«Farò quanto potrò come i tenori indisposti»

Through the correspondence between Antonio Bazzini and Ugo Bassani (1851–1914), his beloved pupil, we approach a wide range of topics concerning various areas of art and music. We learn about the concert life of various cities (not only Milan and Venice, the two centres in which the two composers’ lives took place), the teaching activities of some important institutions (the conservatories in Milan, Florence, Naples, Venice), the repertoire in vogue, the publishers active at the time and their choices; we learn about the opera seasons in Milan and Turin, about emerging composers and the outcome of their new compositions. While in some cases the contents of the missives only serve to clarify already known information, in others they address previously unpublished topics and thus open up multiple perspectives of investigation into late 19th century society, artistic habits and repertoire. The precious corpus of just over sixty letters is kept at the Library of the Liszt Institute Foundation in Bologna and covers approximately two decades (1876–1895).