Word: casa
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...bride Benita Hume, widow of Cinemactor Ronald Colman. Eva, it so happens, is a former potential step-aunt of Cinemactress Elizabeth Taylor (through Liz's first marriage to Hilton's playboy son Nicky), thus also ex-step-great-aunt, two marriages removed, of another guest in the Casa, fledgling Cinemogul Mike Todd Jr., son of Liz's third husband and, naturally, Hilton's ex-step-grandson-in-law, two marriages removed. Through Liz, Eva is likely to become ex-step-aunt, three marriages removed, of Crooner Eddie Fisher, whose ex-wife Debbie Reynolds-Hilton...
...Casa Ricordi owns an estimated 150,000 pieces of original sheet music, can furnish scores and orchestral parts of 2,000 operas and 500 symphonies. The firm discovered, nurtured and financed virtually every major composing talent in Italian opera, e.g., Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, Puccini, many of whose original manuscripts, for safekeeping, now lie crammed into 17 zinc cases, 45 feet below ground in a Milan bank. The House of Ricordi still publishes the works of many of the world's leading composers, including Francis Poulenc, Gian Carlo Menotti, Edgard Varese. Now 151 years old, the firm is making news...
...Hates. Casa Ricordi was founded in Milan in 1808 by a violinist who, so the legend goes, noticed that the workers around La Scala wore paper hats made of discarded musical scores. Giovanni Ricordi investigated, found that valuable scores and orchestra parts were stacked high in La Scala's cellar. He began to buy up some of the scores, set himself up as a copyist, got a contract stipulating that all the scores he produced would remain his property after a performance. In an age without copyrights or royalties on performances, he funneled some of his earnings back...
Giovanni's son Tito took over the firm, but the dynasty's organizational genius was Grandson Giulio, an ironic, meticulously dressed man, who dabbled in poetry and chamber music, negotiated so shrewdly that Casa Ricordi realized as much as 65% from the earnings of its composers' work. With a near-monopolistic control over Italian opera, Giulio attended rehearsals at La Scala, recommended the hiring or firing of singers, publicly castigated conductors. A pet hate for a time: Toscanini, whose style he once likened to a "mastodonic mechanical piano." Above all, Giulio commissioned Arrigo...
...Dogs. The last of the Ricordis to head the firm was Tito II, who expanded Casa Ricordi into the sprawling complex that now has branch offices in a dozen countries, and a chain of Italian retail stores. But Tito was unpopular and dictatorial, resigned in 1919. The business passed to Accountant Renzo Valcarenghi and Composer-Stage Designer Carlo Clausetti, whose sons now run the firm. Today Casa Ricordi is doing brisker business than ever, despite World War II bomb damage. The firm remains stiffly self-conscious about its artistic obligations, maintains a string of opera scouts throughout Italy. Says...