The study of the objects collected by Evan Gorga reveals the character of one of the most eccentric tenors of all time, who left his collection of musical instruments - Italy's largest - to the Italian state.
The unpublished documents and images that have emerged from the archive paint an interesting picture of the passion for collecting antiques in Rome in the 19th and 20th centuries, and refer to the vogue’s most famous collectors. This volume of research pays homage to the endless and extremely varied collection of archeological artifacts that belonged to Evangelista Gorga, to mark its reappearance, after decades of oblivion, in the new setting created specially for it at Palazzo Altemps, where the tenor once lived. A team of specialists has re-examined the many categories of material that he accumulated (Roman frescoes and stuccoes, weird conglomerations of ancient and modern glass, inscriptions, all kinds of ceramics, antefixes, bronze statuettes, domestic china, oil-lamps tackle for horses, toys and Egyptian artifacts) and carried out extensive research on the antiques market.