In 1919 a musician who had already challenged all social conventions by demanding enrollment in the composition course of the Conservatory of Naples forbidden to women, cultivates a dream ........
........She wants to build, together with her husband Franco Michele Napolitano, a network of intellectuals and artists that embraces all of Europe and founded the Scarlatti Association.
After 100 years one of the most important cultural achievements that Naples has had.
After 100 years one of the most important cultural achievements that Naples has had.
Franco Michele Napolitano, conductor and composer. Emilia's husband
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Dimitri Mitropulos
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Adolf Busch
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Karl Bohm
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Henryk Szering
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Pter Pears & Benjamin Britten
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Wilhelm Backhaus
Emilia Gubitosi wants to promote repertoires never performed before, but for this reason she has to build an audience. She begins to associate women to a school of choral singing, she begins to teach music, to educate to listen, but above all she transmits the value of the word "together".
Culture becomes the engine of social cohesion and civil development.
Music is its fuel.
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Emilia and the chorus
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the choir rehearsals
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The Masters and the Chorus
Such is the theme of the exhibition: a journey with visitors through the traces left by a path of signs and ideas.
Villa Pignatelli, an extraordinary example of neoclassical civil architecture in Naples, is an archetype and the ideal place to set a story like this. Place of the "Golden Age of Conversation" that produces a welding between the aristocracy and the intellectual bourgeoisie able to give fruits to the culture of the city.
In a place like this the Scarlatti Association was born.
In a place like this the Scarlatti Association was born.
When the ruling classes and the artists feel they need each other, then it is possible to dream of
Nicola Rubertelli: art director
In the blue lounge
The Historic Apartment houses “narrative objects" that blend in with the original furnishings, telling the 100 years of the city's life.
In the blue living room a piano stand supports a three-voice score where each note represents an event. The comparison between the musical keys makes it possible to verify correspondences and coincidences that have fuelled civil life.
The main events that happened in the first 100 years of life, their social consequences, the traditions of a millenary people seen as a mirror of the activities of the Association..
In the blue living room a piano stand supports a three-voice score where each note represents an event. The comparison between the musical keys makes it possible to verify correspondences and coincidences that have fuelled civil life.
The main events that happened in the first 100 years of life, their social consequences, the traditions of a millenary people seen as a mirror of the activities of the Association..
In the red lounge
In the red living room we can find a harpsichord that in the decoration of the lid reveals the story of a child "kidnapped" by music, by Naples, by the charm of the masters of the time. He could only become himself a teacher for students of another time.
An imaginary story, however, that describes the road to knowledge, culture, success and personal fulfilment.
Dedicated to our youngest visitors, it tells, in a positive way, how commitment and escape from shortcuts is the safest way.
An imaginary story, however, that describes the road to knowledge, culture, success and personal fulfilment.
Dedicated to our youngest visitors, it tells, in a positive way, how commitment and escape from shortcuts is the safest way.
The film won two awards at the Art&Tour Festival in Portugal: First prize in the "art&Tour" category and second prize in the "History Heritage" category.
In the dining room and in the library
In the dining room and in the library, visitors see postcards with images of thirteen intellectuals with whom I talked for hours recording their opinions and points of view on music, the role of culture, knowledge. Placing the card to one of the stand close to the Scarlatti portrait, each of them will take the place of the great musician and will answer a specific question. The visitor will be able to compare different points of view with his own, a direct approach to diversity as a wealth that music seeks, elaborates, shares.
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The Dining Room
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Salbatore Accardo
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Stefano Bollani
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Gilberto Corbellini
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Luca De Fusco
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Vincenzo De Gregorio
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Oreste de Vittis
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Antonio Florio
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Titti Marrone
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Flavia Nardelli
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Eugenio Ottieri
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Rosanna Purchia
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Tommaso Rossi
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Daniela Tortora
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The Library
The basement
The basement becomes an immersive path of signs, of fragments, of objects that represent something else by themselves whose original meaning becomes only a shadow in the memory of those who were able to recognize them and who are able to produce sense and a new meaning only from the encounter with the disoriented visitor.
A rain of notes covers visitors at the entrance and discovers the anonymous card player who transforms his mutilated hand into an instrument of life, as opposed to the splendid photograph by Mimmo Jodice who plays with time and light while the two opposing mirrors from the villa's original furnishings play with space, imposing disorientation as the key to interpretation.
Disorientation is the origin of knowledge, the reconstruction of a balance is the activity that encourages it.
The soul of the music becomes a scenography, objects that, as notes, must seek and chase the concatenation with the previous and the next one so that their development is a story to which the audience can give sense and meaning. This design approach we believe we have learned from music always both ambivalent and fluctuating between rationality and sensation.
The exhibition, on the other hand, was not meant to be an display of the successes of the Scarlatti Association, but the representation of the strategies that made them possible.
A vision, a dream as Emilia Gubitosi defined it, could not be represented other than a fairy tale.
The exhibition, on the other hand, was not meant to be an display of the successes of the Scarlatti Association, but the representation of the strategies that made them possible.
A vision, a dream as Emilia Gubitosi defined it, could not be represented other than a fairy tale.
Each object represents something else and is linked to the next only through a symbiosis to be discovered or invented where the public will play a primary role, each with its own sensitivity, culture, context.
Our legitimate fears disappeared when the first children entered and we saw them wandering around as if they were inside the gears of a big toy, showing that with less prejudice we dream more.
Until the entrance of a Picassian theatre where a film recalls that dream and that woman: Emilia Gubitosi.
Back to 100 years from that day among her descendants to control "her creature", the reality must step aside. If what happens to the protagonists in the film was not humanly possible on earth, it doesn't matter, the theatre is by definition the place of choice of the mystery.
The film won the award at the Art&Tour Festival in Portugal: First prize in the category “Biography”.
Back to 100 years from that day among her descendants to control "her creature", the reality must step aside. If what happens to the protagonists in the film was not humanly possible on earth, it doesn't matter, the theatre is by definition the place of choice of the mystery.
The film won the award at the Art&Tour Festival in Portugal: First prize in the category “Biography”.
Definitely real, instead, is the last part of the path that is dedicated to the activity that in Naples different institutions carry out in favour of children by bringing them closer to music, which in practice means training them to use the deepest meaning of the word "together".
The exhibition was produced by Scabec on behalf of the Campania Region.
Photo credits: Barbara di Maio (Scabec) for the exhibition and Mauro Scaramella (Visual Mask) for the shooting backstage