museum of music

The Music Museum of Verona is dedicated to the history of classical music and the collection of historical musical instruments. Located in a palace in the historic centre, the museum documents the rich Veronese musical tradition from the Renaissance to the twentieth century, with particular attention to the golden age of nineteenth-century opera when Verona was a mandatory stop on the tours of the greatest European singers.

The collection includes over 200 musical instruments from the 16th to the 20th century: violins, cellos, flutes, oboes, horns, trumpets, pianos, harpsichords, lutes and guitars that bear witness to the evolution of stringed instrument making and musical organology. Alongside the instruments, the museum preserves autograph scores by composers, letters from musicians, posters of historical concerts, photographs of famous performers, and opera stage costumes that recount Veronese musical life through the centuries.

Veronese musical tradition since the Renaissance

Verona has a musical tradition that dates back to the Renaissance. The Accademia Filarmonica, founded in 1543, is one of the oldest musical institutions in Europe, dedicated to the study and practice of music. For centuries the Academy organised concerts, cultivated musical talents, commissioned compositions.

The Teatro Filarmonico, inaugurated in 1732, became one of the most important opera houses in Italy.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Verona saw the greatest European composers and performers pass through: Mozart played at the Filarmonico in 1770 (he was 14 years old), Rossini conducted his operas, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi were performed with the best singers. The Veronese audience, notoriously demanding, decreed successes or failures. Maria Callas, in the early years of her career, sang in Verona receiving acclaim that launched her.

The city also produced musical instruments: Veronese luthiers built violins, violas and cellos following Cremonese traditions (Stradivari, Amati, Guarneri).

Organ builders constructed organs for churches. Manufacturers of woodwind and brass instruments supplied musical bands that animated festivals. This artisan musical activity created a heritage of instruments that today forms part of the museum collections.

The museum was born in the 1990s from the desire to preserve and enhance the Veronese musical heritage. The collection was formed through donations from private individuals (musicians, collectors, families of deceased musicians), acquisitions of instruments from the antiques market, deposits from musical institutions (Conservatory, Accademia Filarmonica, theatres). The initial nucleus included about 50 instruments, but it grew rapidly.

Particularly significant was the donation of the Dalla Riva family, historic Veronese luthiers who gave the museum ancient instruments from their personal collection as well as luthier's tools, moulds and models that document construction techniques.

Another important donation came from the orchestra conductor who left autograph scores, batons, medals and photographs of his international career.

The museum also acquired a collection of mechanical instruments: music boxes, barrel organs, player pianos, gramophones that bear witness to the mechanical reproduction of music before the electronic era. One section documents Veneto folk music: traditional instruments (diatonic accordion, rustic violin, fife) used in festivals, dances and serenades of peasant cultures.

Today the museum carries out activities of conservation, research and dissemination of music. It collaborates with the Conservatory, luthiers and musicologists for studies on historical instruments: datings, attributions, restorations. Some instruments are restored to be played in concerts of ancient music with period instruments, allowing one to listen to original timbres that modern instruments cannot reproduce.

The educational activity is fundamental: schools visit the museum with itineraries that teach instrumental families (strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, keyboards), the evolution of instruments through the centuries, how sound is produced (vibrations, resonances, acoustics).

Workshops allow people to touch (replicas of) instruments, try to produce sounds, understand the physics of sound. Conservatory students explore the history of the instruments they study.

The museum organises concerts in the historic rooms using restored instruments from the collection: sonatas for Baroque violin, chamber music for eighteenth-century traverse flutes, harpsichord pieces. These concerts, in addition to enhancing the collection, offer unique listening experiences.

During the summer opera Festival (July-August), the museum hosts temporary exhibitions on operatic themes, meetings with singers, screenings of documentaries that connect the museum to the events in the Arena.