Porte Chiuse (Closed Doors)
Letter to my parents Erminia Romano – Tonino Tatò (1921-2021)
by Giovanna Tatò
With a contribution by Lucia Navarrini on Erminia Romano and the art of conducting
Published 2023
224 pp, in Italian, with many illustrations
Maurizio Vetri Editore

In 2021, I published in my “Forgotten Artists” series an article on Erminia Romano, a pioneer in a field then reserved, especially in Italy, for men: that of conducting. I pieced together what information I could find, but admitted at the outset that the essay was “more of a plea to anyone who has further information to come forward”. MWI was subsequently contacted by Romano’s eldest daughter, the writer and journalist Giovanna Tatò, pointing out that there were errors in the article. However, rather than list them, she preferred to wait until the appearance of the book she was preparing for imminent publication. This book, intended as a tribute to her parents in their centenary year (both were born in 1921), was delayed by the Covid crisis but is now available.

I hope to publish in due course a revised version of my article, taking into account the information now available. In the meantime, here is a review of the book, which will make absorbing reading for anyone able to read Italian and interested in Italian post-war history, both musical and political.

This is the story of two major figures, one from the world of music, the other from that of politics. Something also needs to be said about a third figure, Giovanna Tatò herself. A journalist with a career stretching back some 35 years, first in the printed press then in RAI (Italian Radio and Television), she published her first novel, Gerusalemme, in 2018. I have not read this, but I note that it is a fusion of fiction and autobiography arising from a trip to Jerusalem. This seems to me significant, for the body of Closed Doors, in which Tatò addresses her parents in the second person, goes beyond faithful reportage, which it undoubtedly is. The feeling is that of a work of literature, of art. This is not easy to bring off. I was reminded of Doris Lessing’s Alfred and Emily (Fourth Estate 2008), likewise an author’s tribute to her parents. But, whereas Lessing resorts to the hybrid combination of a fictionalized account of the lives her parents might have led but didn’t, followed by a pedestrian plod through her own memories of how things actually were, Tatò sticks to reality. I find Tatò’s book the more successful of the two artistically.

In a brief introduction, Tatò sets out her premises. Both her parents were victims of “closed doors”, her mother because she attempted a career that was considered at the time to be for men only, her father because he remained under the shadow of the communist leader Berlinguer, to whom he was secretary during some of the most dramatic years of late 20^th century Italian history. She then outlines their lives in the form of two letters, one to each, written mainly in the second person. There are numerous photographic illustrations, an essay by the musicologist Lucia Navarrini and three appendices relating aspects of her father’s work. Needless to say, most of the information on Erminia Romano has not appeared in print before. Antonio – “Tonino” – Tatò’s career is more documented, but not everything here is widely known, to say the least.

In the letter to her mother, the “closed doors” and the resulting trials, tribulations and frustrations are ever present. It is revealed, for example, that Michelangeli, having been engaged to play a concerto with the Santa Cecilia Orchestra which Romano was to conduct, abruptly withdrew on learning that the conductor was to be a woman. There are also portraits of other members of the family, of Romano’s earlier years and upbringing, of her militancy in the communist party, of her marriage, idyllic in its first years but ending in breakdown as she insisted on her musical career. Another door closed.

In the case of her father, the “closed doors” are less obvious. The world of politics was hardly closed to men. The closure regards recognition for what he did. Giovanna Tatò convincingly shows that her father was the master theorist and the master planner behind the major political upheaval of the early 1970s, the “compromesso storico”. This “historical compromise” was to unite the forces of communists and Roman Catholics, logically incompatible and officially not even on speaking terms but both, in their ways, concerned to better the human condition. This is not to imply that Enrico Berlinguer, as the public face of the “compromesso”, was just a puppet. They were likeminded men and the combination of Antonio Tatò’s logistical support and Berlinguer’s charisma very nearly brought their project to fruition. I arrived in Italy in 1975, so I can bear witness to the enthusiasm and engagement of most of the young people I met, who really believed that Italy was on the brink of a new opening. I also witnessed the 1976 elections, at which the communists achieved their highest-ever share of the vote, but didn’t quite win. I witnessed the kidnapping and subsequent assassination of Aldo Moro, the man who, on the Catholic side of the political fence, had been most identified with the “compromesso”. I also witnessed the cynicism and disengagement of the electorate as Italy stumbled from crisis to crisis, scandal to scandal. Perhaps these were the “closed doors”. I would discuss this in more detail, but I think I have said enough for a site that deals in music not politics.

So, returning to Erminia Romano, Giovanna Tatò gives us illuminating comments on her study methods, impressions of her performances, reflections on her choice of clothing, diet and much else. That said, I have to register a slight disappointment that, in terms of crude facts, not very much is added to what I already knew. Without disturbing the essentially personal and poetic tenor of the main body of the text, maybe a chronology or a timeline might have been added? I hoped Lucia Navarrini’s essay would done this, but she deals with more abstract matters that, however interesting, might have taken second place to biographical details. As it is, I now know that Erminia Romano was born on 28^th November 1921 (previously I knew only the year). Of her marriage, Giovanna Tatò tells us they “were married in church a few weeks after the Americans entered Rome, a very simple ceremony in the presence of a few faithful friends and no parent. Not even a photo”. So, for a hard date, we are left to discover elsewhere that the Americans took possession of Rome on 4 June 1944 and to wonder how many the “few weeks” actually were. As for her death, Giovanna Tatò recalls that the last concert of her mother’s she attended was in Naples in 1975, that there we other concerts that her work prevented her from attending and that “you left us suddenly, like a thunderbolt in a clear sky”. Put that way, it sounds as if Romano died not long after 1975. Elsewhere, I find she died in 1987. Some sort of account of how and where she lived after her divorce would have been interesting. As for her professional life, it seems that Romano had a well-ordered collection of photographs, reviews, posters and programme books that has “survived at least partially the passing of time”. So a list of her engagements, so far as they are known, would have been helpful. My own article lists those that can be discovered from Italian institutions with online archives, but there must be many more, and it seems that Romano made some notable appearances outside Italy – places, dates and any reviews would have been welcome. Contingently to this book, Giovanna Tatò has put on You Tube Romano’s televised concert of female composers, enabling us to see that she had the natural technique of an innate conductor. Her première of Morricone’s Concerto for Orchestra can be found at Internet Archive. The writer of a hypothetical future biography will draw gratefully upon all that is here, but will still have a lot of research to do. For political historians, this book may open the doors to a reassessment of Tonino Tatò’s role in those difficult years.

To conclude, this is a valuable book and a work of art in its own right. If you can read Italian fluently, you will probably know enough about the country to find equal illumination in the section dedicated to Antonio Tatò. Though in all truth, many younger Italians would need an edition with detailed footnotes to find their way through much of it. The “compromesso storico” is by now the half-remembered story of a visionary project that never came about. This fact has tended to close the doors to a detailed analysis of why it failed and, ultimately, why it landed us where we are now.

Christopher Howell