Fabio Vacchi (; born 19 February 1949) is an Italian composer.
Biography Training and debut Fabio Vacchi studied at the Conservatorio Giovanni Battista Martini of Bologna with Giacomo Manzoni and Tito Gotti. In 1974 he participated in the courses of the Tanglewood Festival in the United States, where he was awarded the Koussevitzky Prize in Composition. In 1976 he won first prize at the Gaudeamus Composition Competition in the Netherlands, with the work Les soupirs de Geneviève for 11 string soloists. In the same year, he wrote Sinfonia in quattro tempi, conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli for the Venice Biennale Festival, which thereafter dedicated to him two monographic concerts in 1979 and 1981. In Venice, where he lived from 1984 to 1992, he met and was supported by Luigi Nono, who invited him at the Experimentalstudio der Heinrich-Strobel-Stiftung, Freiburg.
From the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino to the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berliner, the Gewandhaus and the Carnegie Hall Vacchi made his debut at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Festival in 1982 with Girotondo, an opera whose libretto was adapted from Arthur Schnitzler. Following this opera came Il Viaggio (Teatro Comunale di Bologna, text by Tonino Guerra), – in the same year, 1990, when he attended the New York Festival of Contemporary Music with L'usgnol in vatta a un fil - then La station thermale, with a libretto by Myriam Tanant from Goldoni - produced at Opéra de Lyon (1993), afterwards at La ScalaMichelangelo Zurletti, Fanghi, alghe, amori nei Bagni d’Abano, La Repubblica, 16 November 1993; Mario Messinis, Applausi per “La Stazione termale” di Fabio Vacchi, Il Gazzettino di Venezia, 21 March 1995 and Opéra Comique de Paris (1995). He also wrote Sacer Sanctus (1997) for chorus and instruments, text by Giuseppe Pontiggia, "a work commissioned by La Scala (1997) and repeated at the Festival of Ravenna (1998), the Festival Présence 2002 in ParisMarc Bachaud, Musique. Le festival Présence de Radio France décline la palette de la création musicale contemporaine, in L’Humanité, 1 Février 2002; https://www.humanite.fr/node/259534; https://www.yumpu.com/it/document/view/33481088/suono-gabbiani-la-coscienza-uno-sprone-a-conoscere and S. Cecilia in Rome in 2003", En Vinternatt (for a tournée - October–November 2001 - of the Gustav Mahler Chamber Orchestra conducted by Sir Neville Marriner).
For the musical theatre he has subsequently written Les oiseaux de passage (Opéra de Lyon, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, 1998–2001) and, in 2003, Il letto della Storia, with a libretto by Franco Marcoaldi and stage direction by Giorgio Barberio Corsetti. For this opera, he received the Abbiati Prize from the National Association of Italian Critics for the best new work of the year. The partnership with Marcoaldi has continued, bringing about such works as Terra comune (which, at the request of Luciano Berio, inaugurated Rome's Auditorium Parco della Musica in 2002), Tre Veglie commissioned by the Salzburg Festival (conducted in 2000 by Ivan Fischer, with Anna Caterina Antonacci),Michelangelo Zurletti, Le veglie di Vacchi, la Repubblica, 2 August 2000 and the second opera for the Teatro alla Scala, Teneke (2007, chosen for the That's Opera event, on the occasion of the bicentennial of Ricordi, curated by Jean-Jacques Nattiez) conducted by Roberto Abbado, stage direction by Ermanno Olmi, with set design by Arnaldo Pomodoro.Marcoaldi creates the libretto from the homonymous novel by Yaşar Kemal. Juliet Giraldi, Teneke Fabio Vacchi, Teatro alla Scala, Milan, Opera Now, January/February 2008; Paolo Isotta, Tamburi di latta all’opera, Corriere della Sera, 24 September 2007; Marilena Laterza, Teneke, monta la rivolta popolare sulla sinfonia dei tamburi di latta, il Manifesto, 30 September 2007; Lorenzo Arruga, Il Giornale, 24 September 2007
Vacchi's music was again heard at the Salzburg Festival in 2006, during the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, with a performance by Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Riccardo Muti of La giusta armonia, a melologue with narrator and orchestra based on a text by the proto-socialist Franz Heinrich Ziegenhagen, who was a friend of Mozart.https://www.wienerphilharmoniker.at/orchestra/philharmonic-journal/year/2006/month/11/blogitemid/815 ; https://www.musicaustria.at/neue-musik-in-salzburg-ii-urauffuehrungen/ ; https://www.wienerphilharmoniker.at/en/search/Fabio%20Vacchi Worthy of mention is Voci di notte (2006), commissioned by the Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, on the occasion of the 70th birthday of their conductor Zubin Mehta. Mehta is one of many conductors, such as Berio, Chung, Harding, Marriner, Pappano, and, as already mentioned Muti and Abbado, who have conducted Vacchi's music a number of times.
In 2009 Riccardo Chailly conducted the symphonic melologue Prospero o dell’Armonia (by Shakespeare, Filarmonica della Scala)E.Girardi, Novità di Vacchi e Chailly ispirato: concerto perfetto, Il Corriere della Sera, 29 March 2009 and in 2011 Tagebuch der Empörung (Leipzig, Gewandhaus Orchestra).P.Korfmacher, Werke von Ravel, Cerha und Vacchi und Martin Grubinger als Solist im Großen Concert unter Chailly, Leipziger Volkszeitung, 14 May 2011 (https://www.genios.de/presse-archiv/inhalt/LVZ/20110514/1/leipziger-volkszeitung.html) Both the symphonic Mare che fiumi accoglie,http://www.lamusicadiraitre.rai.it/category/0,1067207,1067049-1078664,00.html; https://www.auditorium.com/evento/orchestra_accademia_nazionale_di_santa_cecilia_pappano-12290.html conducted by Antonio Pappano at the Parco della Musica in Rome, and the opera La madre del mostro, based on a libretto by Michele Serra, date back to 2007. Amos Oz wrote the libretto of the opera The Same Sea for Vacchi, from the novel of the same name, staged at Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, with scenery by Gae Aulenti, in 2011.Fania Oz-Salzberger, The Same Sea, Newsweek, 2 May 2011; Carla Moreni, Lo stesso mare. Ironia sulle passioni di coppia, il Sole 24 ore, 8 May 2011 Again in collaboration with Amos Oz, he composed the melologue D’un tratto nel folto del bosco, based on a text by Michele Serra from the novel of the same name (Nestled deep in a thick forest) by the Israeli writer, for the Festival Mito (which dedicated a monograph - the first Italian - to Vacchi, in 2014) of 2010. The melologue also travelled to Paris, in 2014 and in a French version (Soudain dans la forêt profonde, Comédie française, Salle Pleyel), with a CD by the Ministère de l'Éducation Nationale, designed for schools in France. In 2015, he composed a symphonic poem, Der Walddämon, again inspired by Nestled Deep in a Thick Forest by Amos Oz and commissioned by Riccardo Chailly, who conducted it at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. In the same year, Vacchi directed the Atelier Opéra en création at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, where his works were performed between 2014 and 2015, among which Dai calanchi di Sabbiuno conducted by P.Järvi in a concert dedicated to the memory of P.Chereau. In 2016 his ninth opera came out, Lo specchio magico, based on a text by Aldo Nove (staged at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, conducted by John Axelrod)Enrico Girardi, La «Urban Art Dance», il Corriere della sera, 14 May 2016 and Vencidos for voice and orchestra commissioned by the Festival Internacional Cervantino, in Mexico, for the Miguel de Cervantes celebrations. In 2018 the Teatro San Carlo put on Eternapoli, at the request of Toni Servillo. Again in 2018, after the Concerto for violoncello at Petruzzelli di Bari, the Concerto for violin Natura naturansHelmut Failoni, Vacchi, una prima e mezza con violoncello e violino, La Lettura del Corriere della Sera; Leonetta Bentivoglio, Musica Contemporanea. Quanti pregiudizi, la Repubblica, 11 February 2019; https://www.ventiperquattro.it/2018/10/22/fondazione-petruzzelli-stagione-concertistica-2018-con-la-prima-esecuzione-assoluta-firmata-da-fabio-vacchi/ ; https://www.rainews.it/tgr/puglia/articoli/2018/10/pug-fabio-vacchi-concerto-petruzzelli-63b1dec3-bc9c-426a-ab73-852cd7796747.html; https://ricerca.repubblica.it/.../violoncello-e-orchestra-il-concerto-di-vacchi-con-dindo had its European première at the Opera of Budapest and its American première at the Carnegie Hall in New York, (conductor Balázs Kocsár, soloist Haruka Nagao).http://opusalb.com/shqip-gjithmone-i-dashuruar-me-violoncelin-fabio-vacchi-luhet-ne-carnegie-hall/; https://www.lecodellitorale.it/2018/10/23/the-hungarian-state-opera-orchestra; http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/milano/milanese-fabio-vacchi-sbarca-carnegie-hall-1595188.html; http://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/cultura/musica/2018/10/27/musica-fabio-vacchi-alla-carnegie-hall_bc20868d-5f98-4010-af33-afdbac2272b3.html; http://www.ansa.it/emiliaromagna/notizie/2018/10/27/musica-fabio-vacchi-alla-carnegie-hall_76f89827-27d4-4cd1-ba5e-2d61c1dac30d.html; http://www.cidim.it/cidim/content/314696?id=378120; http://www.nuovarassegna.it/spettacoli/il-compositore-fabio-vacchi-sbarca-alla-carnagie-hall; http://www.rivistamusica.com/due-prime-per-fabio-vacchi/ In February 2019 the Orchestra laVerdi of Milan devoted four monographic concerts to him, including the Italian première of Natura naturans.
Works of social commitment