the great pianist
twelve o’clock, April 30, 2021 – 08:24
On the day of his death, 150 years later, discovered by Marielva Torino in the State Archives
of Natasha Festa
If the paleopathologist Marielva Torino faces a case, there is no detail that escapes her absolute flair. Analyzing the mummified body of Sigismund Thalberg, the greatest pianist of the nineteenth century, the Austrian founder of the Neapolitan school who had no rivals except Franz Liszt, he had set himself the goal of finding his testament of which there was no trace . Knowing his infallible method – says the director of the State Archives Candida Carrino – I was sure he would find it. And so it was: the precious holograph document that came out of the folders of the notary Leopoldo Gallo di Resina, close to the family of the musician’s wife, the Neapolitan Francesca Labache. But the great director of coincidences has done more. The will appeared on the day of the 150th anniversary of his death, which took place on April 27, 1871. When – as the master Vincenzo Vitale wrote – he was bestowed with some of the most sensational honors … speeches, poems, sumptuous cemetery buildings and the marble monument in the Villa Comunale.
Professor Torino, tell us about your career as a bloodhound.
I started my research on Thalberg because his body was “treated” by Efisio Marini, the well-known “embalmer” born in Cagliari in 1835 and died in Naples in 1900. I am collaborating, in fact, with Professor Michele Papa, professor of Human Anatomy at the Vanvitelli University and curator of the Anatomical Museum of Naples, in the preparation of the Catalog dedicated to the study and works of Marini, kept at the Musa. With so much unpublished material found, we hope to make a publication within the Thalberg year. It intrigued me that little was known about his personal life. In my work, I believe it is important to understand the context in which people or “characters” have lived. I investigate with respect and grace. Thalberg was a great musician and if he hadn’t died here he would have had many other honors. Because, as Libero Bovio said, “Naples tolerates and forgives everything except ingenuity”. The tracks took me around Europe. I confess that because of the difficulties I got a little disheartened, but I didn’t want to give up: an extraordinary musician like Thalberg didn’t deserve it. In the end, the clues led me back to the “casket” of the history of Naples.
What does the text reveal?
We can finally establish the paternity and maternity of the pianist, news up to now uncertain: he was the illegitimate son of the Austrian general Franz Joseph von Dietrichstein, VIII prince of Dietrichstein and his mistress, Baroness Maria Julia Bydeskuty von Ipp, who later married Ludwig August Wetzlar von Plankenstern. He got his surname from one of his father’s possessions: Thalberg. The mother moved to Venice, bought the magnificent Palazzo Pisani-Gritti. It was famous for its beauty, culture and for its luxurious receptions during which it welcomed guests between two majestic greyhounds.
What are you leaving Thalberg?
An immense fortune: only in his tour in America, in 1856, he earned over a million lire. The will is all in favor of the wife and allows to better delineate the personality of the extensor: a man of heart, very sensitive, with great outbursts of generosity. Liszt himself had a profound respect for him and defined him as the “aristocratic pianist”, in terms of style and nature.
Perch fu mummificato?
The widow, daughter of the great Neapolitan singer, but of French origins Luigi Lablache, commissioned the treatment to Marini. The result was so extraordinary that the lady in a letter to the newspapers congratulated the scholar. Thalberg’s body was the first that Marini treated with an original method that he developed in Naples. At first he was in such a state of “natural freshness and flexibility” that every evening, fully dressed, even with his favorite twins, he was seated at the table in his villa in Posillipo. There is no doubt of the credibility of the master Vitale who reports these particulars. The strangeness became known and the widow was forced to “petrify” her beloved husband and keep him in the monumental tomb she had commissioned: one of the most majestic in the Naples Cemetery. Here, thanks to the permission of the heir of Thalberg’s daughter, Princess Giulia Ferrara Pignatelli of Strongoli, and the help of maestro Francesco Nicolosi, president of the International Study Center dedicated to the musician, it was possible to carry out the recognition of the perfectly intact body despite the barbaric looting of sarcophagus and coffin perpetrated years ago. The body does not show any sign of decomposition and attests to the great ingenuity of the scientist Marini.
April 30, 2021 | 08:24
© REPRODUCTION RESERVED