CulturaItalia Newsletter

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"CulturaItalia is an ever-growing collaborative network of public and private institutions.
The participant-driven project is intended to bring together various players in the fields of Italian cultural production and access, partners who will be able to contribute to the development of the portal and thus to improve the visibility of their contents and initiatives on a national and international level. Museums, archives, libraries and other cultural entities both public and private can participate by making contents organised into databases available, or by sending news regarding initiatives, organisations and activities.

The resources can be in text, audio, image or video format, and must be germane to the thematic channels, and to those representing initiatives, persons, places and cultural heritage items from sources all over the Italian territory."

* Newsletter n.1 (May 4, 2010)

An initiative of the Vatican Library Digital manuscripts

'The Osservatore Romano dated March 24 has published the following story which we felt certain would be of interest to you' Msgr. Cesare Pasini, Prefect of The Vatican Libray. said. The story concerns the project of the digitization of 80,000 manuscripts of the Vatican Library.

Michelangelo's Dream

Michelangelo's Dream
The Courtauld Gallery, London - from February 18 to May 16, 2010

"Michelangelo’s masterpiece The Dream is one of the greatest of all Renaissance drawings. This complex work shows a nude youth being roused by a winged spirit from the vices that surround him.

The Dream was probably part of the celebrated group of drawings which Michelangelo made as gifts for Tommaso de' Cavalieri, a young Roman nobleman with whom he had fallen passionately in love. With loans from international collections, the exhibition unites The Dream for the first time with these extraordinary drawings.

Michelangelo’s Dream also includes a selection of previously unexhibited handwritten poems which the artist composed for Cavalieri. Further closely related drawings by Michelangelo as well as works by Albrecht Dürer and others will shed light on the meaning of Michelangelo’s enigmatic masterpiece.

This unique opportunity to see some of Michelangelo’s finest and most beautiful drawings promises to be one of the exhibition highlights of the year."

* video podcasts

"The exhibition Michelangelo's Dream contains not only drawings but also the manuscripts of some of his most important letters and poems. The poems (...) were composed for the Roman nobleman Tommaso de'Cavalieri and deal with spiritual longing and passionate desire. Michelangelo's sonnets and madrigals are perhaps less well known than his sculpture and painting but were considered of great worth by humanist intellectuals in his time."

* audio podcasts

"Each podcast is of a single poem and includes an introduction by Jim Harris, visiting lecturer at The Courtauld Institute of Art, an English translation and then the original Italian."

Pinocchio on Podcast

Andrea Balestri reads Le avventure di Pinocchio by Collodi.

Digital Edition of the Complete Work of Galileo Galilei

Digital Edition of the Complete Work of Galileo Galilei represents the first footstep of a project that will offer the whole tools to the researchers for the analysis, the study and the collaborative search on the texts.

The Nun of Monza (Milan, 11/25/09-3/21/10)

La Monaca di Monza
Milan, Sforza Castle
Nov. 25, 2009 - Mar. 21, 2010

Works by Francesco Hayez, Mose' Bianchi, Giuseppe Molteni and other painters.

{In you are interested in Manzoni, you can find more data about him on my edublog, especially in November 2009}

The European Zibaldone

María de las Nieves Muñiz Muñiz [University of Barcellona] , Franco D'Intino and Michael Caesar [The Leopardi Centre at the University of Birmingham] will undertake the first complete, online, Italian/Spanish/English edition of Leopardi's notebooks, the Zibaldone di pensieri, Fabio Corvatta, President of CNLS, said.

Fiabe Italiane/Italian Folktales

Fiabe Italiane/Italian Folktales
Turin, Teatro Carignano - from Jan. 19 to Jan. 31, 2010
Naples, Teatro San Ferdinando - From Feb. 2 to Feb. 7, 2010
Milan, Teatro Grassi - from Feb. 9 to Feb. 14, 2010

Inspired by Giambattista Basile, Italo Calvino edited a collection of folktales - Fiabe italiane. John Turturro and Carl Capotorto adapted some of them to theatre. Folktales selected by Turturro: Il Fiorentino (76), La storia dello spirito maligno, La scuola della Salamanca (128), Pelle di vecchia - La vecchia dell’orto - (70 - 181), Lo sciocco senza paura (80), Il re degli animali (52), Salta nel mio sacco! (200), La tacchina (141).

* interview by Alexandra Farkas [Corriere della Sera]
* John Turturro reads a short story by Italo Calvino

History of Italian Literature by Griseldaonline

Summary

“L’eredità di Francesco De Sanctis. Un viaggio tra i capolavori della letteratura italiana” (Rome, 3/16/09 - 5/11/09)

“L’eredità di Francesco De Sanctis. Un viaggio tra i capolavori della letteratura italiana” - Readings Series
Rome, March 16 – May 11, 2009

Monday March 16 5pm Quirinale
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
Anna Bonaiuto e Toni Servillo

Monday March 23 4pm Montecitorio
FRANCESCO PETRARCA
Anna Galiena

Monday March 30 6:30pm Sala Zuccari
DANTE ALIGHIERI
Claudia Gerini

Tuesday April 7 5pm Villa Doria Pamphili
VITTORIO ALFIERI
Neri Marcorè

Tuesday April 21 5pm Ministero dei Beni Culturali
TORQUATO TASSO
Luigi Lo Cascio

Monday April 27 7pm Campidoglio
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
Alessandro Haber

Monday May 4 5pm Palazzo Chigi
NICCOLO’ MACHIAVELLI
Laura Morante

Monday May 11 7pm Villa Madama
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
FRANCESCO DE SANCTIS
Fabrizio Bentivoglio

* slideshow

A Virtual Tour of Hell

Dante's Inferno is a flash website by Todd King.

Biblioteca della letteratura italiana

Biblioteca della letteratura italiana offers digitalized texts in Acrobat Reader format.

GriseldaOnLine

GriseldaOnLine is an experimental review dedicated to school, didactics and informatics applied to human sciences. It presents essays, hypertexts, interviews, forums.
Articles are often grouped into ideas such as "inferni", "l'altro", "the body", the enemy, the young, metamorphosis, "la piazza".

Scrittori d'Italia Laterza: Digital Library

Scrittori d'Italia is a prestigious collection founded in 1910 by Laterza Publ. under the direction of Benedetto Croce, who was the editor of the first book dedicated to Marinist Poets. The last book, L'asino by Carlo de Dottori, was released in 1987. The original project included 660 books; however, the publisher released "only" 197 works in 287 volumes.
The Digital version allows the reader to check every page of the entire collection for a total of 125.171 images.

Galileo e l'universo dei suoi libri (Florence, 12/5/08 - 2/28/09)

Galileo e l'universo dei suoi libri
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Tribuna Dantesca - from Dec. 5, 2008 to Feb. 28, 2009

The exceptional website of the exhibition offers the chance to read Galilei's works and books owned by the scientist, with his own marginal annotations.

'Giordano Bruno' by Ingrid D. Rowland

Giordano Bruno by Ingrid D. Rowland
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008

* article by Anthony Gottlieb [NYTimes]
* excerpt

Links:
- Centro Internazionale di Studi Bruniani
- La Biblioteca Ideale (Comitato Nazionale per le celebrazioni di G.B. nel 4^ centenario della morte)
- Sito dei seguaci del filosofo nolano

'Amore e ginnastica' by Edmondo De Amicis

This month [Dec. 2008] Leopoldo Mastelloni reads Amore e ginnastica by Edmondo De Amicis. You can podcast the reading at Rai - Ad Alta Voce.

* full text

[A movie was shot by Luigi Filippo D'Amico in 1973]

Danteworlds

A multimedia journey through the realms of the Divine Comedy. A visual representation of Dante's worlds that includes the various creatures and people met by the pilgrim throughout his journey. Available for each region are explanatory notes, a gallery of artistic images, recordings of significant Italian verses and study questions. Designed by the University of Texas at Austin, the site is meant to be an enriching complement to the reading of the cantos.

Heliotropia

A new issue of Heliotropia, Journal of the Boccaccio American Association, edited by Michael Papio, is now online [Vol. 5, Nos. 1-2 (2008)]

'Le avventure di Pinocchio' by Collodi with illustrations by Lorenzo Mattotti

Einaudi publishes a new edition of
Le avventure di Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
with illustrations by Lorenzo Mattotti;
an introduction by Tiziano Scarpa;
and an interview by Emilio Varra'.

[Mattotti is working with Enzo D'Alo' to a movie on Pinocchio]