Alessandro Baricco

Alessandro Baricco at Lucca Comics & Games in 2010

Alessandro Baricco (Italian pronunciation: [a.les.ˈsan.dro ba.ˈrik.ko]; born January 25, 1958 in Turin, Piedmont^[1]) is a popular Italian writer, director and performer. His novels have been translated into a wide number of languages. He currently lives in Rome with his wife and two sons.

Life and works

After receiving degrees in philosophy (under Gianni Vattimo) and piano, he 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 musical 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, videogames, novels and short stories.

In the following years his fame grew enormously 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 Academy Award-winning director 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.

He has directed the film Lezione 21 on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and its critical reception.

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: pianist, 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.

Theater

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 theater 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.

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

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

Awards

Source: "A note about the author" of Without Blood and.^[1]

Prix Médicis étranger — France
Selezione Campiello — Italy^[2]
Viareggio – Italy
Palazzo al Bosco – Italy

References

↑ 1.0 1.1 "Alessandro Baricco – Authors – Random House".
↑ "Premio Letterario Viareggio Rèpaci – Albo d'oro" (in Italian). Retrieved January 13, 2011.

External links

City di Baricco – Un libro e i suoi dintorni | Travel inside and around text

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 (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)

Authority control	WorldCat VIAF: 27123545 LCCN: n88253955 ISNI: 0000 0001 1023 1089 GND: 115743030 SUDOC: 031301134 BNF: cb12254270h (data) MusicBrainz: 7aa33b80-8241-42af-994d-001527771e02 NKC: jo20010083068 ICCU: IT\ICCU\CFIV\075277