Il processo di candidatura come percorso di cambiamento: The Practice of Opera Singing in Italy

Abstract

The contribution traces the complex and longstanding history of the Candidacy of the Practice of Opera Singing in Italy, as it represents, to a certain degree, a useful ‘case study’. While this article is being written, the ‘Element’ stands as the 2023 national candidacy of Italy, without having yet received the UNESCO ratification of its inclusion in the Intangible Cultural Heritage List. However, for the promoting Committee, the quantity and quality of acquisitions obtained throughtout many years of research, already represents a largely positive result of intellectual and institutional growth. Within the article, the path that led to the candidacy is retraced, starting from a description of the multifaceted community that drew up the dossier under the expert guidance of the technical-scientific coordination of the UNESCO Service II-Office of the General Secretariat of the Italian Ministry of Culture. The Committee is composed by a mixed board of personalities and institutions of utter importance (such as the Teatro alla Scala, the Accademia di S. Cecilia, the Association of Lyric Symphony Foundations ANFOLS, the Association of Italian Traditional Theatres ATIT and Assolirica) that, for the first time in history, have been working together on strategies aimed at common goals. Hence, the article reviews the Committee main acquisitions of intellectual value, starting from a more coherent and scientific definition of the good and its immateriality, as well as Institutional achievements, such as the creation of a network that did not exist at the beginning of the process, and draft plan for performing, scientific, popular and pedagogical safeguarding actions.