Franco Casavola

Franco Casavola (Modugno, Bari, 1891 – Bari, 1955) was an Italian composer and critic whose career reflects a move from the Futurist avant-garde towards a more conventional idiom. Trained in Bari, Milan and Rome, where his teachers included Respighi, he joined the Futurist movement around 1920, a period that is of interest for understanding the artistic currents of inter-war Italy.

For roughly seven years he took part in drafting or disseminating several manifestos, published in the Milanese daily L'ambrosiano and in journals such as NOI: rivista d'arte futurista and Il futurismo. He also wrote a Futurist novel, dramatic sketches, and music for Luigi Russolo's intonarumori. His most ambitious scores of this phase were his ballets, which he himself later came to repudiate, among them La danza dell'elica, with sets by Marinetti. During these years he also showed an interest in multimedia experiments.

From 1927 onwards he adopted a more traditional outlook. His greatest popular success came with the opera Il gobbo del califfo, which has a parodic tone and moderate exoticism, and in whose harmony echoes of his Futurist period can still be heard. From 1936 he devoted much of his energy to film music, and this influence is evident in his last opera, Salammbò. He worked as a music critic for newspapers in Bari and Rome and, in his final years, turned to musicology; he left an almost finished book on Traetta, which was published after his death.

His legacy is that of a transitional musician: his Futurist work was largely lost or repudiated, while his operas and film scores document a career of a more conservative style.