During Ties that Bind: The Folk Roots of Italian Music in March, Professor Alessandro Carrera from the University of Houston provided an extensive and interactive lecture on Italy’s ancient musical regional traditions to a mixed audience of about 60.
Wilkinson College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Italian Studies Program present, Ties That Bind: The Folk Roots of Italian Music with Alessandro Carrera, Professor of Italian, The University of Houston, Thursday, February 27, 2014 at 7:30 p.m. – 9 p.m. in Salmon Recital Hall.
Italian folk music is one of the peninsula’s best-kept secrets. Italy has dozens of musical regional traditions, many of them ancient, little known outside the country, yet very much alive and constantly evolving. Alessandro Carrera will show how the best songwriters, popular musicians and classical composers have often incorporated key elements of fold and traditional music into their work.
Come to learn and sample the folk roots of Italian music.
This event is sponsored by the Musco Chair in Italian Studies and is free and open to the public.
In January the program received newspaper coverage by the Orange County Register.
Federico Fellini is considered one of the greatest cinematic geniuses of our time, but his films were not produced in isolation. Instead, they are the results of collaborations with some of the greatest scriptwriters of twentieth-century Italy. Inspiring Fellini re-examines the filmmaker’s oeuvre, taking into consideration the considerable influence of his collaborations with writers and intellectuals including Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, and Andrea Zanzotto. Author Federico Pacchioni provides a portrait of Fellini that is more complex than one of the stereotypical solitary genius, as he has been portrayed by Fellini criticism in the past.
Pacchioni explores the dynamics of Fellini’s cinematic collaborations through analyses of the writers’ independently produced works, their contributions to the conceptualization of the films, and their conversations with Fellini himself, found in public and private archival sources. This book is an invaluable resource in the effort to understand the genesis of Fellini’s artistic development.
Reviews:
“Focusing on the filmmaker’s intense and sometimes turbulent relationships with his collaborators, Inspiring Fellini leads us through the intricate scriptwriting process which produced such masterpieces as La strada, La dolce vita, 8 1/2, and Amarcord. Thanks to Pacchioni’s meticulous archival research, penetrating analyses, and accessible style, specialists and film-buffs alike have a great deal to gain from the discoveries and insights of this important new work.”
–Millicent Marcus, Department of Italian, Yale University
“Pacchioni’s solid scholarship, critical insight, and innovative methodology revisit the question of the auteur, repositioning the canon of Italian art cinema in relation to current tendencies that focus on gender, genre, and popular film.”
–John P. Welle, Notre Dame University
“Inspiring Fellini is a ground-breaking contribution to Italian film studies, to Fellini studies, and to film theory about artistic collaboration in the industry. Pacchioni’s treatment of Fellini’s scriptwriters adds an entirely new dimension to our vision of Fellini’s complicated cinematic creativity, and his brilliant use of Fellini’s dream notebooks represents a huge advance in our knowledge of the Italian director’s personality and artistic choices.”
–Peter Bondanella, Indiana University Bloomington
Check out the book on Amazon
In November at the Italian Comedy of Masks, classically-trained mime and actor Mace Perlman enlightened the audience about the Commedia dell’Arte. It was very successful with standing room only and more than 200 guests (both students and community) in attendance.
Are you a fan of silent film comedians like Charlie Chaplin and improvisational club comedy? Ever wonder why television sitcoms love to recycle all those stock characters, from the lovable but dumb husband to the wisecracking best friend?
Then save the date Thursday, Nov. 21, when the Italian Studies Program hosts Mace Perlman, a master of the centuries-old Italian tradition ofcommedia dell’Arte in a performance and talk titled The Italian Comedy of Masks from 7:30 to 9 p.m. in the Fish Interfaith Center, Wallace All Faiths Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.
Commedia dell’arte was an improvisational style of theater that developed in 16th century Italy and featured traveling troupes of comic actors playing stock characters who wore caricature masks and costumes that quickly established the character’s personality.
Perlman will lecture on the commedia dell’arte tradition Thursday, Nov. 21.
The cultural legacy of commedia dell’Arte artists is alive and well, says Federico Pacchioni, Ph.D., the Sebastian Paul and Marybelle Musco Professor of Italian Studies in Wilkinson College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Their imprint can be found “on plays, operas, paintings, and popular entertainment of yesterday as well as today.”
Perlman is an actor, teacher, director, and translator whose theatrical training began with two years under Marcel Marceau at his International School of Mimodrama in Paris. Following studies at Stanford University (BA in Humanities Special Programs: Baroque Studies, MA in Humanities), he trained and worked for six years at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan under the master director, Giorgio Strehler. Since returning to his native Greenwich, CT he has taught acting in the Conservatory of Theatre Arts and Film at SUNY-Purchase and at the Stella Adler Conservatory in New York.
