Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi di Lampedusa, 1934-2023

[VictorIII]

Il 10 maggio, a 89 anni, il perito musicale e figlio adottivo di Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi nato Gioacchino Lanza Branciforte Ramirez, è tornato al Signore. In preparazione di un evento su Il Gattopardo tenuto da uno studioso di Harvard nel 2017, ho avuto la fortuna di comunicare via email con Gioacchino. Altri amici di Boston sono stati felicemente accolti da Gioacchino e dalla moglie a Palermo, tutti a conferma della grandezza e gentilezza del defunto.

Condivido le belle parole di Gioacchino, poiché me le ha scritte in inglese.

I don’t do this regularly. Communication is invading our lives and brings me back to ,I Seventies. I was then Artistic director of the Rome Radio Orchestra and choir. And the photocopies were in introduced in the motional broadcast. T

This meant that we destroyed many trees every day. I found every morning on the desk 300 pages or so of photocopies. After a week I said that it was useless to send them to me. If I had to read them I couldn’t do anything else. Now the ship them by email with the result that you mail is clogged or it takes more than one hour the give a look and cancel them. Technology is getting into bad hands and there is no more the faith in limits. Though nothing is more limited tan man. Your days are numbered and you change with age. In this sentence is the greatness of Lampedusa’s writing. Happiness must abide by limits and change in different seasons of your life. I believe that this is the fundamental meaning of the modern novel. Histories is therefore represented as the sequence of traumas. It is the histories of the species no more the history of events.

I retired at 73 and as I have a State pension I cannot work any more for an Italian public company. Therefore a reverted to the literature. Opera, my great passion is only possible if highly and publicly subsidized. My last years are dedicated to Lampedusa. I have written two books on him and other two are on the way. Incredibly not everything about Lampedusa has been examined analysed interpreted. A book in English, “ Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa - A Biography though Images” Alma Books 2013 and “Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa Letters from London and Europe”, paperback edition Alma Books 2011, give you the different advancement of the research. Next May Piper is putting on sale “Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa Die Sirene - Erzählungen”. It is a new complete edition of the authors short stories. And a thorough biographical revision of Lampedusa’s hidden narrative procedures. On the way I have a Spanish book “Lampedusa y España y España y Lampedusa.” It will be published next year by Acantillado.

In my young days I acquired a wide musical and literary knowledge. I have always told my students that the basis of research is a large repertoire knowledge. You must have a repertoire at your fingertips. Two years ago a lectured in San Francisco. The asked me to send an essay more than an abstract for the audience. But my reply was. If you question me on music XVII-XXI century you can project a score and I will start speaking. If you question me about Lampedusa I can answer better than anybody else. I presented “The Biography trough Images at the Oxford Book Festival. At the end of the lecture I said “I have travelled five times to Japan as CEO of an Italian Opera house. And you need to get a visa connected to a working allowance. To describe my qualification the Japanese wrote “performer”. Yes I see from you reception that I have been a good performer. They audience replied enthusiastically. I had been a good performer.

As you say I cannot be in Boston on the dates you mention. But I will be in New York from March 27 to April 1.

Eventually we could have a meeting there.

All the best

Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi

Sfortunatamente, non ho mai incontrato il gentilissimo nobile a New York. Riposa in pace con questo meraviglioso uomo