Abstract

During the 1960s and 70s many directors exploited Giuseppe Verdi's music, as a device to understand better recent national history. Through an audiovisual analysis of the soundtracks of Bernardo Bertolucci's La via del petrolio (1967) and Marco Leto's La villeggiatura (1973), in this paper I explore the crucial role played by experimental composer Egisto Macchi. What happens when an avant-garde composer uses Verdi's music? What are the musical transformations involved and how are they linked to the visual dimension? Macchi reconstructs a hybrid soundscape using only Verdi's instrumental excerpts, mixing and altering their original shapes, as a way to question Italian cultural memory.