2006 Award

Milan 22 November 2006 - The honourable Francesco Rutelli, Minister for Cultural Goods and Activities, during a small ceremony held at the Celeste Aida Exhibition at the La Scala Theatre Museum, received the Casa Ricordi Lastra Award for 2006.

The Casa Ricordi Lastra Award represents the creativity and hard work that have always characterized the Milan-based printing company. This award was founded by its founder Giovanni Ricordi, and is considered the top prize in the industrialisation of the music business in Italy and the rest of the world.

“ I am particularly honoured this year to be able to give Minister Francesco Rutelli the Casa Ricordi Lastra Award, engraved in 1906 with the beginning of Act III of the Aida.  This award is given to honour the special contribution Minister Rutelli has made to highlighting the richness and the heritage of the Ricordi Archive to the general public, thanks to initiatives such as Celeste Aida Exhibition shown when the opera was being carried out at the La Scala Theatre”, declared Tino Cennamo, President of Casa Ricordi.

The Casa Ricordi Lastra award will be granted annually during the three years of the Bicentennial Celebrations of Casa Ricordi, inaugurated by the Celeste Aida exhibition on 14th November 2006. The ex-President of the Italian Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, was the last person to receive such a recognition during the Verdi celebrations.

The 2006 Casa Ricordi Lastra award  is a hand-carved printing plate once used to print high quality musical and orchestral scores for musicians and bands. The Ricordi archive still has a few printing plates that date back to the beginning of the last century. At the start of the 1900s, in spite of the improvement of lithographic techniques and the emergence of offset machines, traditional printing methods using the hand carved printing plates continued to be used to print music until the computerised era of the 1990s.

At the 2006 award ceremony, Tino Cennamo, President of Casa Ricordi, awarded the 2006 Lastra to Minister Fracesco Rutelli. In 2002, the recipient of the first Lastra was the President of the Italian Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. President Ciampi and President Cennamo found an antique edition of “Pater Noster” by Giuseppe Verdi.