The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Written by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Read by David Horovitch
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Naxos AudioBooks
Release date: January 11, 2012
Duration: 09:02:20

Elegiac, bittersweet and profoundly moving, The Leopard chronicles the turbulent transformation of the Risorgimento, in the period of Italian Unification.

The waning feudal authority of the elegant and stately Prince of Salina is pitted against the materialistic cunning of Don Calogero, in Tomasi’s magnificently descriptive memorial to a dying age. Tomasi’s award-winning, semi-autobiographical book became the best-selling novel in Italian history, and is now considered one of the greatest works of 20th-century fiction.

It tells an age-old tale of the conflict between old and new, ancient and modern, reflecting bitterly on the inevitability and cruelty of change

“Even through the most active scenes, David Horovitch always projects a hint of the elegiac tone that suffuses this novel. Published in 1958, di Lampedusa’s story recounts the changes in Sicilian culture that took place during the violent Italian unification of the mid-1800s. Listeners, many of whom might know nothing of mid-eighteenth-century Sicily, will feel the strains of change–the one constant aspect of history. Most of the book is told the from point of view of Fabrizio, a nobleman, and Horovitch’s voice makes him gruff and cultured, noble with an edge of barbarism. We feel the prince’s conflict between his love of his own past and his appreciation for the possibilities of the newly unified Italy.” …..(*) AudioFile

In 1963 Il Gattopardo was made into a film, directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and Claudia Cardinale; it won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The movie has a excellent film score written by Nino Rota.