Muscician and Orchestra Director
Carlo Farina was born in Sanremo on 7 November 1921 to Angelo and Barbara Guardiano.
Belonging to a well-known family of flower growers, he felt a vocation for music from a very young age and decided to begin a regular course of studies by enrolling at the "G. Verdi" Conservatory of Turin, where he studied with Alfano, Cimbro, Gedda, Ghedini, Della Corte, Quaglia, Perracchio and Rocca, obtaining diplomas in composition, choral music and conducting with excellent marks.
In December 1951, in his early thirties, he took over the direction of the Sanremo Symphony Orchestra, becoming its permanent conductor three years later.
In 1959, on the initiative of the Municipality's councillor for tourism, Gino De Mori, he was given the double task of artistic director and permanent director of the Symphony Orchestra, which was simultaneously enlarged to sixty elements with the recruitment of new orchestral professors. In 1960 he held a series of concerts with Maestro Aldo Ferraresi and recorded Mascagni's Isabeau, Puccini's La Bohéme and Zandonai's Concita on Cetra records.
Five years later, he gave a concert dedicated to the memory of the late Maestro Franco Alfano.
In the meantime, he carried out an intense activity abroad, conducting concerts in Germany, Austria, Romania, Czechoslovakia and the United States. In spite of these prestigious international achievements, Farina devoted all his energies to the Sanremo Symphony Orchestra, which he considered "his" orchestra and which, thanks to the intervention of Councillor De Mori, a member of the Italian Concert Association, was included in 1967 in the list of Italian symphonic institutions of "national interest".
After leading the Matuzian Symphony for twenty-seven years without interruption, Farina finally died of illness in a Sanremo clinic on 19 February 1980 at the age of 58.
Three years after his death, a memorial concert in his memory was organised and held at the Teatro dell'Opera del Casino on 28 April 1983. Of his activity as a composer, some of his youthful compositions are particularly memorable, including "Silenzio" and "Notte di pianto per canto e pianoforte", the "Poema delle montagne", which he had presented for the exam in choral music at the Conservatory and which was then entrusted to the voice of the baritone Arturo Testa, and the Sanremo song "Variante amurùusu" on verses by Carlo Alberto.
(Sources: text by Andrea Gandolfo; images from WEB)