Music

Odds are that if you ask an Italian what he fears most he will reply "deafness". It is a tend where music is on the lips and fingers of peasant, priest, pop‑singer and patrician. The Neapolitans gave the world the cream of the melancholy and bouncy songs such as "Santa Lucia", "Funiculi, Funicule", "0 Sole Mio" and other all‑time favorites played to the accompaniment of mandolins and guitars. And an old Piedmontese folk‑song might have been lost had it not been for Italian emigrants who popularized it in the United States under the name of "Ciribiribin".

Their love of music reaches back to the piping Etruscans, then the 6^th century when the Gregorian chants were named after the pope who ordered their classification. In the 10th century it was an Italian, Guido d'Arezzo, who invented the scale.

The list of composers and conductors whose fame spread around the world reads like a "Who's Who" of musicology. Palestrina burst on the scene in the 16th century with the first choral mass. A few generations later the Venetian, Antonio Vivaldi, wrote "The Seasons", concerto grossi and several oratorios which, if you're lucky enough to get tickets, you can hear at gala night concerts in the Doges Palace.

His contemporary, Domenico Scarlatti, remains without peer for the precisely mathematical compositions written for the harpsichord. It was at the same time that Paganini "master of the violin" ‑ was at the height of his fame.

Our own times have seen two Italian conductors, Arturo Toscanini and Guido Cantelli, dominate their field.

No one has yet rivaled the genius of Antoni Stradivarius, the violin‑maker of Cremona. His 18th century wood instruments, one of which you can see in the Palazzo Communale in his home‑town, are today collector's items.

Yet it is in the world of opera that Italians are happiest music and at their best. The 17th century composer, Monteverdi, is regarded as the creator of modern opera. But most opera lovers look to the 19th century giants for musical euphoric, finding it in Giuseppe Verdis Aida, Rigoletto, La Traviata, Otello and Falstaff. Just as popular are Rossini's Barber of Seville and William Tell, and Donizetti's Don Pasquale.

The flowering of Italian opera continued into the 20th century with Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème, Tosca, Madame Butterfly and Turandot. Pietro Mascagni, who died in 1945, added Cavalleria Rusticana to this incomparable repertoire. A single but enduring achievement is also associated with Leoncavallo, who composed Pagliacci.

Italian operatic stars are no less famous. A few who have joined the immortels include Pagliacci, Caruso, Beniamino Gigli, Tito Gobbi, Guiseppe de Stefano, Renata Tebaldi and Maria Caltas.

You won't need a map to find the gilded opera houses of Italy. Pick anyone at random and he will be able to direct you to Milan's La Scala, the Teatro San Carlo of Naples, La Fenice in Venice, the Arena in Verona and Rome's Opera House.

Opera seasons vary according to locality but generally run from December through August, with breaks in between. Count yourself blessed if you get tickets for Aida in Verona's 1st century Roman Arena, or in the floodlit Baths of Caracalla in Rome. They are spectacles that thrill in the windless nights of July and August, with the drama of light, costumes and pounding music.