Alessandro Baricco - Misplaced Pages

Italian writer, director and performer

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Alessandro Baricco (Italian pronunciation: [ale's:andro baˈrik:o]; born 25 January 1958) is an Italian writer, director and performer. His novels have been translated into a number of languages.

Early life, family and education

Baricco was born in Turin, Italy.

He has earned degrees in philosophy (under Gianni Vattimo) and in piano.

Career

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Baricco published essays on music criticism: Il genio in fuga (1988) on Gioachino Rossini, and L'anima di Hegel e le mucche del Wisconsin ("Hegel's Soul and the Cows of Wisconsin", 1992) on the relation between music and modernity. He subsequently worked as music critic for La Repubblica and La Stampa, and hosted talk shows on Rai Tre.

Baricco debuted as a novelist with Castelli di rabbia (translated as Lands of Glass) in 1991.

In 1993, he co-founded a creative writing school in Turin, naming it Scuola Holden after J. D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield. The Scuola Holden hosts a variety of courses on narrative techniques including screenwriting, journalism, novels and short stories.

In the following years, his fame grew throughout Europe, with his works topping the Italian and French best-seller lists. Larger recognition followed the adaptation of his theatrical monologue Novecento into the movie The Legend of 1900, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore.

He has also worked with the French band Air, releasing "City Reading", a mix of the band's music with Baricco's reading of his novel City.

Baricco directed the critically acclaimed film Lezione 21 on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Personal life

Baricco resides in his hometown, Turin. He has two sons. He and his girlfriend Gloria Campaner live together.

In January 2022, Baricco announced he had been diagnosed with chronic myelomonocytic leukemia.

Bibliography

Novels

Castelli di rabbia, Rizzoli 1991, Tascabili Bompiani 1994; Lands of Glass, Penguin 1992. Awarded with Prix Médicis étranger – France
Oceano Mare, Rizzoli 1993; Ocean Sea, ISBN 0-375-70395-0, 1993. Awarded with 'Palazzo al Bosco' — Italy
Novecento. Un monologo, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, Milan, 1994; Novecento, 1994.
Seta, Rizzoli 1996; Silk, ISBN 978-0-307-27797-8, 1996 (See Silk for the film adaptation.)
City (original title), ISBN 978-0-375-72548-7 (edition in English), Rizzoli 1999
Constellations (original title), 1999
Senza sangue, Rizzoli 2002; Without Blood ISBN 1-4000-3478-7, 2002 (Also published in revised form in The New Yorker)
Questa storia, Fandango 2005
Emmaus, Feltrinelli 2009
Mr Gwyn, Feltrinelli 2011
Tre volte all'alba, Feltrinelli 2012
Smith & Wesson, Feltrinelli 2014
La Sposa giovane, Feltrinelli 2015; The Young Bride ISBN 9781609453343, Europa Editions 2016
Abel, Feltrinelli 2023

Theatre

Totem, a literary and musical happening staged in various locations throughout Italy with varying structure and contents. Mostly it consisted of a two-night theatrical event in which Baricco himself, helped by director Gabriele Vacis, actor Eugenio Allegri and musician Daniele Sepe, would read and comment on bits of literature from all centuries and countries, accompanying them with music. In 2001 Rizzoli published the video of Totem recorded in Milan in 1997.
Novecento, Feltrinelli 1994; The Legend of 1900 (1994) – originally a monologue for theatre staged by director Gabriele Vacis, adapted in 1998 into a film by Giuseppe Tornatore, La leggenda del pianista sull'oceano, with music composed by Ennio Morricone.
Davila Roa, staged only once by director Luca Ronconi. Reportedly a huge fiasco, it was never published in written form.
Omero, Iliade, Feltrinelli 2004; An Iliad, Vintage International 2004 ( ISBN 978-0-307-27539-4 ) – a rewriting of Homer's Iliad consisting of 24 chapters, each telling a part of the story through the eyes and words of a prominent character in the poem. The theatrical event from which the book originated was staged only twice due to its logistic difficulties: it spanned over three nights during which the best contemporary Italian actors would impersonate one character each, eight per night.
Palamedes - the cancelled hero, 2016; a theatrical event about Palamedes translated from ancient Greek by Andrea Marcolongo and staged by Baricco himself and the Italian actress Valeria Solarino.

Cinema

Partita Spagnola, Audino Editore 2003 (screenplay never shot).
Lecture 21, 2008 (written and directed).

Collected short writings

Barnum. Cronache dal Grande Show, Feltrinelli 1995
Barnum 2. Altre cronache del Grande Show, Feltrinelli 1998
Next. Piccolo libro sulla globalizzazione e il mondo che verrà, Feltrinelli 2002
Il nuovo Barnum, Feltrinelli 2016

Essays

Il genio in fuga. Sul teatro musicale di Rossini, Il Melangolo 1988, Einaudi 1997
L'anima di Hegel e le mucche del Wisconsin, Garzanti 1992
I Barbari, La Repubblica 2006
The Game, 2018

Awards

Prix Médicis étranger — France
Selezione Campiello — Italy
Viareggio – Italy
Palazzo al Bosco – Italy

References

^ "Alessandro Baricco". Penguin Random House.
A casa di Alessandro Baricco e Gloria Campaner - domus
Alessandro Baricco e la malattia. La compagna Gloria Campaner: "Andrà tutto bene" - Corriere del Veneto
Alessandro Baricco, la compagna: «Commossi per l'enorme affetto intorno a noi» - Vanity Fair
Alessandro Baricco on Instagram January 22 2022
"Premio Letterario Viareggio Rèpaci – Albo d'oro" [Viareggio-Rèpaci Literary Prize – Honor Roll] (in Italian). Archived from the original on September 26, 2008. Retrieved January 13, 2011.

External links

Alessandro Baricco at the Berlin International Literature Festival 2002/03

v t e Recipients of the Viareggio Prize
1930s	Anselmo Bucci – Lorenzo Viani (1930) Corrado Tumiati (1931) Antonino Foschini (1932) Achille Campanile (1933) Raffaele Calzini (1934) Mario Massa – Stefano Pirandello (1935) Riccardo Bacchelli (1936) Guelfo Civinini (1937) Vittorio Giovanni Rossi – Enrico Pea (1938) Arnaldo Frateili – Orio Vergani – Maria Bellonci (1939)
1940s	Silvio Micheli – Umberto Saba (1946) • Antonio Gramsci (1947) • Aldo Palazzeschi – Elsa Morante – Sibilla Aleramo (1948) • Arturo Carlo Jemolo – Renata Viganò (1949)
1950s	Francesco Jovine – Carlo Bernari (1950) • Domenico Rea (1951) • Tommaso Fiore (1952) • Carlo Emilio Gadda (1953) • Rocco Scotellaro (1954) • Vasco Pratolini (1955) • Carlo Levi – Gianna Manzini (1956) • Italo Calvino – Pier Paolo Pasolini (1957) • Ernesto de Martino (1958) • Marino Moretti (1959)
1960s	Giovanni Battista Angioletti (1960) • Alberto Moravia (1961) • Giorgio Bassani (1962) • Antonio Delfini – Sergio Solmi (1963) • Giuseppe Berto (1964) • Goffredo Parise - Angelo Maria Ripellino (1965) • Ottiero Ottieri – Alfonso Gatto (1966) • Raffaello Brignetti (1967) • Libero Bigiaretti (1968) • Fulvio Tomizza (1969)
1970s	Nello Saito (1970) • Ugo Attardi (1971) • Romano Bilenchi (1972) • Achille Campanile (1973) • Clotilde Marghieri (1974) • Paolo Volponi (1975) • Mario Tobino – Dario Bellezza – Sergio Solmi (1976) • Davide Lajolo (1977) • Antonio Altomonte – Mario Luzi (1978) • Giorgio Manganelli (1979)
1980s	Stefano Terra (1980) • Enzo Siciliano (1981) • Primo Levi (1982) • Giuliana Morandini (1983) • Gina Lagorio – Bruno Gentili (1984) • Manlio Cancogni (1985) • Marisa Volpi (1986) • Mario Spinella (1987) • Rosetta Loy (1988) • Salvatore Mannuzzu (1989)
1990s	Luisa Adorno – Cesare Viviani – Maurizio Calvesi (1990) • Antonio Debenedetti (1991) • Luigi Malerba (1992) • Alessandro Baricco (1993) • Antonio Tabucchi (1994) • Maurizio Maggiani – Elio Pagliarani (1995) • Ermanno Rea – Alda Merini (1996) • Claudio Piersanti – Franca Grisoni – Corrado Stajano (1997) • Giorgio Pressburger – Michele Sovente – Carlo Ginzburg (1998) • Ernesto Franco (1999)
2000s	Giorgio van Straten – Sandro Veronesi (2000) • Niccolò Ammaniti – Michele Ranchetti – Giorgio Pestelli (2001) • Fleur Jaeggy – Jolanda Insana – Alfonso Berardinelli (2002) • Giuseppe Montesano (2003) • Edoardo Albinati – Andrea Tagliapietra – Livia Livi (2004) • Raffaele La Capria – Alberto Arbasino – Milo de Angelis (2005) • Gianni Celati – Giovanni Agosti – Giuseppe Conte – Roberto Saviano (2006) • Filippo Tuena – Paolo Mauri – Silvia Bre – Simona Baldanzi – Paolo Colagrande – Paolo Fallai (2007) • Francesca Sanvitale – Miguel Gotor – Eugenio De Signoribus (2008) • Edith Bruck – Adriano Prosperi – Ennio Cavalli (2009)
2010s	Nicola Lagioia – Michele Emmer – Pierluigi Cappello (2010) • Alessandro Mari – Mario Lavagetto – Gian Mario Villalta (2011) • Nicola Gardini – Franco Lo Piparo – Antonella Anedda (2012) • Paolo Di Stefano – Giulio Guidorizzi – Enrico Testa (2013) • Francesco Pecoraro – Alessandro Fo – Luciano Mecacci (2014) • Antonio Scurati – Massimo Bucciantini – Franco Buffoni (2015) • Franco Cordelli – Bruno Pischedda – Sonia Gentili (2016) • Gianfranco Calligarich – Giuseppe Montesano – Stefano Carrai (2017) • Fabio Genovesi – Giuseppe Lupo (2018) • Emanuele Trevi – Renato Minore – Saverio Ricci (2019)
2020s	Paolo Di Paolo – Luciano Cecchinel – Giulio Ferroni (2020) • Edith Bruck - Flavio Santi - Walter Siti (2021) • Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli – Pietro Castellitto – Claudio Damiani – Wlodek Goldkorn – Agnese Pini – Veronica Raimo – Silvia Ronchey (2022)

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