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Online conferences on Dante Alighieri together with a Renaissance music concert – FREE ONLINE

On the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri (Florence, 1265- Ravenna, 1321), the best-known Italian author in the world, the Italian Cultural Institute – Hong Kong asked to some leading academics to talk about the importance that the poet had in the history of culture, national and international: Giorgio Biancorosso (Hong Kong University), musicologist; Piero Boitani (Sapienza Università di Roma), BA from Wittenberg University (Ohio, USA), Ph.D from the University of Cambridge, medievalist, Dante scholar; Emanuele Lugli (Stanford University), art historian; Nicolò Maldina (University of Bologna), historian of literature.

Their speeches, in English, will be published online starting October 23.

In particular, the speech by Prof. Biancorosso will be combined with an online concert of Renaissance music by Maestro Massimo Marchese with lute, flutes and soprano.

This event is part of the Italia Mia Festival.

 

PROGRAMME

Lecture by Prof. Maldina “Dante’s Penitential Journey: from Sinner to Prophet” —– 23 October 2021 – Watch the video

Abstract: The seminar will focus on the autobiographical journey narrated by Dante in the Comedy, with a specific stress on its penitential nature.

By discussing the multiplicity of Biblical and Medieval models used by Dante to shape his identity as the main character of the Comedy, the paper will offer an introductory discussion of one of the most important features of the poem itself, i.e. the journey that its protagonist undergo trough the afterlife from the sinful condition in which he finds himself at the beginning of the narrative to the acquisition of a prophetic status.

 

Lecture by Prof. Lugli “Dante’s Medieval Cities” —– 30 October 2021 – Watch the video

Abstract: The seminar will focus on the art and architecture that Dante Alighieri had the opportunity to see during his exile, and on how these themes influenced his literary production.

 

Lecture by Prof. Biancorosso “The Poet as Listener: Tracing Dante’s Musical Aesthetics through His Poetic Oeuvre” —– 6 November 2021 – Watch the video

Abstract:  The Poet as Listener: Tracing Dante’s Musical Aesthetics through His Poetic Oeuvre.

 

Renaissance music concert by Maestro Marchese “Ragionar d’Amore!” with an introductory note by Prof. Biancorosso —– 13 November 2021 – Watch the video

Concert title: RAGIONAR D’AMORE! A journey around Dante and his poetic legacy in Music

Dante Alighieri: dalla Divina Commedia e dalla Vita Nova

Francesco Spinacino – Ricercare

Aria per cantar capitoli sulle terzine dantesche

Marchetto Cara – Vergine Madre

Anonimo XIV sec. – Belicha

Aria per sonetti

Marchetto Cara – Tanto gentile, tanto onesta pare

Anonimo XV sec. – Paduana del re/Gagliarda “La gamba”

Francesco Petrarca: dal Canzoniere

Bartolomeo Tromboncino – Occhi mei lassi

Anonimo – Virgine bella

Franchino Gaffurio – Imperatrix Reginarum

A. Patavus – Datime pace o duri miei pensieri

Diego Ortiz – Recercada

Bartolomeo Tromboncino – Hor ch’el cielo e la terra

Giovanni Boccaccio: dalla Clizia e dal Decamerone

Tielman Susato – Passemedio – Reprise “La Pingne”

Philippe Verdelotto – Quanto sia lieto il giorno

Francesco da Milano – Fantasie

Philippe Verdelotto – O dolce nocte

C. Gervaise – Suite di Bransle

Francesco Petrarca: dal Canzoniere

Bartolomeo Tromboncino – Virgine bella

 

Lecture by Chiar.mo Prof. Boitani “Dante in England and America” —– 18 December 2021 – Watch the video

Abstract: The seminar will focus on Dante Alighieri influence in England and America.

 

***

 

Biographies of the Professors

Prof. Giorgio Biancorosso

Giorgio Biancorosso (PhD, Princeton, 2001) is Professor of Music and Director of the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at The University of Hong Kong.

His recent publications include Situated Listening (Oxford University Press, 2016), “Traccia, memoria, e riscrittura: le registrazioni” in Mille e una Callas (Quodlibet, 2016), and “The Phantom of the Opera and the Performance of Cinema,” Opera Quarterly 34/2-3 (2018). Biancorosso is also active in Hong Kong as a curator and programmer.

 

Prof. Chiar. mo Piero Boitani

Born in Rome in 1947, married in Dublin to Joan FitzGerald, Professor Emeritus Piero Boitani has three children and lives in Rome. He studied at the “Liceo T. Tasso”, then at the University of Rome “Sapienza” (Laurea in Lettere, 1971). He has a BA from Wittenberg University, Ohio (1970) and a Ph.D from the University of Cambridge (1975). Taught Italian Lit at Cambridge, then American and English Lit at the Universities of Pescara and Perugia. Became Full Prof of English Lit in 1981, since 1985 at the University of Rome “Sapienza”. Since 1998 Prof of Comparative Lit at “Sapienza”, Chair of the Dept of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 2004-2010, Director of SUM-Sapienza Ph.D. program in European Literature and Culture, 2007-2010. Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Italian Switzerland, Lugano since 2007. Visiting Prof in the Universities of Cambridge, Connecticut, Berkeley, Ohio State, Keio (Tokyo), Notre Dame, Harvard, Toronto, etc. President of the European Society for English Studies 1989-95, Fellow of the British Academy, the Academia Europaea, the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, the Accademia dell’Arcadia, the Medieval Academy of America, the Dante Society of America, the Accademia dei Lincei, Arts and Humanities Advisor to the American Academy in Rome, in 2002 he has received the Feltrinelli Prize for Literary Criticism, in 2010 the De Sanctis Prize. He is the Literary Editor of the Greek and Latin classics series, Fondazione Valla.

Medievalist, Dante scholar, comparatist, interested in ancient myth as well as modern literatures, Piero Boitani has published, amongst others, the following volumes: Prosatori Negri Americani del Novecento (Storia e Letteratura, 1973); Chaucer and Boccaccio (Medium Aevum, 1977); English Medieval Narrative of the 13th and 14th Centuries (Cambridge UP 1982); Chaucer and the Imaginary World of Fame (Brewer 1984); The Tragic and the Sublime in Medieval Literature (Cambridge UP 1989); La letteratura del Medioevo inglese (Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1991); The Shadow of Ulysses. Figures of a Myth (Oxford UP 1994; It. orig. 1992; transl. Spanish and Brazilian, 2001, 2005); Sulle orme di Ulisse (Bologna, Il Mulino, 1998, 2007); The Bible and its Rewritings (Oxford UP 1999, It. orig. 1997); The Genius to Improve an Invention (Notre Dame-London, University of Notre Dame Press; It. orig. 1999); Winged Words. Flight in Poetry and History (University of Chicago Press, 2007, It. orig. 2004); Esodi e Odissee (Liguori, 2004); Dante’s Poetry of the Donati (Italian Studies, 2007); La prima lezione sulla letteratura (Laterza, 2007), Letteratura europea e Medioevo volgare (Il Mulino, 2007); Il Vangelo secondo Shakespeare (Il Mulino, 2009). Edited and contributed to, amongst others, the following: Chaucer and the Italian Trecento (Cambridge UP 1983); The Cambridge Chaucer Companion, with J. Mann (Cambridge UP 2003²); The European Tragedy of Troilus (Oxford UP 1989), Lo spazio letterario del Medioevo volgare (5 vols. Salerno, 2005), with A. Varvaro and M. Mancini. Edited and translated into Italian Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Adelphi 1986, verse), Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (Garzanti 1994, verse), The Cloud of Unknowing (Adelphi 1998), a complete Chaucer with facing texts (Einaudi 2000), and (Life and Introduction) W.B. Yeats, Opera poetica (Mondadori, 2005); Il viaggio dell’anima (Fondazione Valla-Mondadori, 2007). He is currently engaged in writing books on Stars (Mulino), Recognition (Einaudi), and one on Dante (Storia e Letteratura).

 

Prof. Emanuele Lugli

Emanuele Lugli teaches Italian art and architecture of the Middle Ages at Stanford University. His theoretical concerns include questions of trade and labor, the history of technology, and the construction of intellectual networks. His most recent book, The Making of Measure and the Promise of Sameness (Chicago University Press, 2019, winner of Newberry Library’s Weiss-Brown award), explores the ways measurement shaped the industrial production, the religion, and the urban forms of Italy’s medieval cities.

 

Prof. Nicolò Maldina

Nicolò Maldina teaches Italian literature at the University of Bologna (Ravenna Campus); he served as Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Leeds (2012-2015) and as Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh (2015-2020). In Autumn 2017 he held a Visiting Professorship at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. His research lies in the field of Medieval and Early-Modern Italian literature (namely Dante, Boccaccio and Ariosto) and of the religious and didactic literature between 13th-16th centuries. He studies also 20th c. Italian literature (Giuseppe Raimondi).

 

Biographies of the Artists

Elena BERTUZZI – soprano and narrator

Elena Bertuzzi graduated as an opera singer at the Conservatory F. E. Dall’Abaco in Verona. She gained a degree in “Renaissance and Baroque Singing” at the Conservatory A. Pedrollo in Vicenza, with the highest grade cum laude with a final project on XVIIth century “Lamenti italiani”. She performed in many concerts, as solo artist, and in chamber music groups, collaborating with many orchestra and specialized groups, in Italy and abroad, participating in important music festivals; she worked with conductors such as E. Inbal, J. Tate, U. B. Michelangeli, T. Koopman, S. Kuijken, Peter Phillips.

 

Massimo MARCHESE – lute

Massimo Marchese approaches the instrument (lute) at a very young age starting with M° Jakob Lindberg and obtaining a diploma from the “Royal College of Music” in London.

He continues his studies with M° Paul O’Dette, M.ri Nigel North, and Hopkinson Smith; in 1980 he begins officializing his musical activities as a soloist and by working with singers such as Nigel Rogers and Furio Zanasi, renewing his collaboration with Jacob Lindberg (member of the “Dodekachordon” group), and continuing with Enrico Gatti, Ottavio Dantone and Flavio Emilio Scogna, just to name a few.

He is known worldwide as one of the most refined performers of his generation. He played and cooperated with many famous music ensembles and organized concerts as a soloist in several countries around the world.

 

Manuel STAROPOLI – flutes

Manuel Staropoli graduated in recorder and Baroque flute and enriched his musical education with Kees Boeke, Walter van Hauwe and Barthold Kuijken. He also studied and regularly plays the baroque oboe.

He has been performing both as a soloist, and together with chamber ensembles and orchestras in Italy and around the world (Festival van Vlaanderen, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, etc.). He gave masterclasses and seminars on recorder and baroque flute at the Music University in Mannheim Duisburg-Essen, Miskolc (Hungary). He is currently teaching at the music conservatory of Trieste.

 

  • Organized by: Italian Cultural Institute