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Siena

1 procaccia.JPG

Napoleone Procaccia with his wife (Museo Ebraico di Siena)

Leo Levi recorded 14 tunes of the Siena repertoire in 1956 from the voice of Geremia Mario Castelnuovo. He had studied the ritual with his maternal grandfather, Napoleone Procaccia, at the time capoculto of the Siena synagogue.

Levi positioned this particular tradition in the Italian milieu, together with other central Italian repertoires already disappearing at the time: Ancona, Pitigliano, Firenze (Italian tradition). But sephardic influences from Livorno are clearly present in what these recordings present us.

(a selection of recordings from Livorno. Click on the items on the map to listen)