The research

Our research begins in 2019, when we learn about a collection of ocarinas from the end of the 19th century in Vila Franca de Xira, a small town near Lisbon. We therefore ask ourselves the reason for the unusual presence of ocarinas in Portugal and intrigued we discover that the first group of ocarinists from Budrio (Alberto and Ercole Mezzetti, Ulisse Avoni, Davide Mignani, Giuseppe Grossi, Cesare Vicinelli and Federico Vignoli) in 1873 embarked on a tour under the French name of ""Les Montagnardes de les Appennines" playing in the most important cities of Europe. It was in the winter of 1875 that at the end of a series of concerts in Lisbon, following some unclear dynamics, the group broke up and returned to Budrio. But it was too late: the seed of the ocarina had already been planted and, a few months after those performances, other ocarinistic groups, imitators of the Montanari degli Appennini, begin to arise. The phenomenon is so successful that some of them will leave for Brazil, where they will perform in various concerts. And here too history repeats itself. The enthusiasm is strong, so much so that other groups of ocarinas are born even in this distant continent.

How many groups of ocarinas could have been born following the European tours of the first Budrio group and what traces did it leave in these lands? Our goal is to retrieve as much information as possible and map their diffusion.

Through digital and non-digital archives, libraries, newspaper articles and texts, at the moment we have been able to partially reconstruct the ocarina's journey to Portugal and Brazil and the enthusiasm that the music of this terracotta instrument has brought.