The interview of the month

Can you tell us about your professional experience before joining ROF?
I came to the Festival in the spring of 1993, as a consultant for the Emilia Romagna branch of Franco Maria Ricci Editore, where I looked after libraries and presented publishing projects to cultural bodies. I was already looking for work in the area for family reasons, but I never imagined that I would find it in Pesaro. From Monte Cerignone, my village in the Montefeltro area, I travelled to other towns along the coast. After a pleasant meeting with the Festival's directors, I sent my CV, which was well received, also because it coincided with a period of management development that saw the arrival of a number of new figures on the Festival's organisational chart. 

What was your first contact with the Festival?
I arrived at the Festival in the spring of 1993, as a consultant for the Emilia Romagna branch of Franco Maria Ricci Editore, where I looked after libraries and presented publishing projects to cultural institutions. I was already looking for work in the area for family reasons, but I never imagined that I would find it in Pesaro. From Monte Cerignone, my village in the Montefeltro area, I travelled to other towns along the coast. After a pleasant meeting with the Festival's directors, I sent my CV, which was well received, also because it coincided with a period of management development that saw the arrival of a number of new figures on the Festival's organisational chart.

You are in charge of the Publishing and Historical Archive Office. Can you tell us what your work consists of?
I take care of the editorial material accompanying each stage and each office of the Festival: letterheads, programmes, posters, social balance sheets, and so on, right down to posters with the names of all the workers involved in a production or exhibition catalogues, in inter-relation with superiors and in dialogue with each colleague involved, filtering the various requests at the graphics studio and unravelling the fulfilments, including administrative ones, relating to the choice of the printing house, the purchase of paper, and the setting up of the sales counter on performance evenings. Ultimately, of every paper object printed by the Festival, I find myself to be the first boss and the last porter. The online Festival is not in my area of expertise, and thank goodness for that: I have little affinity with silicon and communication in the digital sphere, also due to my age.
The programmes are the most complex publications: the booklets to be collated on the critical editions, the essays with their revisions and translations, the cover illustrations, the historical iconographic layouts, the selection of sketches and figurines, the preliminary apparatus, the parts dedicated to sponsors, the advertisements... In short, there are many lines to pull in order to go to press when it is time - no exceptions allowed - and many pages depend on other offices. Getting to an acceptable level of fairness and harmony requires quite a few desk hours; increasing that level even just a little amplifies the commitment exponentially. One does what one can, as best as one can, without losing sight of the calendar. We are a festival, so much work is condensed into tight periods.

What is your favourite memory of your experience at ROF?

I think back with nostalgia to the early days, to the people who took me by the hand and guided me through the work or backstage. What I learnt about opera from attending rehearsals alongside musicians, singers, directors, set and costume designers. Of course, there have been moments of satisfaction, situations miraculously resolved, but also moments of disappointment and discouragement, and I am not just talking about stumbling over typos that still make me blush, or the fatigue of the years when texts and translations arrived by post or fax, handwritten, perhaps, on the train. Floppy disks were already a luxury.
I was introduced to music, theatre and met so many people. The love and devotion to Rossini that surpasses all contingencies, doing everything possible and then something more, turning time, even the body, into a negligible variable thanks to concentration, the imperative respect for texts, the elegant solutions seasoned with cultured irony, the open and operationally precious availability, the value of trust: these are the precious things that I have left with me from managers, presidents, consultants and editorial collaborators, authors, translators, graphic designers, typographers, photographers, collectors, enthusiasts, musicians and masters.