In conjunction with the concert and round table devoted to Giacomo Manzoni on 3 June at the Teatro Verdi, Padua, the Institute of Music will hold a study day on the composer’s relationship with the literary world. Even when a student, Manzoni was particularly interested in 20th-century literature, especially German literature. In 1955 he graduated in foreign languages and literature from Bocconi University with a thesis on the presence of music in the works of Thomas Mann. The Lübeck writer’s important influence on him is demonstrated by the opera Doktor Faustus (1989). Manzoni’s vocal and theatrical compositions are based on a peculiar technique of reassembling and elaborating texts, revealing a marked aptitude for literary creation. Starting from the materials preserved in the Institute of Music archive, Giacomo Albert, Pietro Cavallotti, Giorgio Panizza and Elena Polledri will deal with paradigmatic cases concerning the setting to music of texts by Hölderlin, Beckett, Ginsberg and various Italian poets (Caproni, Zanzotto, Leonetti, Fortini and Raboni).