Casa Ricordi is a classical music publishing company founded in 1808 as
G. Ricordi & Co. by violinist
Giovanni RicordiGiovanni Ricordi was an Italian violinist and the founder of the classical music publishing company Casa Ricordi....
(1785–1853) in Milan, Italy. Its classical repertoire represents one of the important sources in the world through its publishing of Rossini,
DonizettiDomenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore , Lucia di Lammermoor , and Don Pasquale , all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment...
,
BelliniVincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini was an Italian opera composer. His greatest works are I Capuleti ed i Montecchi , La sonnambula , Norma , Beatrice di Tenda , and I puritani...
,
VerdiGiuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
, and
PucciniGiacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
.
In 1825, Giovanni Ricordi purchased the complete musical archives of
La ScalaLa Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
and in 1839 he bought the copyright to Giuseppe Verdi's music that marked the beginnings of a long working relationship. During the 1840s, Casa Ricordi grew to be the largest music publisher in southern
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and in 1842 the company created the musical journal the
Gazzetta Musicale di Milano. In 1864 it expanded to
NaplesNaples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
and then to
FlorenceFlorence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
(1865),
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
(1871),
LondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
(1878),
PalermoPalermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...
and in 1888 to
ParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
.
Until 1919, when outside management was appointed, four generations of Ricordis were at the helm of the company. Its most notable personality was
Giulio RicordiGiulio Ricordi was an Italian editor and musician.-Biography:Ricordi was born in Milan, where he also died....
(1840–1912) who was closely involved in the operatic career of
Giacomo PucciniGiacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
but whose interests also extended to composing music, art, design and painting. Under him, the company went into the business of printing advertising
posterA poster is any piece of printed paper designed to be attached to a wall or vertical surface. Typically posters include both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or wholly text. Posters are designed to be both eye-catching and informative. Posters may be...
s that were extremely popular throughout Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ricordi company posters included works by celebrated
graphic artistsGraphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...
such as
Leonetto CappielloLeonetto Cappiello was an Italian poster art designer who lived in Paris. He is now often called 'the father of modern advertising' because of his innovation in poster design...
, Luigi Emilio Caldanzano,
Ludovico CavaleriLudovico Cavaleri was an Italian painter.-Biography:A self-taught member of the school of Lombard Naturalism in its last stages, Cavalieri abandoned his medical studies in 1888 to devote himself exclusively to painting...
, Marcello Dudovich,
Adolfo HohensteinAdolfo Hohenstein was a German painter, advertiser, illustrator, set designer and costume designer. He's considered the father of the Italian poster art and an exponent of the Stile Liberty, the Italian Art Nouveau...
, Franz Laskoff, Leopoldo Metlicovitz, Giovanni Mario Mataloni and Aleardo Villa.
During
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the company's business premises suffered severe damage from aerial bombardmennt but its collections had already been safely stored away. Following reconstruction after the war, Ricordi was converted to a limited corporation by the family in 1952 and in 1956 it became a
publicly tradedThis is not the same as a Government-owned corporation.A public company or publicly traded company is a limited liability company that offers its securities for sale to the general public, typically through a stock exchange, or through market makers operating in over the counter markets...
company.
In 1994, Ricordi was acquired by BMG Music Publishing, which in turn was purchased by
Universal Music Publishing GroupUniversal Music Publishing Group is a music publishing company and is part of the Universal Music Group.UMPG owns or administers more than 1 million copyrights. They are one of the largest music publishing businesses in the world with more than 47 offices in 41 countries...
in 2007. It is now Italy's largest
music publisherThe term music publisher originally referred to publishers who issued printed sheet music....
.
External links