“A casa di Hans – Villa La Leprara di Hans Werner Henze nei Castelli Romani”

Book Presentation and Concert

The editor of the volume Gastón Fournier-Facio in conversation with the costume designer Nanà Cecchi and the artistic director and composer Alessio Vlad

Projection of the photographs of the volume by Anton Giulio Onofri

Concert with music for guitar by Hans Werner Henze, performed by Luigi Sini

Three Tentos (Drei Tentos) from Chamber Music (1958)

I. Du schönes Bächlein

II. Es findet das Aug’ oft

III. Sohn Laios

Three Fairytale Pictures (Drei Märchenbilder) from the children’s opera Pollicino (1980)

Arranged for solo guitar by Luigi Sini

I. Pastorale

II. Arietta

III. Notturno

The book “A casa di Hans” was published by Timía Edizioni.

Synopsis

The German composer Hans Werner Henze (1926-2012) loved Italy deeply, and in the mid-1960s he chose to come and live in a house he had built for himself in the Castelli Romani, in Marino, in an idyllic, peaceful setting half an hour’s drive from Rome. For almost half a century, at Villa La Leprara Henze composed most of his scores, and hosted musician friends, artists, intellectuals, politicians and show business personalities, practising the art of good living with elegance. Together with photographs of the Leprara as it was until a few days before it was bought by a new owner, this book brings together testimonies from some of the composer’s many friends and collaborators who spent unforgettable days there.

Testimonials by

Francesco Antonioni, Paolo Arcà, Richard Blackford, Ilaria Borletti Buitoni, Ian Bostridge, Mauro Bucarelli, Nanà Cecchi, Mauro Conti, Niccolò Contucci, Matteo D’Amico, Giuseppe Di Leva, Fabio Fassone, Luciano Garosi, Detlev Glanert, Torben Hardenberg, Stefano Iraci, Reinhold Jaretzky, Michael Kerstan, Jan Latham-Koenig, Giovanna Lomazzi, Lorenzo Mariani, Marcello Panni, Riccardo Panfili, Sir Antonio Pappano, Carlo Pasquini, Annalisa Schino, Franco Serpa, Markus Stenz, Fabio Vacchi, Alessio Vlad, Clemens Wolken, Elisabeth Wolken. With an introduction by Michael Kerstan.

The evening is being realised with the kind support of the Consorzio del Vino Nobile di Montepulciano.

The event will be held in Italian language.

Reservation at prenotazioni@casadigoethe.it

The protagonists of the evening are:

GASTÓN FOURNIER-FACIO is Artistic Advisor of the Mozart Orchestra, Music Consultant of Daniele Cipriani Entertainment and Head of Opera Talks at the Royal Opera House in Muscat (Sultanate of Oman). He is the author of monographs on Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, Hans Werner Henze, Claudio Abbado and Giuseppe Sinopoli. He was Artistic Coordinator of the Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte di Montepulciano, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Teatro alla Scala and Artistic Director of the Teatro Regio in Turin.

Born in Rome where she completed her university studies in Modern Literature, NANÀ CECCHI divides her time between cinema and theatre with a special focus on the melodrama. After years of apprenticeship, she made her debut at the Opera di Roma, designing the costumes for Ernani (1978). In a career dedicated to costume design, she has also occasionally been a theatre set designer. Her meeting with Hans Werner Henze was one of the most important in her education: he entrusted her with the sets and costumes for L’opera da tre soldi (1979) and for Dido and Aeneas (1980) at the Cantiere Interazionale d’Arte in Montepulciano. Her predilection for opera is concentrated in more than thirty productions. Among the directors with whom she collaborated are: Peter Ustinov, Giuliano Montaldo, Volker Schlöndorff, Daniele Abbado, Henning Brockhaus, Roberto Andò, Peter Stein, Michael Kerstan. In Prose Theatre, she worked with Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, Cristina Pezzoli, Carlo Cecchi, among others. She collaborated with Giacomo Battiato in three television films: Colomba, Stradivari and Benvenuto Cellini. In film she made her debut with I Paladini, which earned her the Davide di Donatello (1984). Her film activity continued with several films, including: Ladyhawke, Maccheroni, Gli Occhiali d’oro, Il Primo Cavaliere, I Cavalieri che fecero l’impresa, Christine Cristina. In the course of her theatre and film work, she has received the following awards: Abbiati, Osella della Mostra del Cinema di Venezia, Capitello d’Oro, Globo d’Oro. She has held courses on ‘Costume and Stage Space’ at various Academies and Universities in Italy.

ALESSIO VLAD is artistic director of the Teatro Regio and the Verdi Festival in Parma. He was artistic director of the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome, the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, the Teatro delle Muse in Ancona and the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa. He was also musical consultant of the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto and artistic director of the Ravello Festival. He participated in the creation of the Rete Lirica delle Marche, serving as its artistic director. During his artistic direction, the Theatres of Rome, Naples and Ancona won 10 Abbiati Awards in different categories, while the Marche Region Opera Network won the 2019 ‘Culture Management Award’.
As a composer for film and theatre, he has collaborated with directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Franco Zeffirelli, Giorgio Ferrara, Cristina Comencini, Andrea Barzini and Pier Luigi Pizzi, among others. He won the Golden Globe for the film L’Assedio by Bernardo Bertolucci.

ANTON GIULIO ONOFRI was born in Rome in 1959. Author and director of a number of cult(ural) television programmes in the 1990s, from the legendary Notti dell’Angelo on Mediaset to Onda anomala and Cenerentola on Raitre, with the new century he decided to give up the ephemeral programming and make his own videos and documentaries on music, art and literature that would not expire with the airing. In 2020 he made for the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Roma città chiusa, a photo-story about deserted Rome during the lockdown. Between December 2022 and March 2023, he exhibited the photographic series Non mi troverai dedicated to the artist Gian Maria Tosatti’s home-studio in Naples at the Fondazione Pastificio Cerere in Rome and the Fondazione Mudima in Milan. He writes about cinema and various cultural current affairs in ArtsLife, and enjoys taking photographs with his Leica M10.

LUIGI SINI graduated with top marks under the guidance of Mario Gangi at the Conservatorio S. Cecilia in Rome. He is dedicatee of music by many composers including C. Togni, A. Clementi, A. Gentile, S. Sciarrino, F. Pennisi, F. de Rossi Re, E. Morricone, I. Vandor, M. Panni. An international soloist, he has played with numerous orchestras: RAI in Naples and Rome, RTV in Ljublijana, Solisti Veneti, Sinfonica di Massa e Carrara and with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di S. Cecilia. He has collaborated with prestigious instrumentalists including: R. Fabbriciani, P.Y. Artaud, A. Persichilli, C. Scarponi, A. Salvatore, M. Buffa, M. Sirbu, A. Vismara , M. Berni. He has recorded for Edipan, Unicum, Da vinci records, Emavinci and Sony.