Hugh Last Rome Award: Heating systems in Imperial-period Roman baths in central Italy: Aquinum and beyond

Abstract

environment and within a socio-juridical framework that was aimed at systematically curtailing women’s freedom of action in the public sphere. The contracts, official correspondence, secret Fascist report and anonymous letters of denunciation, among a wealth of other documents, which I found at the Archivi Storici Capitolini, Archivio Centrale dello Stato and Archivio della Camera di Commercio, illuminate the extremely complex position of a woman in power and endowed with social prestige. Newspapers and periodical articles of the period, which are preserved in the holdings of the Emeroteca at the Biblioteca Nazionale, show how Carelli shaped the musical and cultural life of the capital, introducing a wide-ranging and international repertoire, securing important premières, and standing at the forefront of artistic modernism. Her indomitable spirit of a ‘bipedal lioness’, to use D’Annunzio’s definition, makes of Carelli an ideal case-study for the donna nova. The soprano-impresaria’s willingness to live her life according to her own expectations, and her defiance of social conventions (also with regard to her personal life and the controversial relationship with an unscrupulous husband), make a strong claim for Carelli’s inclusion in the list of early twentieth-century Italian women, such as Sibilla Aleramo, Maria Montessori and Eleonora Duse, all of whom turned their existence into a political manifesto for a new womanhood. Throughout the period of my Award the quiet calm of the BSR’s Library, with its supportive staff, provided me with the ideal space for delving into (and making sense of) the overwhelming amount of material I discovered at the various archives. I presented the initial findings of my research at the annual meetings of the two major Italian musicological societies (Società Italiana di Musicologia and Saggiatore Musicale). In general this project has been crucial in helping me to define the central themes of my monograph on sopranos-donne nove of early twentieth-century Italy.