Carlotta Nobile

Career

Born into an ancient family, she graduated in violin at the Conservatory of Benevento when she was only 17, attaining First Class Honours with Distinction, under the guide of her mentor Massimo Bacci. After that, in her short but intense career, she took many specialist courses in violin like the one with Pierre Amoyal at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg, with Pavel Vernikov at the International Academy of Portogruaro and at the Fiesole School of Music, and with Eugen Sârbu at London.

Absolute winner of many national competitions, including the First Absolute Prize at the "F. Kreisler" National Violin Competition of Matera (2006) and at the "Città di Viterbo" National Competition (2008), and the First Prize at the Riviera della Versilia National Competition (2005), she took the award of "Distinguished Musician" at the International Ibla Grand Prize 2007 and "Ernest Bloch Special Mention" at the International Ibla Grand Prize 2008.

Marcello Abbado said about her: «an exceptional musician, a sweet and sensitive girl with an extraordinary vocation for music».

She combined music with her passion for arts, taking a bachelor's degree cum laude in Art History Studies at Sapienza University of Rome in 2010 and attending the University of Cambridge (Art History International Summer Courses in 2009), the Contemporary Art Course at Sotheby's Institute of Art of New York (in 2010) and taking the LUISS Master of Art 2011/2012 in Rome.

In December 2008, she released her first book "Il silenzio delle parole nascoste" ("the silence of hidden words"), followed by "Oxymoron", published by Aracne Editrice in 2012. For several years she wrote a music column called "Righe Sonore" on the website Quaderno.it and wrote for the magazine "Realtà Sannita".

At only 21, in 2010, she became the artistic director of Santa Sophia Academy Chamber Orchestra in Benevento. As first Artistic Director, she is committed to the Academy launch, also for the purpose of exporting it outside its region, taking care of the three-year concert program, new formula on the whole national territory. Her proposal for a varied and eclectic program, ranging from Mozart to The Beatles, from Piazzolla to Strauss, from Bach to the Italian Twentieth century and the Neapolitan Eighteenth century, collects acclaim and public success. Nobile will remain active as Artistic Director of Santa Sophia until the untimely death. Her work helped to lay the foundations for the rapid entry of the academy into the Fund for the Performing Arts (FUS) of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage. After her death, the Academy will live three years of stop. It then resumed its activities under the artistic direction of Maestro Filippo Zigante.

During her career, she explored the interconnections among music, contemporary art and writing, using interdisciplinarity and contamination criteria.

In Rome, together with some other young scholars, she founded the group "Almost Curators", with the aim of connecting contemporary art experts with general public. As a member of "Almost Curators" group, she managed cultural events and wrote many articles on the group's blog.

Cancer and the blog

In October 2011, when she was 22, she was diagnosed being afflicted with melanoma: she fronted every possible cure and various surgical interventions while keeping on her musical and artistic career, alternating concerts and hospitals recoveries. On the newspaper La Stampa, Sandro Cappelletto said: “The more the treatment was hard and the diagnosis got worse, the more her music became a form of rebellion to her destiny, her real life, never losing a bit of quality”.

In April 2012, she started, under a concealed identity, her Facebook page "Il Cancro E Poi" ("Cancer and Afterwards") that gave birth to a huge community of people suffering from cancer just like her. They identified themselves with her thoughts, finding a vital help in her words. In August she created the related website.

« I don’t even know how many centimeters of surgery scars have been drawn on my body, but I love them all, one by one. Every single centimeter of etched skin which will never be healed!
Those are the starting points of my wings. »

« Because you want to prove first of all to yourself that you can even suffer from IV stadium metastatic melanoma but LIVE. Live all joys, projects, sorrows, tears that life gives you every single day.
Because there’s an Afterwards you’ll never stop fighting for. Because nobody can keep you away from the certainty that – despite all the scars, surgeries, needles in veins, tests, contrast liquids, therapies and sorrows – there’s a unique happiness waiting for you, there’s your greatest dream which keeps looking at you from the future and can’t wait to reach you. Because you know that all you’re living now will be given back to you.
Because you clearly feel that the way you now have to look at life could have been reached just through this sorrow. »

During the period of her illness, playing in a duo with the pianist Martin Berkofsky, she joined "Donatori di Musica" ("donors of music"), a social community involved in bringing music concerts in the Italian cancer wards. About her social and charity commitment there’s the book “Donatori di musica” by L. Fumagalli, Curci Editions (2015).

Her Faith and the letter to the Pope

In the last months of her life, Carlotta lived a deep Faith experience, born suddenly on 4 March 2013 at her awakening from a crisis that brought her to the Hospital of Milan for a few days. This fact, perceived like a revelation, was anonymously told by Carlotta on her blog dedicated to cancer in the last post before her death:

« I’m healed in my soul. In an instant, in an ordinary day, as I awoke from a crisis.
I opened my eyes and I found I was a new person. And that’s a miracle. »

She continued in the same post:

« And in a moment you understand that the cancer can HEAL YOUR SOUL, restore the balance in your life essence and give you Faith, hope, self abandon, consciousness of finally becoming who you really wanted to be in all your life but never were: a PEACEFUL WOMAN. So you understand that it’s the cancer that leads you to finally love yourself wholeheartedly, in your strengths and weaknesses, it leads you to savour each moment, each smell, each flavour, each perception, each word, each sharing, every little fragment of infinity condensed in a very common and very precious moment. You understand that it’s cancer with its torment and aggressiveness, with its brutality, to bring you the LIGHT in the end. »

Her spirituality was considerably inspired by Pope Francis’s sermon calling young people to bear the Cross with joy (24 March 2013 Homily).

On Good Friday 2013, in the centre of Rome, Carlotta was looking for a church because she wanted to confess but usually they are closed during the lunch break. The only one left open was the San Giacomo in Augusta Church, in Via del Corso. There Carlotta met the parish priest don Giuseppe Trappolini, they had a very touching conversation and, as Don Giuseppe said, she «cried from Joy» as she talked about her story, her battle against melanoma and the tranquillity she felt after listening to the words of Pope Francis. The priest was moved by a remarkable coincidence: just the day before he was received with some other roman priests by the Pope and in that occasion the Holy Father asked them to keep the churches open on Good Friday all day long to allow anybody to confess. So Don Trappolini decided to tell the Pope the story of Carlotta in a letter and the Pope rang up back to tell he would pray for her. Even Carlotta wrote him a letter to communicate her faith in life and in God’s encounter.

You can read in the letter:

« Dear Pope Francis,
You have changed my life.
I am honored and blessed to be able to carry the Cross with Joy at the age of 24. I know that cancer has healed my soul, by loosening all my interior knots and giving me Faith, Trust, Surrender, and an immense Serenity right at the time when my illness was most severe.
I trust in the Lord, and on my difficult and troubled path, I always see His help.
Dear Pope Francis, You have changed my life.
I would like to ask You something… I have an immense desire to meet You, even for only a moment. To pray together with You the “Our Father”!
“Give us this day our daily bread" and “Deliver us from evil” Amen.
I entrust this dream of mine to Don Giuseppe and I trust in God!
Pray for me, Holy Father. I pray for You every day.
Carlotta. »

Thanks to Don Trappolini, Carlotta was about to meet personally the Pope but, in May 2013 her condition started to get worse and so she went back to Benevento and she spent the last months of her life in her family house. In those months she dedicated herself to prayers in a mood of total trust, self abandon, and gratitude with God. After two years of struggle, she died at the age of 24. The death of the Violin Angel – as the media and the web called her – was announced on the most renowned newspapers and national tv channels.

Testimony of Faith

Her funerals were held in the morning of 17 July 2013 in the Basilica church of San Bartolomeo, so full to not contain all the people coming. After having read some fragments and personal messages through which Carlotta announced calmly the "healing" of her soul, the Rector of the Church Mgr Mario De Santis preached in his homily: «Young people, move, walk and find yourselves! She found the Faith. Today it’s not a sad day, on the contrary the bells will ring in a festive way because even if we cry for having lost a person, on the other side this event offers us the meaning of Resurrection».

The Archbishop of Benevento Andrea Mugione remembered her as «an extraordinary example of Faith and love ending with sacrifice».

Her story of Faith, told and translated in different languages in 2016 by the catholic information site Aleteia, has spread on the web and on the Catholic press in Italy (where it was broadcast on the news of TV2000, Italian Episcopal Conference's TV channel), United States, France, Slovenia, Croatia, Spain, Mexico, Portugal, Brazil, India and Vietnam.

In January 2017 the University Ministry of the Archdiocese of Benevento started the Facebook page "Carlotta Nobile, Testimone di Fede" ("Carlotta Nobile, Witness of Faith") to «collect, keep and enhance her beautiful testament of Faith, that keeps on drawing admiration and keeps on connecting many people, especially the young ones, from all over the world».

Recognitions

In September 2013, she posthumously received the ANLAI Prize, and the Arechi II Prize from the Province of Benevento in June 2014.

The Sapienza University of Rome awarded her a posthumous MA degree in Art History Studies and, with solemnity, on 22 November 2014, dedicated to her memory the hall Aula Tre of the History of Art and Performance Arts Department «for her fine studies on the relationships among Art, Music and Writings».

Thanks to the will of Donatori di Musica group, the music hall of the cancer ward of San Maurizio Hospital in Bolzano has borne her name from 6 August 2014.

On 20 September 2016 the Benevento city Council disclosed that the nursery school in via Firenze has been named after Carlotta Nobile, because of her «extraordinary example of Faith, love and life». With the participation of the highest authorities of the city, the ceremony of entitlement was held on 20 December 2016, on Carlotta’s birthday. In that occasion the mayor Clemente Mastella said: «The entitlement of the nursery school to Carlotta Nobile is for all of us a very important event. Carlotta is a positive example of the spirit of resilience Pope Francis always talks about: in fact she fronted the adversities with a deep strength and courage. Her example is to be followed by the entire community».

On 31 October 2013 American pianist Martin Berkofsky (with whom Carlotta shared the dedication to Donatori di Musica) in one of his last performances before his death, wanted to commemorate Carlotta with a concert held in Milan at the Società del Giardino, playing the religious piano compositions written by Franz Liszt.

On 12 February 2015, the organization "Associazione Centro Studi Carlotta Nobile" was born in order to keep alive her cultural works and activities for young people; it is building a research facility that bears her name and promotes initiatives related to her passions and cultural studies. The organization, with the partnership and the scientific supervision of the History of Art and Performance Arts Department of the Sapienza University of Rome, in October 2015, announced the competition "Premio Carlotta Nobile", consisting of €5.000 for a Master of Arts dissertation about the relationships between Art and Music.