RECANATI. THE CITY OF MARCHE THROUGH LEOPARDI, GIGLI AND LOTTO

Hometown of Giacomo Leopardi and Beniamino Gigli, Recanati preserves extraordinary masterpieces by Lorenzo Lotto.

by Fabio Massimo Penna

The native wild village, the place where "This hermitage hill / and this hedge, which from so much / of the last horizon the view excludes" and where "D'in su the top of the ancient tower, / solitary sparrow , to the countryside / singing go ”in short, we are talking about Recanati, a city in the Marche that Giacomo Leopardi has made immortal in his lyrics. Mythical place where the great poet and man of letters studied in his father's library and where his parent Monaldo, together with two priests, takes care of the education of his son. Seven years of “mad and desperate” study that leave a permanent trace on the boy's body. The atmosphere of the small town in the Marche is felt as suffocating by the poet who in 1819 tried in vain to escape from the city. In Recanati, tourists can visit Casa Leopardi and especially the paternal library where the young Giacomo trained as a man of letters.

In 1890 Beniamino Gigli , one of the most famous Italian opera singers, was born in Recanati. The tenor, just turned eighteen, leaves the Marche center to move to Rome where he studies at the musical high school of Santa Cecilia. The 1914 debut at the Teatro Sociale di Rovigo was followed by the successes at the Scala in Milan, at the San Carlo in Naples at the Real in Madrid before the triumphal period at the Metropolitan in New York and the success in South America in Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and San Paul. For opera lovers, a visit to the Gigli Museum located in the Sala dei Trenta of the Persiani Theater in Recanati is a must. Here you can admire stage costumes, photographs, letters and everything that can serve to reconstruct the life and career of the great tenor. In the area between Recanati, Porto Recanati and Loreto there is, however, the splendid villa that belonged to Beniamino Gigli.

The great culture in Recanati also concerns painting. One of the greatest masterpieces of the Late Renaissance, The Annunciation by Lorenzo Lotto , known precisely as The Annunciation of Recanati, is kept at the Civic Museum. In a room framed in perspective, illuminated by a clear and clear light, which opens onto an extraordinary landscape of the garden below, the Virgin turns with her hands open towards the viewer surprised by the visit of the angel who announces the Immaculate Conception. God appears high above a cloud while a cat leaps into the room, terrified by the sudden appearance of the angel. The painting is extremely original and recalls the visionary qualities that characterize all of Lotto's work. The tranquility of the domestic interior is upset by the divine apparition, as underlined by the posture of the cat with straight hair, while the Madonna seems to establish an inner dialogue with the viewer to whom she turns her gaze and the gesture of her hands. In the Civic Museum you can admire another masterpiece by the great painter The Transfiguration , an imposing panel representing a complex composition depicting the ascension of Christ climbing Mount Tabor together with the apostles. In a harmonious whole that refers to the Divine Raphael, Lotto experiences a disruptive pathetic impetus, in the gestures and expressions of the figures, which seems to contradict the compositional balance. Linked to the experimental novelties and far from the tonal research that took place in his native Veneto, the Venetian painter seems to anticipate the mannerist ways in this painting.