Italian Jewish Liturgical Songs in Los Angeles

[Francesco Spagnolo <yuval...>]

Dear List,

I am happy to announce that a program I have already presented a
number of times in Italy, as well as at the Jewish Culture Days in
Berlin last year, is about to arrive on the American soil. This time
it will (only) be in Los Angeles, but I hope that others will become
interested in the future...

Following the announcement, you can find a few notes that introduce
the program. The lecture will include an introduction to the music of
the Italian Jews, as well as some excerpts from the forthcoming CD
"Italian Jewish Musical Traditions from the Leo Levi Collection
(1954-1961), that is, field recordings from the 1950's.
The concert features Italy's most respected hazzan, Elia Richetti,
with songs from the liturgy of the Sabbath, the High Holidays, the
Festivals as well as Judeo Italian songs for Passover, and Hebrew
piyyutim for Hannukah, Purim, Weddings, and so forth in a number of
local Italian musical traditions. I will be participating to the
concert as well, giving the audience the needed "subtitles".

I hope to meet some list members at the venue!

Best,
Francesco




                                     IOHI
                                       Italian Oral History Institute
                                 www.iohi.org

                                                                      presents:

                                       Italian Jews: Memory, Music, Celebration

                                          Los Angeles, October 24 -
November 5, 2001



                                               Thursday, October 25,
2001, 7:00 p.m
                                      Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel

                                                              7:00 -
7:45 p.m. L e c t u r e

        Feeling Italian and Singing the Bible: National and Jewish
Identity in the Music of the Italian Jews

      Francesco Spagnolo Director, Yuval Italia Italian Center for the
Study of Jewish Music, Milano, Italy


                                                                 8:00
- 9:00 p.m. C o n c e r t

                                            Music of the Italian Jews:
Hazanut from Italian Tradition

                                                           Authentic
voices from Italian tradition:
                                          featuring songs from Milano,
Torino, Verona, Gorizia and Trieste

                                                             sung in
this engagement only by


Cantor, Rabbi Elia Richetti

(Venice, Italy)


                         [Suggested donation $5at the door.
First-come, first-served; no rsvp required.]


Contact: Susan Tobey, Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel, 10500
Wilshire Blvd. (corner Wilshire and Warner Ave., Westwood),
310/475-7311. Parking at no charge at Temple or across the street at
Westwood United Methodist Church.



Musical Traditions of the Italian Jews: It is common to associate the
Jewish people with the idea of a cosmopolitan culture, capable of
fitting into a variety of contexts, always ready for change. Less
well known is the history of Jewish life in Italy and its
contribution to Jewish culture and life in its broadest sense.

Italian Jews were always very few in number, crowded into the same
tight spaces of the Ghettos regardless of their geographic origin.
Thus, in the cities of Rome, Venice, Ancona, Ferrara, Livorno, people
of the most diverse origins--Spain and Portugal, Central Europe,
North Africa and the Middle East--found themselves living together in
close quarters.

Well before the myth of the melting pot, and definitely before the
popularization of "world music," Jews created
their own "fusion" in Italian towns and cities. Their music was sung
in synagogues--the primary stage of the Jewish world. Melodies
created by these means have been orally transmitted to us as a
synthesis of different musical worlds. And as they remained
unwritten, they were preserved only through human memory over the
centuries.

Although during the 20th century Italian Judaism decreased in its
numbers and in diversification, a fair number
of original traditions were preserved by a small number of hazanim,
the traditional synagogue cantors. During
the last part of the century, the migration of Jews from North
African (Lybia and Egypt) and the Middle Eastern
(Syria and Lebanon) added an extra layer to the complexity of the
Italian Jewish musical world.

Over the last four years, Yuval Italia--Centro Studi Musica Ebraica
(the Italian Center for the Study of Jewish Music) has been active in
researching the diversity of Italian Jewish music, in preserving it,
as well as in
presenting it to the public through lectures, concerts, as well as
via radio and television programs in collaboration with Radio
Popolare Milano and RAI-Radiotelevisione Italiana (the Italian
national television and radio network).

Yuval Italia's director, Francesco Spagnolo, is currently producing
an audio anthology of Italian Jewish liturgical songs based on the
field recordings of Leo Levi, who documented Italy's own traditions
in the 1950's. A forthcoming CD, issued as a joint project of the
Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome) and the Jewish Music
Research Centre at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

This programís musical presentation will introduce the audience to a
variety of synagogue songs from the repertoire of the Italian Jews.
During the evening, Rabbi and Cantor Elia Richetti will perform a
selection of
Bible readings, prayers and piyyutim (liturgical poems) still in use
today in several Jewish communities
throughout Northern Italy.

Rabbi and Cantor Elia Richetti, for many years deputy chief rabbi of
the Milano community, and recently appointed as chief rabbi in
Venice, is a veritable "thesaurus" of Jewish tunes from Northern
Italy. He is deeply familiar with the repertoires of Milano, Torino,
Verona, Gorizia and Trieste, and his cantorial skills are well known
throughout the country. A genuine representative of Italian hazanut,
he has been collaborating with Yuval Italia on a number of occasions,
presenting his repertoire at the Milano and Bologna Universities, as
well as participating in the "Sacri Suoni" (Sacred Sounds), a
Milano-based Festival of Liturgial music, together with some of the
best hazanim of various traditions from Eretz Israel. In November
2000, he sang at the "House of World Cultures" in Berlin, at the
closure of the Jewish Cultural Days.


--

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YUVAL ITALIA      Centro Studi Musica Ebraica
the  Italian Center for the Study of Jewish Music

via della Guastalla,19            20122 Milano Italy
tel/fax +39 02 55014977    yuval (at) powerlink(dot)it
            http://www.powerlink.it/yuval
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