In May, 1979, the city is preparing to pay its last tribute to one of the great protagonists of the Spoleto Festival, Thomas Schippers, talented and charismatic conductor to whom we owe some of the most glorious pages of the first decades of the Menottian event. Surrounded by a legendary aura and endowed with grace and magnetic charm, enhanced by a divine physique du rôle, Schippers was struck down by a terrible illness at the age of 47, in his New York home, in December 1977.
His great love for Spoleto and its Festival, to which he had indissolubly linked his name, dictated the decision, contained in his last will and testament, to be buried in the Umbrian city. The urn containing Schippers’ ashes arrived in Spoleto from New York and was temporarily placed in the San Ponziano chapel in the Town Hall.
In the presence of mayor Mario Laureti, authorities and many citizens, the burial ceremony took place on the afternoon of Friday 18 May. Here are some evocative shots of it, kept in the Carducci library’s photo library.
Schippers is one of the Festival’s best-loved personalities, as Gianna Volpi recalls in an affectionate portrait in her 1982 “Spoleto Story”: “He aroused admiration in everyone, even in the people of Spoleto, who are usually rather indifferent and critical towards the people of the Festival, and who still speak of him with affectionate respect […] All they say about him is that he was handsome. That he was good. And that the magic he could create when conducting an opera or a concert is unrepeatable. Even if his tombstone in Piazza del Duomo, behind which his ashes have been placed by his own will, is not a constant pilgrimage destination, those who pass by there cannot help but raise their eyes with a certain sense of respect, and in summer, during the Festival, there is never a lack of broom”.
Another fundamental text for following the story of the festival chronicles, “La città e il Festival dei Due Mondi” (The City and the Festival of Two Worlds) by Gianni Toscano and Sandro Morichelli of 1987, recalls that after the ceremony, an evening concert was held at the Teatro Nuovo by the RAI-TV Rome Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gabriele Ferro with Margherita Rinaldi, Ernesto Palacio and Antonio Savastano.
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