Inside Milans Opulent Retirement Home for Musicians
MILAN — There was a buzz as some two dozen concertgoers in silk scarves and sparkling jewels arrived with the help of wheelchairs, walkers and canes, and took their seats in the ornate, hardwood-floor concert hall of Milan’s Rest Home for Musicians, known as Casa Verdi, which is run by the Giuseppe Verdi Foundation.
A hush fell, as two musicians in evening dress took up their positions behind two golden harps. The room filled with shimmering music by Debussy. The audience was rapt.
“Bravo,” murmured Luisa Mandelli, a soprano who sang with Maria Callas at La Scala in Milan. Then she cocked her head in dismay: Two seats away, a nattily-dressed tenor in a black suit and tie had begun snoring gently. “He’s 98,” whispered Ms. Mandelli, who is 95. She leaned over and slapped her former colleague’s knee.
Ms. Mandelli is one of 60 older musicians living in Casa Verdi, a sumptuous neo-Gothic mansion built in central Milan by Verdi. Completed in 1899, the building was created as a sanctuary for musicians who found themselves poverty-stricken in old age, “Old singers not favored by fortune, or who, when they were young, did not possess the virtue of saving,” as Verdi wrote in a letter at the time.
Nowadays, pensions and social security have reduced the economic necessity of a refuge like this, said Roberto Ruozi, president of the Giuseppe Verdi Foundation, which uses investments made with the royalties from the composer’s operas to fund the rest home. Residents pay on a sliding scale, according to their means.
Nonetheless, Casa Verdi is inundated each year with applications from composers, conductors, singers, orchestral players, music teachers and anyone else who has “exercised the art of music as a profession,” as the foundation’s website puts it. Once applicants establish their professional bona fides, Casa Verdi’s board makes choices based on who they think will be a good fit.
The successful applicants get to spend their last years in a place where, in addition to room, board and medical treatment, they have access to concerts, music rooms, 15 pianos, a large organ, harps, drum sets and the company of their peers.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/arts/music/casa-verdi-musicians-retirement-home-milan.html?
Reminds me of movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartet_(2012_film).
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