Music, Cinema and Photography

She was born in Castelfiorentino in 1916.
She was a lyric soprano. In 1935 she took part in Rome to an important vocal and instrumental opera concert for charity, with Costantini, the bass Giulio Neri (who was also a debutant) and maestro Ferraresi at the piano; on that occasion she was accidentally heard by the great conductor Tullio Serafin, who openly expressed his positive opinion. Then, she won the competition for opera voices at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome in 1936, and the affirmation opened the doors of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the specialization courses of singing at RAI. She interpreted, as protagonist, some important roles in: Tosca, Manon Lescaut and La bohème (Mimì) by Giacomo Puccini, Lodoletta and Isabeau by Pietro Mascagni, Fedora (Olga) by Umberto Giordano, Risurrezione (Katiusha) and Madonna Imperia by Franco Alfano, Thaïs by Jules Massenet. Myriam Ferretti sang alongside famous singers: Giulio Neri, Boris Christoff, Jussi Björling, Giuseppina Cobelli, Tito Schipa, Beniamino Gigli and many others, and was conducted by illustrious conductors such as: Umberto Giordano himself, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli and others. From 1936 to 1940 she also carried out an intense activity at the Radio, singing in numerous operettas. She recorded many records with the most important record companies of the time, but her association with Columbia was stainless and she was often on Italian and foreign radio networks. She sang assiduously in Latin America, Mexico and the United States, as one of the most acclaimed interpreters of Italian music in the world. She has recorded famous songs for films, she is remembered for the production of Walt Disney (Dumbo, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and others), also alongside the Quartetto Cetra.

He was born in La Spezia in 1923.
At the age of 3 he moved with his family to Castelfiorentino (where at the Teatro del Popolo, some of his stage clothes are kept). He learned to make the first emissions of the voice doing the altar boy and following the religious songs.
After the war he resumed his singing studies with Vera Amerighi Rutili a dramatic soprano and in 1951 he took part in a singing competition in Genoa performing three romances: “O tu che in seno agli angeli”, “Celeste Aida” and “Di quella pira” which he then performed in the audition at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome in the presence of the Artistic Director Guido Sampaoli and the Director and founder of the Experimental Opera Competition in Spoleto, Adriano Belli, who declared him the winner in 1952. He debuted in Spoleto in 1952 with Giuseppe Verdi’s La forza del destino together with Gabriella Tucci and took part in a tour in Switzerland and Germany with the Compagnia del Teatro dell’Opera as a substitute for Lauri Volpi.

Born in Castelfiorentino in 1980 from a family of photographers. He learned by experience, alongside his uncle and father, to tell the real feelings through images. His work has earned publications in prestigious magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar ; one of his shots was chosen for the cover of Brides in the special “Wedding of the Year”.
In 2018 he was awarded the Grand Award, the most coveted prize of the WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International), considered the Oscar of wedding photography. For the professional castellano it is a reconfirmation since in 2015 he had already taken home the first prize in the category Album competition single photographer. He has been the photographer of very illustrious weddings including those of Fedez and Chiara Ferragni, Elettra Lamborghini and Afrojack and Bologna footballer Nicola Sansone.

Born in Castelfiorentino. David Bastianoni was a tailor by profession, but he was a great photographer, portraitist, landscape painter, author of real réportages (which have been compared, in some ways, to the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau), which attest with sensitivity and fidelity the historical memory of Castelfiorentino from the early 1940s, succeeding in elevating to history the local and political micro-history.
As of December 5, 2018, Banca Cambiano 1884 S.p.A. (Italy’s oldest Cooperative Credit Bank), owner of the David Bastianoni Fund, has given it on loan to the Fondazione Teatro del Popolo. Inside the theater there is a place exclusively dedicated to it in which all the 33,000 original negatives and the relative test prints are kept, covering a historical period that goes from 1942 to 1955. This fund has been entirely digitized and catalogued, making it available to the public.

Born in Castelfiorentino in 1932.
During the period of his high school studies he founded a film club, which proposed and critically analyzed the recent products of Neorealism. The following years are those of his arrival in Florence, at the University, where Ferrara graduated in Literature with a thesis on the “New Italian Cinema”. After graduation he moved to Rome to attend the course of directing at the Experimental Center of Cinematography. He made two short films in 16mm: “Porto Canale” and “L’amata alla finestra”, both of which received various official awards.
He obtains his directing diploma in 1959. During his periodic returns to his hometown, as part of a project on the Resistance, he shot Brigata partigiana, a documentary in which he mixed reconstructed images with repertory material, a fusion that would soon become his distinctive style. He later devoted himself to the making of documentary films on the Sicilian Mafia, the years of lead and the Resistance, including “Panagulis vive”, “Cento giorni a Palermo”, “Il caso Moro”, “Narcos”, “Giovanni Falcone”, “Segreto di Stato”, “I banchieri di Dio”, “Guido che sfidò le Brigate Rosse”.

Born in Partinico (Palermo) in 1984.
He grows up in Castelfiorentino, he graduates brilliantly at the Conservatory Luigi Cherubini of Florence and then he attends the course of high stylistic interpretative improvement at the Maggio Fiorentino. He is the winner of numerous competitions including the International Verdi Competition in Salsomaggiore Terme (Parma) and the Tita Ruffo Competition where he also won the debut of the role of Duke of Mantua in Livorno. He has also been a member of the Luciano Pavarotti Foundation performing in numerous concerts at the Teatro City Center in New York, the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan and the Teatro Grande in Brescia. He made his debut in Ernani at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. In 2021 he made his debut at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.