 18th. The cathedral archive contains prints of works by the 16th- and 17th-century maestri and their contemporaries; the archive's collection of works by later local composers is now mostly lost.

During the 16th and 17th centuries the calendar of musical events, both religious and secular, was built around liturgical feasts and civic anniversaries. The spring-summer season, which included the feasts of St Vincent Ferrer (4 April) and St Peter (29 June), was almost more important than Carnival as it was the only time of year when all roads were passable and travellers could assemble; the summer season included opera, spettacoli and recited drama. Secular musical activity during the 17th and 18th centuries was dominated by the Arcadian academies. Their meetings often included music composed for the occasion, and they held musical evenings in the palaces of the nobility. The Accademia degli Smarriti (founded 1596) arranged the first public performances of musical spettacoli; the Accademia dei Filiponi (1612) and its successor, the Accademia dei Remoti (1673), supported theatre and opera. The public Teatro dei Remoti, adapted from a salon in Palazzo dei Podestà, opened in 1723; a larger theatre (from 1903 called the Teatro Comunale Masini) was inaugurated in 1788 with the first performance of Giuseppe Giordani's Caio Ostilio. Gala events including opera, maschere and balli were held to entertain first Austrian and then Spanish officers during the War of the Austrian Succession (1742–5). Through the activity of Paolo Alberghi (maestro di cappella 1760–85) Faenza became an important centre of violin study.

Napoleon's army occupied Faenza in 1796. Cantori and mansionari were dismissed from the churches and the cappelle were reduced to skeletal proportions. Alberghi's pupil Antonio Bisoni (maestro di cappella 1797–8, 1801–27) composed prolifically for these reduced forces and also for the theatre. Operatic activity was curtailed in the Napoleonic era but began to flourish in the 1820s, the repertory reflecting prevailing Italian tastes. Among local singers who gained international reputations was the baritone Antonio Tamburini, who inaugurated the Accademia Filarmonica in 1842. With the unification of Italy in 1861 came political and economic stability and an increase in musical activity. By the 1870s each of the city's two main seasons, Carnival and the festival of St Peter, regularly included two or three opera productions. The Accademia Filarmonica organized regular concerts, but opera remained the preferred form of entertainment and operatic repertory dominated concert programmes.

The cathedral cappella increased in size from the withdrawal of French forces in 1815 through the rest of the century, but was reduced again, after 1925, under the fascist regime. Maestri di cappella in the intervening years included A.G. Pettinati, Antonio Cicognani and Lamberto Caffarelli. Many of the city's churches were extensively damaged during World War II but the cathedral emerged relatively unscathed. Restorations have been made to the Dal Corno organs in the cathedral and S Francesco and to organs in other churches. These are now frequently used for recitals of early music, and the choir of S Francesco gives regular concerts. The city's other main concert venue is the Teatro Comunale. Post-war opera performances there have been limited to concert versions of popular works. Concerts of traditional and popular music are regularly given. During the summer season, which by the 1980s had been extended into September, outdoor concerts are given in front of the theatre in the Piazza Nenni and in the central Piazza del Popolo.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ES (A.M. Bonisconti and P. Zama)

GroveO (G. Eive)

G.C. Tonduzzi: Historie di Faenza (Faenza, 1675/R)

G. Pasolini-Zanelli: Il teatro di Faenza dal 1788 al 1888 (Faenza, 1888/R)

A.U. Varotti: ‘Organi ed organisti in S. Francesco di Faenza’, La Concezione, xxxiii (1956), 3–4

R. Brighi: La cappella musicale del duomo di Faenza (diss., U. of Bologna, 1968–9)

E. Hilmar: ‘Die Musikdrucke im Dom von Faenza’, Symbolae historiae musicae: Hellmut Federhofer zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. F.W. Riedel and H. Unverricht (Mainz, 1971), 68–80

G. Lucchesi: ‘L'Archivio capitolare di Faenza’, Ravennatensia, iii (1972), 611–28

A. Ricci, L. Savelli and B.M. Simboli, eds.: Il Teatro comunale a Faenza (Caserta, 1980)

I. Savini: ‘Musica e teatro a Faenza ai tempi del Vescovo Cantoni (1743–1767)’, L'Ospedale per gli infermi nella Faenza del Settecento, ed. A. Ferlini (Faenza, 1982), 177–232

A. Savioli: Faenza, la Basilica cattedrale (Florence, 1988)

S. Monaldini: ‘Teatro a Faenza tra il XVI e il XVIII secolo’, Romagna arte e storia: rivista quadrimestrale di cultura, ix/27 (1989), 63–74

A.R. Gentilini and A. Cassani: ‘Le Accademie faentine tra il XVI e il XIX secolo’, Manfrediana: bollettino della Biblioteca comunale di Faenza, xxv/1 (1991), 15–26; continued as ‘L'attività letteraria dell'Accademia dei Filoponi nel Seicento’, xxvi/1 (1992), 11–32

GLORIA EIVE