Puccini, Ricordi and the Rise of the Modern Entertainment Industry

24.10.2024 – 12.01.2025 Milan

Open Daily 9:30 am – 5:30 pm

Museo Teatrale alla Scala, Milan
Largo Antonio Ghiringhelli 1

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About The Exhibition

OPERA MEETS NEW MEDIA – Bertelsmann presents the interplay of opera and media in the early 20thcentury in a multimedia exhibition to mark the 100th anniversary of Giacomo Puccini’s death. Numerous original documents from the Archivio Storico Ricordi, which is part of Bertelsmann, are also on display.

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) conquered the whole world with his music. His operas have been among the world’s most frequently performed works for over 100 years without interruption. The timeless, emotional Puccini sound continues to inspire and touch people to this day.

Puccini celebrated his greatest successes at a time of revolutionary media innovations. The development of new entertainment technology, first and foremost film and sound recordings, which soon became widespread, represented a revolution for society and musical culture in the early 20^th century, fundamentally challenging the traditional business model of musical theater. It multiplied the distribution of dramatic music and popularized it to an unprecedented extent within just a few years.

The exhibition OPERA MEETS NEW MEDIA – Puccini, Ricordi and the Rise of the Modern Entertainment Industry seeks to uncover the secret of this unprecedented success. It tells of the disruptive forces of new media and their impact; it tells how the artist Puccini and his publisher Ricordi used these times of change to build an international star with the help of modern marketing campaigns; but it also reveals how fundamentally contemporary developments changed the opera business forever.

The exhibition presents this very topical and relevant subject in several audiovisual installations: From the digital 3D modeling of a Puccini portrait to the AI animation of historical stage sets. Numerous original documents from the Archivio Storico Ricordi, which is owned by Bertelsmann, are on display.

Exhibition realized with the contribution of Comitato Promotore Celebrazioni Pucciniane.

Trailer of the exhibition

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Interview with the main curator Gabriele Dotto

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Interview with the co-curator Christy Thomas Adams

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Interview with the co-curator Ellen Lockhart

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Interview with Pierluigi Ledda (Managing Director, Archivio Storico Ricordi)

The book to accompany the exhibition

On the centenary of Giacomo Puccini’s death, OPERA MEETS NEW MEDIA – Puccini, Ricordi and the Rise of the Modern Entertainment Industry, a richly illustrated volume published to accompany the exhibition of the same name presented by Bertelsmann and the Archivio Storico Ricordi, takes an unusual perspective:

Puccini celebrated his greatest successes at a time of disruptive media innovations. The development of new entertainment technology, above all film and sound recordings, which soon became mainstream, represented a revolution for society and musical culture in the early 20th century, fundamentally challenging the traditional business model of music theater. How could music publishers rise to this challenge? Puccini and his publisher Ricordi provide a fascinating “case study” on the subject. In the publication, edited by Gabriele Dotto, experts shed light on the topic in ten topical essays.

Publisher: Prestel Verlag (published on 24 April 2024)
Language: English
Paperback: 152 pages
ISBN-13: 978-3791377728

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Podcast

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Highlights

Caricature of Giacomo Puccini by Aroun-al-Rascid, published in L’Assiette au Beurre, 1902

Turandot by Giacomo Puccini, last autograph sketches, 1924

La maschera tragica, poster by Mauzan Achille Luciano, 1914 [Museo nazionale Collezione Salce]

Last photograph of Giacomo Puccini, Giuseppe Magrini, 1924

Jean D‘Ylen, Pathé c'est la vérité, poster [Museo nazionale Collezione Salce]

Poster for the Società Italiana di Fonotipia by Marcello Dudovich

Plate by the Richard-Ginori ceramics company, featuring images licensed by Ricordi

Theater poster for the world premiere of Turandot at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 25 April 1926

Impressions from the exhibition in Milan

Events

29/11/24

11:00 Uhr

Presentation of the Project „Engraving Memory“ | EVENT POSTPONED, NEW DATE TBA

in collaboration with Tipoteca Italiana
c/o Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense

The Archivio Storico Ricordi presents the “Engraving Memory” project, realized in collaboration with the Tipoteca Italiana. This event, to be held at the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, will highlight the historical and artistic value of the printing plates of Casa Ricordi, which were spared by the bombing in 1943.

The presentation will highlight how these plates, preserved in the Archivio Storico Ricordi, were used to reprint musical works engraved over a century ago, creating unique documents celebrating the art of engraving. Through this project, the aim is to highlight the importance of musical memory and the craft tradition linked to printing, uniting past and present in a cultural dialogue that continues to inspire.

Voices

Without Puccini, there is no opera; without opera, the world is an even drearier place than the evening news would have us think.

— William Berger

I had a handful of records, but when I was 11 years old, I liked Puccini as much as Little Richard. They both made sense to me.

— Patti Smith

My greatest experiences in the theatre and the most religious experiences in my life - of which going to the opera is one for me - have been with the Romantic composers' repertoire: it's Wagner, it's Strauss, Verdi, Puccini. That era gets me every time.

— Rufus Wainwright

Elvis Presley and Puccini shall return.

— Elvis Costello

News

10/24/2024

Following Huge Success in Berlin, Puccini Exhibition Opens at Milan’s La Scala

Opening of multimedia exhibition at La Scala Museum
Exhibition recounts the extraordinary symbiosis between Puccini's business activities and artistic work and Casa Ricordi
Thomas Rabe: “The legacy of the Ricordi Archives goes back to the roots of a business with which Bertelsmann is still closely associated today.”

The Hosts

On the history of one of the world’s most important music archives

The Archivio Storico Ricordi in Milan houses one of the world’s most important collections of Puccini manuscripts. This archive contains not only most of the opera scores by the most famous Italian opera composer after Verdi, but also several hundred letters, hundreds of libretti, dozens of photographs, and more than 700 sketches of costumes and stage sets from early opera performances.

This unique collection – in addition to its Puccini collection, the Archivio also holds extensive documents on Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, Vincenzo Bellini and Giuseppe Verdi – is part of the legacy of the music publisher Casa Ricordi.

Founded by Giovanni Ricordi in Milan in 1808, Casa Ricordi shaped the history of music in Italy and Europe in the 19^th and 20^th centuries like no other publisher. Its publishing activities, meticulously documented from the very beginning, reflect a unique symbiosis of entrepreneurship and creativity, and form the content basis of the collection, which comprises at least 200,000 documents in total.

The Archivio Storico Ricordi was taken over by Bertelsmann with its acquisition of Casa Ricordi in 1994 and remained with the international media, services, and education company even after the resale of the then music rights division in 2006. It has since been made accessible to research and academe, but above all to the public. Thanks to numerous collaborations, exhibitions, and digitization projects, its extraordinarily dense holdings are now also known to a broad international audience.

As national cultural heritage, the Archivio Storico Ricordi is protected by cultural legislation and as such under the tutelage of the Ministry of Culture.

Bertelsmann is aware of the great responsibility that comes with owning this valuable cultural asset and continues to cherish and cultivate the tradition associated with the Ricordi name.

About The Exhibition

Trailer of the exhibition

Interview with the main curator Gabriele Dotto

Interview with the co-curator Christy Thomas Adams

Interview with the co-curator Ellen Lockhart

Interview with Pierluigi Ledda (Managing Director, Archivio Storico Ricordi)

The book to accompany the exhibition

Podcast

Highlights

Impressions from the exhibition in Milan

Events

Presentation of the Project „Engraving Memory“ | EVENT POSTPONED, NEW DATE TBA

Voices

News

Following Huge Success in Berlin, Puccini Exhibition Opens at Milan’s La Scala

The Hosts

On the history of one of the world’s most important music archives

Bertelsmann

Archivio Storico Ricordi

Partner