Italian city in Sicily. The city was founded as a Greek colony in the 8th century bce. A large Greco-Roman theatre, seating 1300, survives to the present day. Despite the natural disasters that have destroyed many of the city’s records, it is known that chant was taught at the Benedictine cathedral from its foundation in 1091. The only music surviving from the Middle Ages is a Troper in Aquitanian notation (E-Mn 19421, c1200), which contains four polyphonic unica as well as a large number of monophonic pieces, one of them in praise of the Catanese martyr Agatha.
The monk Blandino noted that in 1131 a certain Pietro of Pisa entered the cathedral to the sound of an organ; by the mid-15th century there was an organist and a choir of monks and boys. Only after the secularization of the cathedral in 1575 was it possible to have professional singers and instrumentalists, who, according to an early 17th-century ceremoniale, also served on important occasions at other Catanese churches. The same source refers to polychoral psalm singing, but later expense accounts show the increasing popularity of the use of smaller forces, often with castratos as soloists. Conspicuous among the many maestri di cappella of the city is V.T. Bellini, Vincenzo Bellini's grandfather, who served at the church of S Nicolò l'Arena, the same church that in 1767 a large organ was installed by Donato Del Piano.
There were probably many early sacre rappresentazioni given in the monasteries. In 1440 a Passion play was enacted at the church of S Maria la Grande, and throughout the Renaissance there were many other performances, mostly under the auspices of the cathedral but also at the convent of S Placido and at the Jesuit church. Continued Jesuit influence, both through their own theatre and through that of the Accademia dei Chiari, was largely responsible for the religious or moralistic tone of several 17th-century opera plots. There are also a number of 18th-century references to feste teatrali, such as La città di Abella liberata (performed in 1780 and 1783) by the local composer Giuseppe Geremia, while opera of a more strictly commercial type was performed both at the Teatro dell'Università and at the theatres of the princes Biscari and S Domenica. The suppression of these private theatres in the early 19th century prepared the way for the opening of the Teatro Comunale Provvisorio with a production of Rossini's L'Aureliano in Palmira in 1821. Basic to its repertory were the works of the leading Italian composers, but the theatre also contributed to creating a forum during the 19th century for such local musicians as P.A. Coppola, Pietro Platania, Salvatore Pappalardo and F.P. Frontini, who is also known for his research into the folksongs of the Etna region and eastern Sicily. In 1890 the magnificent Teatro Massimo Bellini, designed by Carlo Sada, opened with a production of Norma. The theatre was described by Gigli in his memoirs as ‘the most beautiful and most acoustically perfect in the world’, and remains the principal musical institution in the city.
In the 20th century musical life in Catania was stimulated by the foundation of several concert organizations, including the Lyceum Club (1928), the Società Catanese Amici della Musica, which existed between 1947 and 1962, and, more recently, the Associazione Musicale Etnea (1974), whose programmes are notable for promoting contemporary and non-European music. In 1989 the Teatro Massimo Bellini founded an annual festival dedicated to Bellini. The university has also contributed to the growth of music in the city, with the establishment in 1970 of a professorship in music history in the faculty of arts and philosophy, which promotes conferences, seminars and festivals such as the ‘Siculorum Gymnasii Musica’. Catania's other principal musical institutions are the Istituto Musicale Pareggiato Vincenzo Bellini, founded in 1951, which trains performing musicians, and the Istituto Musicale Sylvestro Ganassi.
Among the leading composers produced by the city in the 20th century are Alfredo Sangiorgi, Aldo Clementi, Francesco Pennisi and Franco Battiato. Ensembles formed in recent years include the Camerata Polifonica Siciliana, the Orchestra Barocca di Catania and the Mille Regretz choir. Mention should also be made of the initiatives promoted by the local authority, which has organized summer concerts in the city since 1981, and by the regional authority, which since 1985 has organized the Catania Musica Estate, a prestigious festival featuring international artists. The Bellini d'Oro prize was established in the city in 1968. Recent research into music preserved in Catania reveals that the disastrous earthquake of 1693 was a watershed in the history and culture of the city. Little remains from before this date beyond the fragments of music and liturgy from the 14th to 16th centuries held in the Archivio di Stato. From the period following the disaster there are various collections of music held in the Biblioteche Riunite Civica ed Antonio Ursino Recupero, where a rare medieval treatise with particular contrapuntal rules ‘ad usum Regni Siciliae’ can also be found. Other collections are housed at the Museo Belliniano, the Curia Arcivescovile, the Società di Storia Patria per la Sicilia Orientale and in the Biblioteca Regionale Universitaria, which since 1995 has had a specialist musicological section.
ES (G. Policastro)
RicordiE
M. Catalano Tirrito: Per la sacra rappresentazione in Sicilia (Termini Imerese, 1907)
G. Policastro: Il teatro siciliano (Catania, 1924)
O. Tiby: Antichi musicisti siciliani (Palermo, 1934/R)
G. Policastro: ‘La cappella musicale del duomo e l'oratorio sacro in Catania nel '600’; ‘La musica ecclesiastica in Catania sotto i Benedettini (1091–1565)’; ‘Cento anni di attività musicale a Catania nel Circolo delle quarantore e nel Convento di S. Nicolò l'Arena’, RMI, lii (1950), 1–24; 97–123; 305–39
D. Danzuso and G. Idonea: Musica, musicisti e teatri a Catania (Palermo, 1990)
DAVID BRYANT/DANIELE FICOLA, ROSALBA MUSUMECI