Flavio Testi (4 January 1923 in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

– 14 January 2014 in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

) was an Italian

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

contemporary classical music Contemporary classical music is classical music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music after the death of Anton Webern, and included seria ...

and

musicologist Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some mu ...

Biography

He studied with Giulio Cesare Gedda and Luigi Perrachio at the Turin Conservatory, and took an arts degree at

Milan University The University of Milan ( it, Università degli Studi di Milano; la, Universitas Studiorum Mediolanensis), known colloquially as UniMi or Statale, is a public research university in Milan, Italy. It is one of the largest universities in Europe ...

(1951). He then worked for

Suvini Zerboni Suvini Zerboni (ESZ) Italian music publishing house founded in 1907 in Milan, taking its name from the theater society of the same name. The ESZ catalogue included, besides operetta favourites, the best of Italian contemporary music, such composers ...

and Ricordi while also composing, pursuing his interest in music history and working on various radio projects for the RAI. From 1972 he devoted himself to educational activities, teaching music history at the Padua Conservatory and then taking up teaching posts at the

Milan Conservatory The Milan Conservatory (''Conservatorio di Milano'') is a college of music in Milan, Italy. History The conservatory was established by a royal decree of 1807 in Milan, capital of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. It opened the following year ...

and

Florence Conservatory The Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini is located in piazza delle Belle Arti in Florence. The conservatory, among the most important in Italy, is named after the Florentine composer Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842). History The conservatory occupies pa ...

Musical style and influence

As a composer, Testi's music has been strongly influenced by the works of

Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...

along with his own dramatic sensibility. This is particularly evident in his earlier orchestral works such as ''Concerto'' (1954) and ''Divertimento'' (1956). His ''La crocifissione'' premièred at

La Scala La Scala (, , ; abbreviation in Italian of the official name ) is a famous opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the ' (New Royal-Ducal Theatre alla Scala). The premiere performan ...

in 1954 to great acclaim. The expressiveness of work was particularly admired and the composer followed similar style in his ''Stabat mater'' (1957) and ''New York oficina y denuncia'' (1964), the latter of which denounced the dehumanizing environment of the modern metropolis. The work coincided with the Testi's conversion to the

Marxism Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

, and was followed by other compositions highlighting social and political concerns, including the Neruda setting ''Canto a las madres de los milicianos muertos'' (1967) and ''Cori di Santiago'' (1975). Testi's operas evolve towards junctures of violent scenic-musical realism. ''L’albergo dei poveri'' (1966) displays a clearly characteristic attitude of rough dramatic purpose, confirmed in ''Il sosia'' (1981) and ''Riccardo III'' (

, 1987), works which probe intensely into the psychology of their characters. In general Testi's style, rather than adhering to the radicalisms of the post-Webern avant garde, re-elaborates and reflects, not without eclecticism, certain crucial 20th-century achievements, from Stravinsky and Bartók to early

Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...

. His last opera, ''Mariana Pineda'', premiered at the

Theater Erfurt The Theater Erfurt is a German municipal theatre located in Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia. The main stage is in a building in the Brühlervorstadt, completed in 2003. The theatre offers musical theatre and concerts, played by the Philharmonisc ...

, Germany, on September 8, 2007.

Works

*''Il furore d'Oreste'' (Bergamo, Teatro Donizetti, 1956); *''La Celestina'' (Florence, Teatro della Pergola, 1963); *''L'Albergo dei Poveri'' (Milan, Piccola Scala, 1966); *''Il Sosia'' (Milan, Piccola Scala, 1981); *''Riccardo III'' (Milan, Teatro alla Scala, 1987); *''La brocca rotta'' (Bologna, Teatro Comunale, 1997); *''Saül'' (Paris, Radio France, in forma di concerto, 2003; Macerata, Teatro Lauro Rossi, in forma scenica, 2007); *''Mariana Pineda'' (Theater Erfurt, Germany, 2007).

Awards

*2010: Gonfalone d'Argentohttp://met.provincia.fi.it/news.aspx?id=67415 Source: MET - News dalle Pubbliche Amministrazioni della Toscana centrale, 8 February 2010, "Gonfalone d'Argento a Flavio Testi"

Discography

* Saul (opera) * La Celestina (opera)

References

Sources

*Raffaele Pozzi. The ''

New Grove Dictionary of Opera ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'' is an encyclopedia of opera, considered to be one of the best general reference sources on the subject. It is the largest work on opera in English, and in its printed form, amounts to 5,448 pages in four volu ...

'', edited by Stanley Sadie (1992). and {{DEFAULTSORT:Testi, Flavio 1923 births 2014 deaths Italian classical composers Italian male classical composers Italian opera composers Male opera composers Turin Conservatory alumni University of Milan alumni Academic staff of Milan Conservatory Musicians from Florence 20th-century Italian musicians 20th-century Italian male musicians