Guido Barbieri

Biography

Guido Barbieri, who was born in Parma in 1956, teaches History and the Aesthetics of Music at the Conservatorio A. Casella in L'Aquila. Presenter and consultant for Radio 3 from 1982 to 2012, he is currently one of the music critics for the newspaper La Repubblica.
In celebration of Verdi in 2001, for the Rai Sat Show he created the presentation of the full cycle of the works of Giuseppe Verdi. The entire cycle was repeated as part of the Rai5 broadcasts celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy. He works regularly as a music consultant, for the Rai Due television programme Protestantesimo. He has written two works: a monograph on Georg Friederich Handel, published by Newton Compton, and a listening guide to Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro published by Gremese. In 2010 he published a long essay, entitled Le anestesie del cuore in the volume I portatori del tempo edited by Achille Bonito Oliva and published by Electa Mondadori. He is currently working on a monograph dedicated to Edgard Varèse which will be published by the publishing house Epos in Palermo.
He has written theatre pieces and radio programmes on musical themes (Poiché l'avida sete dedicated to Carlo Gesualdo, Una voce perduta about Farinelli, La civiltà delle macchine about Edgard Varèse, Studio senza luce on Andres Segovia, etc.) as well as texts and libretti for Italian composers (Ennio Morricone, Michelangelo Lupone, Laura Bianchini, Luigi Ceccarelli, Emanuele Pappalardo). He wrote the lyrics of the musical Portopalo. Nomi, su tombe senza corpi, staged in December 2006 at the Auditorium in Rome with music by Riccardo Nova and directed by Giorgio Barberio Corsetti, and for Al Kamandjati, directed by Moni Ovadia and music by Franghiz Ali Zadeh. In the summer of 2011, at the Case Romane in Marettino, he staged, together with Marco Paolini and Mario Brunello, the show Nessunluogo, for which he wrote the texts and story. In 2012, at the ZKM in Karlsruhe and then at the Teatro India in Rome, the multimedia work Three Mile Island was staged, written in collaboration with Andrea Molino. In April, the work 3:32 Naufragio di terra was performed at the Basilica of Collemaggio in L'Aquila, conceived with Lucia Ronchetti. In 2007, he participated in the Prix Italia with the radio work La corda spezzata. Teatro e musica nell’Inferno di Terezin, played by Toni Servillo, Maria Paiato and Antonio Tidona.
Having founded and directed the Contemporanea series promoted by the Fondazione Musica per Roma, he is currently artistic director of the Guido Michelli Società dei Concerti in Ancona and the Barattelli Società Aquilana dei Concerti. He is also an editorial consultant at the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari.
In July 2005 he received the Premio Feronia for music criticism.