Opera Meets New Media - Interview with Gabriele Dotto

The exhibition “Opera Meets New Media” presented by Bertelsmann was put together by an international team of curators comprised of Gabriele Dotto (principal curator), Christy Thomas Adams, and Ellen Lockhart. It tells the story of the extraordinary symbiosis of commercial activity and artistic creation already practiced by Puccini and his publisher, Casa Ricordi, in the last century. It traces the rapid rise of sound recordings and film as competitors for opera theaters and the traditional business of music publishers. Other topics include the new, modern, and efficient marketing strategies developed by Casa Ricordi to market its opera repertoire, the “branding” of the publishing house’s most successful composer and its globally expanding business. Exhibits and installations also tell of the challenges of the then new media for existing copyright law and the exploitation of performing rights. “Opera Meets New Media” was made possible by the extensive holdings of the Archivio Storico Ricordi, which belongs to Bertelsmann, with artifacts relating to Puccini’s operas published by Ricordi, supplemented by letters, business documents, composition registers, publications and many other contemporary testimonies.
Gabriele Dotto is Director of Research at the Archivio Storico Ricordi, has written numerous academic publications (Chicago University Press, Michigan State University Press, where he is now Director Emeritus) and looks back on a long, distinguished career in music publishing (as Editor-in-Chief, later Publisher, of Casa Ricordi, and head of its historical archive). He is the author of numerous publications and lectures on Italian opera. Dr. Dotto has curated exhibitions on opera in Milan, Berlin, Brussels, and New York and is co-editor - with Roger Parker - of the Critical Editions of the Operas of Donizetti and Puccini. He is currently preparing the Critical Edition of Verdi’s Falstaff and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.