Casa Ricordi is a publisher of primarily classical music and opera. Its classical repertoire represents one of the important sources in the world through its publishing of the work of the major 19th-century Italian composers such as Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, Vincenzo Bellini, Giuseppe Verdi, and, later in the century, Giacomo Puccini, composers with whom one or another of the Ricordi family came into close contact.Gossett 2006, p. 97
Founded in Milan in 1808 as G. Ricordi & C. by violinist Giovanni Ricordi (1785–1853), the Ricordi company became a totally family-run organization until 1919, when outside management was appointed. Four generations of Ricordis were at the helm of the company, Giovanni being succeeded in 1853 by his son Tito (1811–1888) (who had worked for his father since 1825). Tito's son was Giulio (1840–1912). He had also worked for his father, beginning full-time in 1863, and then took over from 1888 until his death in 1912. Finally, Giulio's son, also named Tito, (1865–1933) replaced his father until 1919.Macnutt (i) 1998, p. 1317 By the 1840s and throughout that decade, Casa Ricordi had grown to be the largest music publisher in southern Europe and in 1842 the company created the musical journal the Gazzetta Musicale di Milano.
As younger employees under their fathers and then as leaders of the company, the succeeding Ricordis made great strides in establishing publishing relationships with opera houses outside of Milan, including La Fenice in Venice and Teatro San Carlo in Naples. They also established branches of the company within Italy – in 1864 it expanded to Naples and then to Florence (1865), Rome (1871) and Palermo, as well as in London (1875) and Paris (1888). With this expansion under the elder Tito, another of his accomplishments was in modernizing printing methods. With the acquisition of rival publishers, by 1886 Ricordi handled 40,000 editions as well as the Italian rights to Wagner's operas. In the 20th century, the company's expansion continued with acquisitions and new branches, which included those in New York (1911), São Paulo (1927), Toronto (1954), Sydney (1956), and Mexico City (1958).Macnutt (i) 1998, p. 1318
In its early days, the company established itself under the portico of the Palazzo della Ragione and then close to the La Scala opera house after 1844, eventually moving to its present location on the via Berchet. However, these premises suffered severe damage from aerial bombardment during World War II, but their collections had already been safely stored away. Following reconstruction after the war, Ricordi was converted to a limited corporation by the family in 1952 and in 1956 it became a publicly traded company. With 135,500 editions by 1991, Ricordi was acquired in 1994 by BMG Music Publishing, which in turn was purchased by Universal Music Publishing Group in 2007. It is now Italy's largest music publisher.
Beginnings
Giovanni Ricordi, a violinist, leader of a small orchestra in Milan, as well as "a genius and positive force in the history of Italian opera," in 1803 had a firm, a copisteria, which specialized in producing manuscript copies of music for local music groups, and very quickly, he became official copyist for two theatres. He entered into what became a short-term partnership with Felice Festa, an engraver and music seller, but that ended in June 1808.
The first work, which the new company published in 1808, was a guitar piece by Antonio Nava. This was followed in 1814 by the first catalogue, which contained 143 items. Ricordi Company history on ricordicompany.it The 1814 catalogue included mostly piano arrangements of operatic tunes and some individual numbers as well as pieces for guitars, but Macnutt notes the most important single inclusion as being the complete vocal score of Simon Mayr's 1806 opera, Adelasia ed Aleramo, which was regularly performed at La Scala until 1820.
Throughout these years he was acutely aware of the limitations of copyright law, as varied as it was throughout both the country and the continent. While he was able to secure performance rights to individual numbers and then, engraving them onto copper plates, easily make reproductions from there, he found that the full orchestral scores were still guarded in Italy, although German and French publishers were printing entire scores with impunity.Gossett 2006, pp. 98—99
In fact, in regard to the printing of full scores in Italy, Macnutt in his article "Publishing" in Sadie, notes that: "The full scores published in Italy in the first half of the century were eight Rossini scores printed in lithography by [two rival publishers] Ratti Cencetti & Comp. in Rome in the 1820s and a single Bellini opera, Beatrice di Tenda, published by Pittarrelli about 1833, also in Rome."Macnutt (ii) 1998, p. 1163
It was through the gradual accession to the rights to control La Scala's archives, as well as subsequently-produced operas, that he was able to bypass the limitations on publishing full scores, and—as Gossett notes—"not be its employee but a private entrepreneur from whom theatres rented materials". In contrast, many of Ricordi's competitors produced "hackwork manuscripts" in no way based on the composers' autographs. In 1844, the company produced its "Gran Catalogo", which focused on music for the theatre, and included the work of what it called its "house composers," which included Rossini, Bellini, Mercadante, Donizetti and Verdi.
In addition, another of Giovanni's strategies was to acquire—beyond just the publishing rights—the right to represent the composers to the opera companies and theatres that would present their work, so that successive performances elsewhere would bring in additional royalties. In that way, Giovanni and his successors acquired more-or-less total rights to their composers' works. As Rossini's operas gave way to those of Bellini, the rise of Donizetti followed until his death, and then the preeminence of Verdi, the position of each composer was strengthened by this growing strategy.Gossett 2006, p. 100
As business expanded, it became clear to Giovanni that also producing string and choral parts, for which there would be great demand by opera house orchestras, was another means of expanding the firm's involvement and also assuring composers that there would be uniformity.Gossett 2006, p. 101 However, although Ricordi began to publish full scores from the 1850s, they were never made available for sale, only for rent to opera houses. Quite quickly, as Verdi's operas became more and more popular, this approach extended to producing all of the orchestral parts for each opera, most especially the three great successes of the 1850s, Rigoletto, Il trovatore, and La traviata, and those that followed when Tito Ricordi headed the firm.
The company under Giulio Ricordi
With the nickname Jules Burgmein, Giulio Ricordi contributed to the prestige of the Casa Ricordi as it also produced several magazines (La gazzetta musicale, Musica e musicisti and Ars et labor), and various other once famous publications (La biblioteca del pianista, l'Opera Omnia di Frédéric Chopin, L'arte musicale in Italia, Le Sonate di Domenico Scarlatti).
The Ricordi company also published Giuseppe Verdi's later operas, Giulio having established a relationship with the composer as a young man. Over a ten-year period, he convinced Verdi to give the young librettist and composer Arrigo Boito the opportunity to help him to revise the original 1857 Simon Boccanegra, a "trial run" to plant the idea of Verdi creating a new opera. They presented the revised Boccanegra in March 1881. In alliance with Verdi's wife and Verdi's friend, the conductor Franco Faccio, Ricordi's strategy was to lure the ageing composer out of retirement to compose another opera. While this strategy took some years to achieve, it proved to be successful, as was the opera, Otello, which brought Verdi great acclaim in Milan in 1887. It was followed by Falstaff in 1893, both set to libretti by Boito.
Giulio also had the good sense to promote younger composers of merit, most especially the operatic career of Giacomo Puccini. Others included Amilcare Ponchielli, Alfredo Catalani, Carlos Gomes, Fanny Puzzi, and Umberto Giordano. Their relationship began in 1884 with the company's support for the printing of the libretto of the young Puccini's first opera Le villi without charge, when it premiered on 31 May 1884 at the Teatro Dal Verme.
Fellow students from the Milan Conservatory formed a large part of the orchestra, and the performance was enough of a success that Casa Ricordi purchased the opera. When revised into a two-act version with an intermezzo between the acts, Le villi was performed at La Scala in Milan on 24 January 1885, and the score was published in 1887. To Puccini in particular, Giulio became something of a father-figure, feared (since Giulio often needed to be censorious over Puccini's dilatory work habits) but deeply trusted.
In 1888 the company acquired the music publishing firm of Lucca & Canti; a company which had formed 10 years earlier with the merging of the publishing firms of Giovanni Canti and Francesco Lucca. Canti was notably Verdi's first publisher and Ricordi gained the rights to his early compositions through this acquisition.
Additionally, under Giulio the company went into the business of printing advertising posters that were extremely popular throughout Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ricordi company posters included works by celebrated graphic artists such as Leonetto Cappiello, Luigi Emilio Caldanzano, Ludovico Cavaleri, Marcello Dudovich, Adolfo Hohenstein (also known as Adolf), Franz Laskoff, Leopoldo Metlicovitz, Giovanni Maria Mataloni, Aleardo Terzi and Aleardo Villa.
Relationships with composers Having already acquired the La Scala holdings, in 1839 Giovanni bought the copyright to Giuseppe Verdi's first opera, Oberto, as well as to his future compositions, thus marking the beginnings of a long working relationship with that composer by three generations of Ricordis, most especially Giulio Ricordi. However, it is known that Verdi was unhappy with the elder Tito on occasion over what appeared to be the publisher's "sanctioning, for financial gain, mutilated performances of his works". These concerns carried over to the 20th century.
However, relationships with composers had begun well before 1839. In fact, shortly after Rossini's Tancredi had been staged in Venice in 1813, the composer made the acquaintance of Giovanni, who was then starting his business in Milan although still involved with La Scala. A strong relationship was established between publisher and composer and, between 1846 and 1864, the company published all of his operas for piano and voice, with the composer becoming "...ruefully aware that music which he had reused from what he took to be a failed opera would now [upon publication] be seen to have been recycled."Osborne 1996, p. 28 and 372 Although Rossini agreed to the publication of his work, it was not without some reservations: writing to Tito Ricordi on 14 December 1864, he accepts that publication will reveal that, "The same pieces of music will be found in various operas," but notes that the time pressure to compose so many works meant that, "I barely had time to read the so-called poetry to set to music."Rossini to Tito Ricordi, in Gossett (ii) 2004, "Compositional methods", Senici, p. 81 In all, Rossini also worked with three generations of Ricordis.