February 24
- Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò – Monday, February 24, 2025 – 5:00 pm
Sei come sei
Casa Italiana hosts this book club online on the Zoom platform to discuss contemporary Italian books in Italian. The Club is open to anyone and its purpose is to offer the possibility to practice the Italian language. Everybody is encouraged to speak. The group suggests the books, usually by contemporary Italian authors, that reflect the changes that have taken place with time in the language and customs. The discussion is informal. - Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò – Monday, February 24, 2025 – 6:30 pm
Metamorphoses
On the occasion of his visiting professorship at NYU in Spring 2025, Italian philosopher and EHESS Professor Emanuele Coccia joins NYU Professor Eugenio Refini for a conversation around the concept of metamorphosis across philosophy and literature. In his 2021 book, Metamorphoses, Coccia sees metamorphosis not just as a biological process, but as the fundamental force that binds all life together. Challenging the rigid boundaries between species, the living and the non-living, and even human identity, Coccia presents a visionary perspective in which life is an ever-changing continuum, where transformation is not the exception but the rule. His book invites readers to reconsider existence as deeply interconnected, revealing a world in which every form of life is a continuation of those that came before. To what extent does this approach to metamorphosis speak to relevant concerns in the production and study of literary discourse? - Istituto Italiano di Cultura NY – Monday, February 24, 2025 – 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Concerto vincitori italiani del Concorso Internazionale “Crescendo Competition”
È un concorso dedicato a giovani e giovanissimi musicisti, che si svolge dal 2007 e la cui finale si tiene a New York alla Carnegie Hall.
February 25
- Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò – Tuesday, February 25, 2025 – 6:00 pm
Rossini and…
“What Makes It Italian?” is a music listening and discussion group that meets online on the Zoom platform and is open to everyone.Participation is free.The group is led by Gina Crusco, who has also guided listening at Bard LLI and Riverdale Y; acted as maestro del coro for opera in Italy; instructed music at The New School; and directed Underworld Productions.
February 27
- Istituto Italiano di Cultura NY – Thursday, February 27, 2025 – 6:00 – 7:30 pm
“The Journey of Phil Trajetta”
Questa nuova monografia sintetizza e contestualizza i dettagli che circondano la vita e l’opera di Filippo (Phil) Trajetta (Venezia, 1776 – Filadelfia, 1854), figlio del celebre compositore d’opera Tommaso Trajetta (spesso scritto Traetta). Il volume è stato progettato per richiamare l’attenzione di musicologi e professionisti su un maestro trascurato che ha valorosamente contribuito allo sviluppo della musica in America in un momento cruciale della storia del Paese: il periodo tra gli anni americani post-Rivoluzione e la soglia della Guerra Civile.
March 4
- Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò – Tuesday, March 4, 2025 – 6:00 pm
Donizetti and…
“What Makes It Italian?” is a music listening and discussion group that meets online on the Zoom platform and is open to everyone. Between Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore (1832) and the next Italian comic masterpiece, Verdi’s Falstaff (1893), the popularity of comic opera dipped. Still, composers like Vincenzo Fioravanti were on the scene trying to extend the genre. - Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò – Tuesday, March 4, 2025 – 6:30 pm
La rossa Goletta
È un veliero piccolo e leggero a far viaggiare questo carico di poesie. Le porta dentro di sé, già nel ricco etimo di “goletta”. Il francese da cui discende, goëlette, indica un tipo di pesce, la rondinella di mare, mentre goëland, un uccello marino della specie del grande gabbiano. Gwela, la radice bretone che batte in petto alla parola, significa piangere. Un perpetuo navigare, fra creature marine, con un pianto in sottofondo. E il rosso, del sangue, del male, del sentire, del desiderio. Tutti elementi che compongono e costellano il paesaggio genesiaco de La rossa goletta in forma di ricorrenze tematiche: l’amore, il dolore, la passione, la speranza, la morte, la vita, lo struggimento, la bellezza, l’essere donna, le cose quotidiane. Intorno, metaforico e contraddittorio, il mare – l’eterno ondivago, lo splendido abisso che permette alla materia viva di stare a galla – assurge a condizione esistenziale e la lettura si fa traversata, ora agevole, ora turbolenta, sulle distese imprevedibili del dire poetico.
March 5
- Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò – Wednesday, March 5, 2025 – 6:30 pm
Adventures in Italian Opera with Fred Plotkin
The fifth Adventure in Italian Opera with Fred Plotkin of this season features the legendary bass René Pape, who will be singing the role of Rocco in Beethoven’s Fidelio at The Metropolitan Opera. René Pape appears courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera.
March 7
- Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò – Friday, March 7, 2025 – 6:00 pm
The Black Italian Renaissance: African Presence in Art
Blackness is not always immediately associated with Italian Renaissance history, but African people and people of African descent were integral parts of the Italian Renaissance. Their presence is attested to in Renaissance sculpture, painting, and archival records—hidden in plain sight. The documentary The Black Italian Renaissance: African Presence in Art (2022), written by journalist and screenwriter Francesca Priori and directed by filmmaker Cristian Di Mattia, seeks to uncover information about Black life in Renaissance Italy, asking: who were the African and Afro-descendant people depicted in Renaissance art? Where did they come from, and what were their experiences in Italy?
March 11
- Casa Italiana Zerilli – Marimò -Tuesday, March 11, 2025 – 6:00 pm
Verdi and…
Mercadante was as famous as he was prolific during his lifetime, and Verdi incontestably drew upon his understanding of dramatic writing. It is Verdi’s music that has endured, while Mercadante has fallen into oblivion. - Casa Italiana Zerilli – Marimò -Tuesday, March 11, 2025 – 6:30 pm
Malaparte: A Biography
Curzio Suckert (1898-1957)—best known by his pen-name Malaparte—was not only a literary master but one of the mystery men of twentieth-century letters. The son of a cosmopolitan German businessman, his mother an Italian, Malaparte led a life that was intimately entwined from start to finish with the twentieth century’s troubled history, and only recently has it become possible to begin to separate fact from the screen of fictions with which he continually surrounded himself.
March 12
- Casa Italiana Zerilli – Marimò – Wednesday, March 12, 2025 – 6:30 pm
Il Signor Jackson
IL SIGNOR JACKSON documents how former AICR president Edward Jackson grew up as a Black youth in an Italian neighborhood and considered himself Italian. It focuses on the challenges he encountered in seeking a career as an Italian language teacher. Born in Harlem, Prof. Edward Jackson, raised in an Italian-American neighborhood of 1950’s Bronx, became an educator in the NY City Public School System and a cultural figure of Italian biculturalism and bilingualism.
March 18
- Casa Italiana Zerilli – Marimò – Tuesday, March 18, 2025 – 6:00 pm
Catalani and…
In the late Ottocento, Northern Europe’s taste for myth and fairytale crossed the Alps, along with Wagnerian harmony. La Wally (1892) by Alfredo Catalani was premiered at La Scala, and Luigi Mancinelli’s Isora di Provenza (1884) at Bologna.
Vivaldi, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Catalani, Respighi: let’s hear the composers we know and love. But what of their contemporaries who are not household names? How do their works compare to those of the greats? Come listen to beloved favorites – balanced by lesser-known works – for an exhilarating exploration of Italian music this Spring.
