(bSan Remo, 3 Feb 1887; d Naples, 23 Dec 1971). Italian composer. After studies in Lucca and with Riemann in Leipzig (1909–10), he held teaching posts in Parma (1928–33), Naples (1933–8) and Rome (1938–51), then became director of the conservatories of Naples (1951–3) and Bogotà, Colombia (1953–6). From 1961 he was artistic director of the S Carlo opera house, Naples. As a composer he was an unpredictable eclectic. He made his name with Giocondo e il suo re, the only one of his operas that appears to have been performed. It was frequently revived in Italy, despite criticism from certain quarters of its overt indebtedness to Puccini and Zandonai. A few years later, in the Second and Third Quartets, he was working in a fresher, more vivacious style characterized by crisply dissonant diatonicism. The orchestral works of the 1930s, however, show unreliable taste: the Fantasia del rosso e nero, with its chromatic angularities and xylophone-obsessed rhetoric, is no more persuasively personal than Giocondo. Nor are his postwar excursions into strict dodecaphony any more convincing: it is significant that, after mingling dodecaphony with tonal elements in the First Piano Concerto, he reverted to straightforward tonality in the Second and all subsequent works. His books include Tecnica dodecafonica (Milan, 1948).
WORKS
(selective list)
Dramatic: Giocondo e il suo re (op, 3, G. Forzano, after Ariosto: Orlando furioso), 1915–21, Milan, Dal Verme, 24 June 1924; other stage works, unperf., some inc.; film music
Orch: Sonata drammatica, vn, orch, 1930; Pastorale di Natale, 1932; Fantasia del rosso e nero, 1935; Pagine di Ramon, 1937; Pf Conc. no.1, 1952; L’ora inquieta, str, 1953; Pf Conc. no.2, 1957; Vc Conc., 1960; Variazioni su un tema car a Napoleone I, 1966; other works