The adoptive son of Tomasi di Lampedusa has died: “the last guardian of the Leopard”

He was the custodian of the legacy of “Il Gattopardo” and kept alive the memory of the author of the literary masterpiece, his adoptive father, the prince writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (Palermo 1986 – Rome 1957): the musicologist and historian of opera and melodrama Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi closed his eyes forever yesterday evening, Wednesday 10 May, at the age of 89 in the historic Palazzo Lanza Tomasi in via Butera in Palermo, where he had returned after hospitalization, due to lung problems and cardiac, at the Buccheri La Ferla hospital in Palermo.

Lanza Tomasi was honorary president of the Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa institution and of the jury of the homonymous literary prize. He oversaw the publication of the illustrious adoptive father’s literary work, concluded with the Mondadori «Meridiano» (1994-95).

And he was also the author of «Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. A biography in images» (1998) and «The places of the Leopard» (2001), both published by Sellerio.
Born in Rome on 11 February 1934, Gioacchino Lanza Branciforte Ramírez was the third son of Senator Fabrizio Lanza Branciforte Ruffo, count of Mazarin and of Assaro, and of Conchita Ramírez Camacho, daughter and heiress of Wenceslas Marquis of Villa Urrutia.

He moved with his family to Palermo after the Second World War. In 1953, together with other young intellectuals from Palermo, including his contemporary Francesco Orlando, a future literary critic, he began frequenting Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, his distant cousin, to whom he remained close in the last four years of his life and by whom he was adopted in 1957. thus assuming the surname Lanza Tomasi. After the Sicilian writer’s death, Lanza Tomasi took on his intellectual legacy, preserving his memory and recovering, after long years of restoration, his last home, Palazzo Lampedusa alla Marina (which later became Palazzo Lanza Tomasi), where the prince author of the «Gattopardo» lived until his death and in which he collected his historical library.

The carreer
Having started his career as a music critic, in 1965 Lanza Tomasi began his career as a music organizer and gradually became the artistic director of various institutions: the Roman Philharmonic Academy (1973-75 and 1988-92), the Teatro Massimo in Palermo (1971 -75), the Rome Opera House (1976-1984), the Rai Symphony Orchestra and Chorus of Rome (1984-1992), the Bologna Municipal Theater (1992-1995). He was general director of the Rome Europe Art and Culture Foundation and consultant for the reconstruction of the Vittorio Emanuele Theater in Messina. From 1996 to 2000 he directed the Italian Cultural Institute in New York. Specialist in the work of Vincenzo Bellini and Giuseppe Verdi, since 1983 he has been full professor of History of Music at the University of Palermo; from 1989 to 1995 he was president of the Degree Course in Educational Sciences and vice president of Aduim (the Italian association of university professors of musical disciplines). Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi was at the helm of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples from 2001 to 2006: as superintendent he relaunched its activity in a big way, promoting the revival of works that came out of the repertoire, the dissemination of new trends in contemporary musical theater and the assignment of the installations to renowned painters and sculptors, collaborating, among others, with Roberto De Simone, Arnaldo Pomodoro and Michelangelo Pistoletto. He has published numerous works including: «The villas of Palermo» (Il Punto, 1966, with an introduction by Cesare Brandi), «Sicilian castles and monasteries» (Lito-Tipografiche Ires, 1968, with Enzo Sellerio), «Guida all’opera » (Mondadori, 1971), «Ernani by Giuseppe Verdi. Guida all’opera» (Mondadori, 1982), «Erik Satie and the music of surrealism» (Officina Edizioni, 1976), «Vincenzo Bellini» (Sellerio, 2001). He has also signed articles and essays on contemporary musicians: Bussotti, Pousseur, Sciarrino, Stockhausen, Kagel, Berio.

The theater and all the operas
In his many roles as theater director, Lanza Tomasi promoted the revival of works that came out of the repertoire, the knowledge of new trends in contemporary musical theater and the entrusting of the staging to painters and sculptors rather than set designers. We recall the filming of Armida by Christoph Willibald Gluck, conductor Gabriele Ferro, direction and staging by Filippo Sanjust (Palermo 1974) and Cecchina the Good Son by Niccolò Piccinni, direction by Sylvano Bussotti, sets and costumes by Toni Zancanaro (Palermo 1975) ; the first modern revival of Bravo by Saverio Mercadante, directed by Roberto Guicciardini, scenery by Edo Janich, conductor Gabriele Ferro (1976); the first modern revival of Gioacchino Rossini’s Tancredi in the complete version with the Ferrara finale, staging and direction by Filippo Sanjust, conductor Gabriele Ferro, with Marilyn Horne and Margherita Rinaldi (Rome 1977); the filming of «Parisina» by Pietro Mascagni, directed by Gianandrea Gavazzeni, direction and staging by Pier Luigi Pizzi (Rome 1978) and of «The tale of the changed son» by Gian Francesco Malipiero, directed by Gavazzeni, directed by Virginio Puecher (Rome 1982); the first public performance of «Feu d’artifice» by Igor Stravinsky-Balla (Rome 1977); the philological reworking of Marco Spada, a ballet on the bandits of the Roman countryside, music by Daniel Auber, reconstructed on historical documentation by Pierre Lacotte, and Le Papillon, the only ballet by Jacques Offenbach, reconstructed by Pierre Lacotte on French documents, the first appearances on the Italian scene of the American school with commissions to Morton Feldman of Neither, on a text by Samuel Beckett, conductor Marcello Panni, staging by Michelangelo Pistoletto (Rome 1976), and to Philip Glass and Bob Wilson of The Civil Wars (Rome 1983); the installations entrusted to Mario Ceroli and Arnaldo Pomodoro; «L’Incoronazione di Poppea» at the Comunale di Bologna for the Monteverdian celebrations (1993), directed by Graham Vick, sets and costumes by Paul Brown, conductor Ivor Bolton; Rossini’s «La Cenerentola», directed by Roberto De Simone, conductor Riccardo Chailly (Bologna 1993); Rossini’s «The Barber of Seville» at the Vittorio Emanuele Theater in Messina, directed by Federico Tiezzi, scenes by Pier Paolo Bisleri, conductor Evelino Pidò (1994). «The Turk in Italy» by Rossini, directed by Antonio Calenda, scenery by Nicola Rubertelli (Bologna 1994). At the Rai Symphony Orchestra of Rome he promoted various first performances of contemporary composers, from Goffredo Petrassi to Guido Turchi, to Ivan Vandor and gave space to emerging Italian talents: Claudio Ambrosini, Giorgio Battistelli, Paolo Arcà, Alessandro Sbordoni, Ivan Fedele , Alessandro Solbiati, Flavio Scogna. Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi received the honorary citizenship of three municipalities in Sicily: Santa Margherita di Belice, Gibellina and Palma di Montechiaro founded by the ancestors of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in 1637.