Claudio Vela
The Crolla Amato Gadda Prize
Best Published Scholarly Work on Gadda
Panel 1 Judge
Claudio Vela graduated from Pavia University (1979) with a thesis on Pietro Bembo’s Rime. He taught at the Universities of Pavia (Faculty of Paleography and Musical Philology), Trieste (Scuola Superiore di Lingue Moderne per interpreti e traduttori) and again Pavia (Faculty of Musicology, based in Cremona), where he is professor of Italian Philology.
Vela’s research interests range from Renaissance lyric texts for music (with editions of the literary text of Book Nine, Three and Six of Monteverdi’s Madrigali, 1983, 1988, 1991) and the textual tradition of Bembo’s works (with essays published in Studi di Filologia Italiana, 1981, 1988) to 20th century literature, in particular Gadda studies. He edited the editio princeps of Bembo’s Prose della volgar lingua (2001), and Baldassar Castiglione’s and Cesare Gonzaga’s Tirsi in La poesia pastorale nel Rinascimento (1998). He also edited Carlo Dionisotti’s Scritti sul Bembo (2002), and an early Italian text, the so-called Frammento Piacentino, in Tracce di una tradizione sommersa. I primi testi lirici italiani tra poesia e musica (2005). He has published widely in scholarly journals (Anticomoderno, Stilistica e metrica italiana, The Edinburgh Journal of Gadda Studies) and conference proceedings and Festschriften, contributing critical and philological studies on Dante, Petrarca, Sacchetti, Ariosto, Bembo, Machiavelli, Della Casa, poetry for music from the Duecento to the Cinquecento, and 20th century authors such as Angelo Maria Ripellino and Carlo Emilio Gadda.
Vela was part of Dante Isella’s team in the 5 vols Garzanti edition of Gadda’s works (1988-1993), for which he edited Il primo libro delle Favole, the Translations and the radio play Háry János. He also published an annotated edition of Gadda’s Il primo libro delle Favole (1990), Gadda’s translation of Ruiz de Alarcón’s La verità sospetta (1993), and Gadda’s collected interviews, «Per favore, mi lasci nell’ombra» (1993). More recently he compiled a census of Gadda’s letters for Issues nos. 1-5 (2001-2007) of I Quaderni dell’Ingegnere. Studi e testi gaddiani, directed by Dante Isella.
He is currently on the Editorial Board of I Quaderni dell'Ingegnere and The Edinburgh Journal of Gadda Studies, and acts as editorial reader and advisor for Filologia Italiana.
