Traditional music
To discover the traditional music of the Italian Alps or the Dolomites, the best way is to follow the trail of the region's folk groups, some of which have accomplished through their works a work close to ethnomusicology. In Piedmont, for example, La Ciapa Rusa has collected and recorded the rural musical heritage and has participated in the safeguarding of ancient dances such as monferrine, alexandrine, curente or sestrine. In 1997, the group split up, with some of its members forming Tendachënt, a new ensemble with a similar ambition to preserve and modernise the traditional repertoire in order to pass it on to the younger generations. In the same region, there is also Tre Martelli, whose repertoire is also based on ethno-musicological research undertaken in Piedmont. After forty years of activity and a dozen albums, the group has become a real institution. In Lombardy, the group Barabàn is renowned for its search for a balance between the musical traditions of northern Italy - polyphonies from the Po Valley, archaic songs from the Apennines, etc. - and contemporary sensibility. - and contemporary sensibility. In their music, one can hear popular northern Italian instruments such as the piffero (an oboe), the müsa (a bagpipe) and the hurdy-gurdy. In the Dolomites, the group Calicanto and the Dolomites Popular Orchestra have a similar ambition and produce works that also aim to revive the local repertoire.
Classical music
Italy's reputation in the field of learned music is well established. And the Italian Alps and Dolomites regions alone are home to many of the country's great historical names and major institutions. Starting with Lombardy, where Milan is home to La Scala, considered Italy's leading opera house (built in 1778). This is also where some of the country's greatest orchestra directors come from: Claudio Abbado (1933-2014) and Riccardo Chailly, both of whom have been at the helm of La Scala, as well as Daniele Gatti, now director of the Rome Opera. Northeast of Milan, in Bergamo, the great local pride is Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848). The composer is often honoured in the city, particularly at the Bergamo Musica Festival, which never misses an opportunity to perform his works. Further south, in the Po Valley, is Cremona, a city renowned for its violin making and its illustrious practitioners, such as the Amati family, the Guarneri family and Stradivarius. Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), whoseOrfeo
is considered the "first opera", was also born in Cremona.In Piedmont, the Teatro Regio in Turin is the great Italian reference point for lyrical music and undoubtedly one of the world's leading opera houses. The premiere of Puccini's La Bohème was given here in 1896 in the presence of King Victor Emmanuel II. Destroyed by fire in 1936, only its façade is original and dates from 1738. The musical season is a must for the people of Turin, who go there every year with great enthusiasm. Turin is also the home of the RAI National Symphony Orchestra conducted since 2016 by James Conlon, and enjoying an excellent reputation. Also, every year, the city jointly organizes with Milan a music festival called Mito Settembre Musica which offers high quality concerts at low prices (classical, jazz, rock). The region also hosts the Musical Weeks of Stresa (on the shores of Lake Maggiore), which are rich in concerts and chamber music recitals, as well as the Festival Cusiano di Musica Antica
, an important festival of baroque music on the island of San Giulio, in the centre of the beautiful Lake Orta.In the Veneto region, the musical history is obviously very copious. As in painting, music also had a Venetian school. From the beginning of the 16th century, Venice became a major city in European musical life, taking over from Rome, whose attractiveness to artists declined after the sack of the city in 1527. A prosperous city with a stable government, Venice quickly became an important centre for the publication of musical scores. Composers flocked from all over Europe to benefit from this innovation, particularly from Flanders, which explains why the first representatives of this Venetian school were Flemings, with Jacques Buus and especially Adrian Willaert, who imported the polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school to Venice.
But it was really three decades later that the city would reach the height of its prestige with the birth of a violin prodigy and world-renowned composer of the Baroque period: Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1742). A contemporary of Vivaldi but still in his shadow, Tomaso Albinoni is the other great Venetian composer of the Italian Baroque. Among contemporaries, the Serenissima also gave birth to a great name: Luigi Nono (1924-1990). At the forefront of new music, the composer traversed serialism, aleatoric music, concrete or electronic music without ever becoming a prisoner of one style. Today's Venice has retained all its musical aura and offers many places to enthuse music lovers. There is of course the Fenice, one of the most prestigious stages in the world, but also the Teatro Malibran and the Scuola Grande Di San Giovanni Evangelista.Popular music
It is also worth noting that the region has been the birthplace of many Italian singing stars. Among them are national monuments such as the Milanese crooner Adriano Celentano(24,000 Baci), Umberto Tozzi (known for his haunting Ti amo) from Turin and the great Paolo Conte, a figure of Italian jazz and blues, from Asti.
