Massimo Bignardi

The idea of ​​retracing the streets of one's city, in the same way as leafing through an old calendar, brings together Nando Calabrese's experiences in photography. Colson Whitehead, in his The Colossus of New York, published in Italian in the early 2000s, wrote that our streets "are calendars that contain what we have been and what we will be tomorrow". That is, it outlines the idea of ​​a unicum within which different concepts of time are inscribed, even if they are conditions of each other: memory becomes active, creative and, therefore, regenerates the processes and is already the future. I want to say that in its flow, time does not erase any of the traces, on the contrary it causes them to fuel expectations, because waiting already implies a change. Nando Calabrese has a particular relationship with his city, the incredible volcanic Naples; it is at least as regards photography that does not adhere to a vision, typical of the followers of Cartier-Bresson, that is to say a photography that bears witness to its time, avoiding "the artifice that kills human truth". Calabrese, has already made it abundantly clear in the sequence of shots proposed in the exhibition "Art and the City", set up in the first months of 2018 at the PAN in Naples, seeks precisely the artifice which, after all, is the engine, the identity of the city of Partenope.  The artists, their works, the architecture traced, obeying the layout of the installation, a narrative thread that stretched out, slipping into the secrets of hidden, mental relationships, then giving life to imaginative constructions: one of the many beautiful images that accompany the catalog edited by Antonella Nigro, the one that portrays Rosaria Matarese in Palazzo Mannajuolo, on the helical staircase, a great architectural invention by Giulio Ulisse Arata, architect of the Art Nouveau period that marked the renewal of the city at the end of the first decade of the 20th century.Nando he posed, one by one, not only the characters, but a complex of memories and current events that weave the fabric of the cultural liveliness of Naples: real 'plastic complexes' installed in topical places of the city, in the solemn architecture of a of the most 'bright' (said Stendhal) capitals of the Old Continent. He therefore established a relationship with time, while keeping at bay both the nostalgias that veil the past and the exuberance of the 'new' at all costs. With the sequence of shots proposed today in this exhibition, the viewfinder of his camera frames other pages of Neapolitan life: the city of music, that is, that which was and is of Bellini, Cimarosa, Paisiello, Scarlatti and down to Pergolesi; the city that hosted the premiere of Bizet's Carmen, in that theater located in the heart of the old university city, between Port'Alba, Piazza Dante, the old Polyclinic, the Academy of Fine Arts and the Museum founded by the Bourbons, today the Archaeological Museum National. In short, the city of the great musicians who studied and celebrated Naples, in the most beautiful pages of the history of music. Like the images collected in "Art and the City", the twelve shots (proposed in large format) that articulate the trace of this exhibition, follow a post-production choice that introduces color into the system of a black and white photographic shot, even if, at times, they lead us to think that the opposite happens, that is, that, from the color system, Nando builds an 'in place', a sort of identity (Hillman's in) enclosed in the gray scale, originating from the polar contrast of black and white. A clear example is offered to us by the photograph entitled Harp and voice Palazzo Majorano Caccioppoli Messina: the woman's body, the gesture that accompanies the singing, are integrated into the architecture of the portal, designed by Sanfelice, with the gray of the piperno masterfully inserted into the wall overlooking the heart of the San Ferdinando district. There is no need to resort to colour: Calabrese knows well that the plastic dimension does not require an expressive figure to be entrusted to it. It is different for the harp, as well as for other musical instruments, as it was also for the works, the art objects in the aforementioned cycle exhibited at the PAN. Schönberg wrote in the preface to the Texts, published in 1926: “The The author of the text must reserve the space intended for the music on the surface, since it aims to penetrate in depth”.

Sergio Attanasio

The most beautiful theater in the world, a king and a court who loved to surround themselves with international artists, an enchanting land and landscape that attracted the greatest European musicians and composers to Naples over time. From the young Mozart with his father in May 1770 at Palazzo Sessa in Cappella Vecchia in the home of the English minister William Hamilton and in the Royal Chapel of Portici, to Wagner who from January 1880 stayed at Villa Doria d'Angri in Posillipo where he wrote a good part of Parsifal and then he was also at the Vittoria hotel in Sorrento and at Villa Rufolo in Ravello.

From Rossini who from 1815 was a guest of the impresario Barbaja and composed the Othello Overture between the palace in via Toledo and the villa of Mergellina, to Donizzetti who from June 1828 lived on the main floor of a palace in via Nardones where he wrote the Lucia di Lammermoor a few steps from the San Carlo theatre, where Verdi performed on four occasions: in 1835 with the premiere of Alzira, in 1849 with the Luisa Miller, in 1858 with the Simon Boccanegra and in 1872/73 with the Don Carlos and Aida. These are perhaps the most popular artists among the musicians and composers who have stayed in our city. Then some decided to build a mansion by the sea or on the hill of Posillipo like the Sicilian tenor Roberto Stagno and his wife the soprano Gemma Bellincioni who were the first interpreters in 1870 of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and purchased and renovated a seventeenth-century residence, the ancient palace of the Dukes of Cantalupo in Mergellina, where they dreamed of staying for their entire lives. And a virtuous Austrian composer and pianist like Thalbergh who, after marrying the daughter of the Neapolitan bass Luigi Lablache, was kidnapped by our city and lived between the palace in Monte di Dio and the villa with chapel in Posillipo where he died in 1871. But Naples is has always rightly been considered the European capital of music and the musical education of young people, where Leonardo Leo, first student and then teacher, at the Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini and Nicolò Porpora also teacher at one of the Conservatories of Naples, the S Maria di Loreto, were welcomed in the homes of foreign nobles and ministers such as Palazzo Mirelli di Teora by Fanzago on the Chiaia coast, or Palazzo Caracciolo di Torella in Largo Ferrandina. At Palazzo Berio we remember that in 1772, the Court even moved, on the occasion of the celebrations for the baptism of Maria Teresa Carolina, firstborn of Ferdinand IV and in the garden an elliptical hall and a theater were created by Vanvitelli and a 5-voice serenade was performed entitled Cerere placata, with music by Niccolò Jommelli with scenes designed by Carlo Bibiena.

From the four conservatories of Naples not only small musicians and young composers were trained, but also sweet and brilliant voices like those of the castrati, such as Farinelli (Carlo Broschi) or Cappellolli (Gaetano Maiorano) who, after having sung in all the European courts, crowned his I dream of building a building in the city in the Quartieri Spagnoli a few steps from the San Carlo Theater. But not just music and theater works. How can we fail to remember the Neapolitan melodies of Murolo and Tagliaferri with mandolins and guitar on the sea of ​​Posillipo, or under a tavern in Palazzo Donn'Anna, where the Gulf of Naples shines in the distance and Vesuvius closes a dream panorama.

Stefano Sovrani

A flute to represent Mozart's presence in Naples, a symbol that evokes a very famous work (The Magic Flute) and which recalls the virtuosity and delicacy of the sound. For Niccolò Iommelli the cello brings us back to stringed instruments, fully valorised in the wonderful Requiem of the musician from Aversa. Same arches for Leonardo Leo, set for the occasion in Palazzo Mirelli in Teora. Building after building and musician after musician, I imagined a path to offer the visitor to the Music and the City exhibition a common thread that would lead them through the meanders of the musical genius of the Neapolitan school which makes the city the undisputed capital of this form of art, yesterday and today. And here, then, is Richard Wagner hovering among the rooms of Villa Doria D'Angri as he concludes his Parsifal through the presence of the brass instruments, which he so favoured. Gaetano Donizetti, who composed 50 operas and debuted 29 of them in Naples, is represented with wind instruments such as the oboe, clarinet and bassoon which present the main themes in his works. From a photo to a piece of music, passing through the story of Sigismund Thalberg, who fell in love with Naples to the point of remaining there until the end of his days, sitting at his piano in the splendid Villa of Posillipo. That piano in which he excelled enough to rival the better-known Franz Liszt. And Palazzo Donn'Anna, also in Posillipo, is the backdrop to the mandolin and guitar melodies that take us back to Ernesto Murolo and Ernesto Tagliaferri, inherent to those places in unforgettable romances. On the other front, represented by his band instruments, Giuseppe Verdi who will debut some works in Naples including the famous "Luisa Miller". And bel canto could not be missing in a city that gave birth to the inventors of comic opera (Iommelli, Piccini, Cimarosa and others) which in the palace that the castrato Cappellolli had built - having become rich - is sublimated in the image of a singer accompanied by a harpist: the sound of the harp as a mirror of the purity and clarity of a voice.