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Puccini, Ricordi and the Rise of the Modern Entertainment Industry
Bertelsmann presents the interplay of opera and media in the early 20th century in a multimedia exhibition to mark the 100th anniversary of Giacomo Puccini’s death. Numerous original documents from the Archivio Storico Ricordi, which is part of Bertelsmann, are also on display.
Image gallery
Hauptstadtrepräsentanz Bertelsmann
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) conquered the whole world with his music. His operas have been among the world’s most frequently performed works for over 100 years without interruption. The timeless, emotional Puccini sound continues to inspire and touch people to this day.
Puccini celebrated his greatest successes at a time of revolutionary media innovations.
The development of new entertainment technology, first and foremost film and sound recordings, which soon became widespread, represented a revolution for society and musical culture in the early 20th century, fundamentally challenging the traditional business model of musical theater.
It multiplied the distribution of dramatic music and popularized it to an unprecedented extent within just a few years.
The exhibition OPERA MEETS NEW MEDIA – Puccini, Ricordi and the Rise of the Modern Entertainment Industry seeks to uncover the secret of this unprecedented success.
It tells of the disruptive forces of new media and their impact; it tells how the artist Puccini and his publisher Ricordi used these times of change to build an international star with the help of modern marketing campaigns; but it also reveals how fundamentally contemporary developments changed the opera business forever.
The exhibition presents this very topical and relevant subject in several audiovisual installations:
From the digital 3D modeling of a Puccini portrait to the AI animation of contemporary stage sets.
Numerous original documents from the Archivio Storico Ricordi, which is owned by Bertelsmann, are also on display – and most of them are being shown in Germany for the first time.
