Thanks to the investigative work of the Carabinieri Nucleo Tutela Patrimonio Culturale, the city and the Bologna Museums Institution are in possession of a document of extraordinary interest for the history of Bologna.
This is the letter – dated April 28, 1839 – that Gioachino Rossini sent to the Senator of Bologna to thank and accept “with real exultation of spirit” the appointment as perpetual Honorary Consultant of the City Music School, a charge that Rossini will keep until 1861, also after having definitively discharged from the city in 1848.
The letter of the great master, which consists of two pages in folio, was stolen during an unspecified period, but after 1942; in fact, as can be seen from the publication of the magazine Rossiniana, the document was exhibited at the Liceo musicale on the occasion of the “Rossini celebration” organized by the Ministry of Education and the Municipality of Bologna from 27 to 29 May 1942 to celebrate the elevation of the musical high school of Bologna at the State Conservatory.
The awarding ceremony of Rossini’s handwritten letter took place on Monday 17 December at the Music Museum (Strada Maggiore, 34), where the important document will be exhibited in the room dedicated to the famous composer, on the occasion of the Rossini celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the death. Present for the occasion the Mayor Virginio Merola, the Director of the Archival and Bibliographic Superintendence of Emilia Romagna, Elisabetta Arioti, the President of the Bologna Museums Institution, Roberto Grandi, the Director of the Institution Maurizio Ferretti and the Commander of the Carabinieri Nucleo Tutela Cultural Heritage of Bologna, Maggiore Giuseppe De Gori.
The exceptional recovery in fact stems from a report made by the heads of the Museum of Music, alerted by Rossini expert musicologists who had recognized, in a document on sale at an auction house, some similarities with that stolen after 1942 by the Conservatory of Bologna . The investigations, coordinated by the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office, were particularly complex, since the document’s image, given the time of the theft, was not contained in the database of illegally taken away cultural assets managed by the Carabinieri Command for Cultural Heritage.
The meticulous investigative investigations of the Carabinieri del Nucleo of Bologna, however, made it possible to find, in the records of the municipal historical archive, a document dated 19 February 1902, containing the transcription of the original text deposited on the occasion of the autograph’s delivery to the Biblioteca del Liceo Musical of Bologna that allowed the definitive recognition of the letter.
