Italian city in the Umbria region. In the 13th century Perugia was the leading centre of the devotional societies that practised the singing of laude. The first such confraternity, the Compagnia dei Disciplinati or Flagellanti, was founded in 1260 by Raniero Fasani. From the 14th century until about the mid-16th the city's government engaged several minstrels (canterini), who provided musical and poetic entertainment twice daily for the magistrates, and at least twice monthly for the populace, at concerts held in public squares. In the last quarter of the 14th century the canterino Ercolano di Gilio (Gigli) da Perugia won wide recognition for his abilities as an improviser.
The earliest documentation of the practice of sacred polyphony in the cathedral of S Lorenzo is provided by three manuscript versions of the versicle Benedicamus Domino dating from the end of the 14th century (I-PEd Cod.15). From 1433 musical activity is regularly documented in the Libri contabili and in 1521 the chapel was officially established with a papal brief from Leo X. The maestri di cappella include the papal singer Ivo Barry (1535–6), Giorgio Mirreo di Cambrai (1551–75), Vincenzo Cossa (1591–1620), Francesco Marcorelli (1635–41), Francesco Bagaglia (1694–1740), Baldassarre Angelini (1740–62), Francesco Zannetti (1762–88), Luigi Caruso (1788–1823), Giuseppe Rossi Bonaccorsi (1823–33), Ulisse Corticelli (1845–80), Agostino Mercuri (1880–92), Giuseppe Scudellari (1892–1901) and Raffaele Casimiri (1905–8). Among the most representative of the second generation of trecento composers was Niccolò da Perugia, author of madrigals, and cacce on texts by Sacchetti and Soldanieri, among others. An important Perugian figure, responsible for the diffusion in Italy of French musical style in the early 15th century, was Matteo da Perugia, first maestro di cappella at Milan Cathedral.
The construction of organs in the city's various churches began in the mid-15th century. Perugia's principal organ builders were Bevenate di Francesco (S Agostino, 1494, S Simone del Carmine, 1504), Luca Biagi (S Maria Nuova, 1584), Pietro Fedeli (S Lorenzo, 1785) and Angelo Morettini (19th century). Several makers of string instruments settled in Perugia in the 16th and 17th centuries, including Martino and Lorenzo di Pietro, Lutio di Lorenzo Mucetti, who introduced lyre making into the city, and Pietro Pavolo di Gerolamo.
After the founding of a university in 1275 humanistic studies and activities gained ground in Perugia. A collection of frottola texts, Il libro de amore chiamato Ardelia by Baldassare Olympo delli Alexandri, was printed in 1520, and was important for the dissemination of humanism. In 1561 Raffaele Sozi instituted the Accademia degli Unisoni, whose principal aim was the theory and practice of music. Following the will of Bishop Napoleone Comitoli a public school of plainchant was instituted in 1621 at the church of S Bartolomeo, and was first directed by Nicolò Magnanini. In the late 16th century and early 17th the printer Pietroiacomo Petrucci was active in Perugia; in 1577 he published Malvezzi’s Ricercari a quattro and in 1603 Arcadelt’s first book of four-part madrigals. Other music publishers working in the city in the 16th and 17th centuries included Eredi del Bartoli, Angelo Laurenzi and Girolamo Costanti.
The reorganization of the Accademia degli Unisoni under the protection of S Cecilia in 1604 prompted the construction of an oratory next to the church of S Maria Nuova. The building was used exclusively by the accademici throughout the 17th century for performances of sacred musical dramas; similar performances took place in the church of S Filippo Neri, built in 1649. From 1690 to 1705 the singer, composer and historiographer G.A. Bontempi lived in Perugia, publishing his Historia musica there in 1695.
The first opera known to have been performed in Perugia was Cavalli's Giasone (1663). In March 1717 a group of 60 noblemen arranged to give the city its first public theatre, the Teatro del Pavone. Constructed under the direction of Costantino Ranieri and Alessandro Baglioni, it was completed in 1723, and in 1726 the promoters of the enterprise formally constituted the Nobile Accademia del Casino to supervise it. In 1765 the original wooden theatre, known as the Teatro della Nobile Accademia del Casino, or Teatro del Pavone (after the peacock depicted on the curtain), was rebuilt in stone to a design by Pietro Carattoli, who used the Teatro Argentina in Rome as a model; it was in a horseshoe shape, with four tiers comprising 82 boxes. A group of affluent citizens, in competition with the Accademia del Casino, which was patronized exclusively by the nobility, subsidized the construction of a new theatre, the Nuovo Teatro Civico del Verzaro, inaugurated in 1781 with Francesco Zannetti's La Didone abbandonata and Giacomo Rust's Artaserse. The Italian première of Rossini's Moïse et Pharaon was given at the Verzaro in 1829. In 1874 it was renamed Teatro Francesco Morlacchi; in 1942, having been donated to the city's administration, it became the Teatro Comunale Morlacchi. Another theatre, the Teatro Turreno, was erected mainly to present spectacles for the less affluent social classes; it was inaugurated in 1891 with Pedrotti's Tutti in maschera.
The Congregazione dell'Oratorio di S Filippo Neri, established in 1615, was the centre of oratorio performance in Perugia. From 1689 the Accademia degli Unisoni celebrated the feast of St Cecilia in the oratory of the same name adjoining the Chiesa Nuova. Many oratorios, particularly cantatas for Christmas Eve, were sponsored by the Compagnia dei Nobili del Gesù. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries there was a flourishing local school of oratorio, with composers such as Pietro Giacomo Bacci, Francesco Bagaglia and Giovanni Bernardino Serafini, and subsequently Baldassarre Angelini, Francesco Zannetti and Luigi Caruso.
A musical institute was founded in 1790 by Luigi Caruso; in 1873 it was named after Francesco Morlacchi, and in 1967 it became a state conservatory. The history of music has been taught at the university since 1957. The annual Sagra Musicale Umbra, founded in 1937, is a festival devoted mainly to choral and symphonic religious works. The Associazione Amici della Musica, founded in 1946 and presided over by A.B. Gatteschi, sponsors concerts throughout the year, presenting renowned virtuosos and many contemporary works. In 1983 the Centro di Studi Musicali in Umbria was founded with the aim of promoting research into the region's musical heritage.
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A.W. Atlas: ‘The Accademia degli Unisoni: a Music Academy in Renaissance Perugia’, A Musical Offering: Essays in Honor of Martin Bernstein, ed. E.H. Clinkscale and C. Brook (New York, 1977), 5–24
B. Brumana: ‘Luigi Caruso e la cappella musicale del duomo di Perugia dal 1788 al 1823’, NRMI, xi (1977), 380–405
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M.M.R. Ventura, ed.: Teatro Francesco Morlacchi: archivio storico (Perugia, 1983)
B. Brumana: Il fondo musicale dell'archivio di San Pietro a Perugia: catalogo (Perugia, 1986)
G. Ciliberti: ‘Repertorio delle fonti musicali umbre dal XIII al XV secolo e dei musicisti arsnovistici di provenienza umbra’, Bollettino della Deputazione di storia patria per l'Umbria, lxxxv (1988), 219–70
N. Guidobaldi: ‘Music Publishing in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Umbria’, EMH, viii (1988), 1–36
B. Brumana and G.Ciliberti: ‘Umanesimo e tradizione orale: nuovi documenti sui canterini a Perugia nel XV secolo’, NRMI, xxiii (1989), 579–91
B. Brumana and G.Ciliberti: Musica e musicisti nella cattedrale di S. Lorenzo a Perugia (XIV–XVII secolo) (Florence, 1991)
B. Brumana: L'archivio musicale della cattedrale di S. Lorenzo a Perugia: catalogo (Perugia, 1993)
B. Brumana: Teatro musicale e accademie a Perugia tra dominazione francese e restaurazione (1801–1830) (Florence, 1996)
G. Ciliberti: Musica e società in Umbria tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Turnhout, 1998)
ELVIDIO SURIAN/BIANCAMARIA BRUMANA