Corghi Azio

(Ciriè, Turin, 1937). Composer, musicologist and teacher. The catalogue of his compositions, programmed and performed in major international theatres and concert halls, includes works for music theatre (Symbola, Tactus, Gargantua, Blimunda, Divara), ballet (Actus III, Mazapegul, Un petit train de plaisir, Amorsacro/Amorprofano), instrumental groups (Intavolature, In fieri, Hop-Frog, Alternanze, Sinfonia dell’esercito di Arlecchino, Il pungolo di un amore) and small chamber ensembles (Joos florals, Arcs-en-ciel, Actus I, Ninnios, Viòire, Intermedi e Canzoni, “...promenade “ dans l’île de la liberté, “chansons d’élite...”). His ballet Mazapegul was awarded the “Leonid Massine/Positano 1990 “ Prize.

The Teatro alla Scala of Milan commissioned Blimunda for the 1989-90 season, an opera based on José Saramago’s novel “Memoriale del Convento” which was performed at the Teatro Lirico, Milan in May 1990 and subsequently at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisbon (1991) and at the Teatro Regio, Turin (1992); Corghi was awarded the “Premio S.I.A.E per la Lirica” for this work.

In 1992, on the occasion of the bicentenary of the birth of Gioachino Rossini, the International Piano Fesival of Brescia and Bergamo commissioned Suite Dodo and, in the same year, his ballet Un petit train de plaisir was premièred at Pesaro’s Teatro Rossini with choreography by Amedeo Amadio (a “Europeios” production telecast worldwide live by RAI UNO).

On commission by the Städtische Bühnen of Münster for the 1992-93 season, Corghi composed the opera Divara (Wasser und Blut) on texts by José Saramago; the work was premièred with great success in October 1993 and subsequently performed during the 1995 season of the Ferrara Musica festival. The Ferrara Musica Festival had already programmed for the 1993 Monteverdi celebrations Corghi’s cantata “...fero dolore” on Pianto della Madonna, Monteverdi’s adaptation of Lamento di Arianna.

The composition animi motus - performed by the Kronos Quartet at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala in autumn 1994 - was commissioned by the Società del Quartetto of Milan for the centenary celebrations of the birth of Alfredo Amman.

Among more recent works are : the cantata La morte di Lazzaro, on text by José Saramago, composed for the Chorus of the Teatro alla Scala (1995) and the large-scale cantata La cetra appesa on popular Verdi themes, composed for the Orchestra Sinfonica dell’Emilia Romagna on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Liberation of Italy.

As musicologist, Corghi has collaborated with the Fondazione Rossini of Pesaro, and with the publishers Casa Ricordi (critical revision of Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri and of Vivaldi’s operatic arias and Beatus vir).

For his didactic activities (he teaches composition at Milan Conservatory) he has been awarded the “Omaggio a Massimo Mila” prize. In 1993 he was awarded the “Gino Tani” International Prize for the Performing Arts, while his Ricordi CD Un petit train de plaisir won the “1995 Editor’s Choice” prize in the Cannes Classical Awards.

A versatile musician with a strong predisposition for the theatre (a theatre whose fundamental choral dimension is based on the protagonism of the people), a follower of the grand tradition but with a mind projected towards the future, capable of a display of imaginative and creative compositional virtuosity as well as of a more stark and stinging expressiveness, Azio Corghi as a composer relates (as he declared in an interview) “to the way of living history peculiar to musicians like Berio or Ligeti, or to the first two great Italian composers of the XX century: Dallapiccola and Petrassi”. The decisive element of artistic creation for this Piedmontese composer is the value of the idea proposed - together with the capacity for invention and imagination: in other words, the value of a musical work cannot be determined solely by linguistic and technical means, but is imparted by the substance of the idea, by the depth of the thought and of the ethics that support it.