At the heart of the Cremonese violin-making tradition, Wanna Zambelli holds a unique place: the first Italian woman to graduate from the International School of Violin Making in Cremona, a student of Pietro Sgarabotto and collaborator of Francesco Bissolotti, she lived through — as a leading protagonist — an unparalleled era of twentieth-century violin making. In this interview, she retraces her formative years alongside legendary masters such as Simone Fernando Sacconi, the revival of the classical Cremonese method, the direct relationship between violin maker and musician, the challenges of teaching, and the transformations of contemporary violin making, caught between the protection of artisanal quality and the rise of new technologies. A valuable testimony intertwining personal memory, cultural history, and the future of the art of the violin.

Maestra Zambelli, when you decided to enroll at the International School of Violin Making in Cremona in 1968, female presence in the field was almost nonexistent. What drove you toward such an unusual choice for that time?

It was 1968, I was fifteen years old and living in Volongo — I am not originally from Cremona, but from the other side of the Oglio River, from the town where Carla Fracci spent her youth and where, on October 7, 1964, she also married Beppe Menegatti.

After a joyless year at the technical institute (too many subjects, too much theory), on October 1, 1968, I crossed the threshold of the Palazzo dell’Arte in Cremona, which at that time housed the International School of Violin Making and where today the Violin Museum is located. In this way I became the first Italian female student at the school, which had opened in 1938 after the 1937 celebrations marking the bicentenary of Antonio Stradivari’s death; perhaps it was destiny, maybe helped by the fact that I share the surname of the great master’s second wife (Antonia Maria Zambelli). Before me there had been only two women at the school, one Swiss student many years earlier and then a French one.

As soon as I started, I realized I liked it! On the first day I was introduced to Maestro Pietro Sgarabotto and Maestro GioBatta Morassi (then his assistant). Sgarabotto immediately took me under his wing, even though he terrified me with sayings such as: “Give me a lever and I will lift the world,” as if to say, let’s see what we can make of this country girl. He showed me a series of models of “f-holes” (the sound holes on the violin top), which all looked identical to me. They were plaster casts made by his father Gaetano from antique instruments, which he kept like relics, and he wanted me to point out the differences between one and another. I thought: “If this is the first day, I don’t know how this is going to end for me.” He had his own theory: “A violin maker, who is an artist and not a carpenter, can be understood by what he creates. Therefore you must study him deeply through his instruments.”

As a teacher, Sgarabotto was something of a romantic figure, while Morassi was more pragmatic and spoke in a more modern and understandable way.

Fortunately, already on the second day, during carving class, Maestro Francesco Bissolotti, who had barely seen me the first day, was immediately enthusiastic about the way I used my hands. He told me: “As soon as you finish school, come work with me.” That was when I realized I was in the right place.

Going to school was fun for me. When holidays came, I got bored because I had nothing to do at home. In my class there were six students of different ages (ten in the whole school): we were like a family. And so I never had any difficulty. I loved sitting at the workbench and figuring out how things had to be done.

You have often recalled the atmosphere of Cremona’s violin-making world in the 1960s as a still small and almost family-like environment. What kind of city was Cremona then for a young aspiring luthier?

My decision to devote myself to this art came at a time when the Cremonese violin-making landscape consisted of only a limited number of workshops, with leading figures such as GioBatta Morassi, Francesco Bissolotti, and Giorgio Cè among the few who had opened their own businesses. At that time Cremona did not even have a music conservatory, a sign of a musical and violin-making scene far less structured than it would later become. There were hardly any musicians around. My decision to enter this world arose from a strong personal interest in violin making, but also from a certain boldness in pursuing a career in a field where female presence was then almost nonexistent.

Pietro Sgarabotto was your first teacher. What was the most important lesson you received from him, both technically and personally?

During my years of training, I had the opportunity to study with Pietro Sgarabotto, a master “of the old school,” with a large black bow instead of a tie and long hair like a nineteenth-century artist. He also had a great passion for motorcycles, one of the first BMW models.

Being a student of a respected, affable, and patient master like Sgarabotto gave me a solid technical foundation. His teaching, though tied to a traditional vision, allowed me to understand a great deal about wood and its craftsmanship. He made me understand that to become a good violin maker one must begin as an apprentice, sweeping the workshop floor and stealing the master’s art with one’s eyes.

For him, time did not matter. Everything had to be done by hand, so the student could understand every single step. At first I liked this very much, but as the years passed, his “baroque” way of teaching began to weigh on me.

Sgarabotto told me that by looking at an instrument, one could see the person who made it. And indeed it is true: if it is made properly, one at a time, patiently, then in my opinion a little of who you are at that moment goes into it. Over the years I understood that making perfectly flawless violins is not the most important thing; what matters is giving them more personality. Or perhaps it is simply natural: at first one tries to imitate, then gradually one gives the instrument one’s own personal imprint.

Sgarabotto had a sacred respect for materials; nothing was to be wasted. After my lunch in the cafeteria, during the first hours of Wednesday afternoon in Piazza Marconi (where the market was then held), he and I, like two street sweepers, would go collect abandoned packaging from the sold goods in order to make violin molds and templates from it. Instead of buying brushes to spread glue, he made them using the horsehair from broken bows. No waste allowed!

Meeting Francesco Bissolotti seems to have marked a decisive turning point in your path. How did his workshop help you understand the classical Cremonese method more deeply?

After graduating, it was my meeting with Francesco Bissolotti that definitively shaped my path. Bissolotti, already engaged at that time in recovering the original Stradivarian methodology together with the great violin maker and restorer Simone Fernando Sacconi, became my principal mentor, introducing me to a vision of violin making that went beyond simple construction to become historical and acoustic research.

From 1972 to 1975, my apprenticeship in Bissolotti’s workshop led me to fully understand the importance and meaning of the classical Cremonese method of violin construction (internal mold and purfling with the body closed), to the point that I collaborated with him on the traveling exhibition “Classical Violin Making: A Method. Stradivari and the Cremonese School” (thirty successful installations in Italy and Europe, beginning in 1980 at La Scala in Milan).

Bissolotti taught me in particular the importance of constant dialogue with the musician. An essential moment in this perspective came in October 1983, when several great performers gathered in Bissolotti’s workshop: Salvatore Accardo, Bruno Giuranna, and Rocco Filippini. In an atmosphere of genuine cordiality, instruments by Bissolotti, his sons, and one of my violins passed from hand to hand amid rapid exchanges of opinions and brilliant testing sessions.

This happy moment of comparison about the aesthetic and acoustic quality of the instruments later became the subject of a report filmed directly in the workshop by RAI’s Channel 1, where Salvatore Accardo was interviewed about the special five-string viola that Bissolotti had built especially for him, and where Accardo himself presented one of my violins with a brief acoustic demonstration.

From this atmosphere of collaboration came further momentum for the direct relationship between me and the Swiss cellist Rocco Filippini. One of Filippini’s students had recently received the cello I had built for him; Filippini himself had had the opportunity to try and appreciate one of my instruments made for a Milanese concert performer, so it seemed almost natural that the great cellist would seek, through me, to fulfill his desire to experiment in concert with a modern instrument capable of meeting the demands of a soloist. Thus came the commission for a cello that Filippini greatly appreciated: we chose the wood together, and he followed every stage of the work. It took quite a long time to build, but it turned out well, and he personally used it, alternating the antique classical instrument with the modern “classical” one.

Another testimony among many is my cello played in concert (together with two violins and a viola by Bissolotti) in April 1985 at the Teatro Manzoni in Pistoia by the famous Lindsay String Quartet. Likewise, the violin I built in 1985 for Beverley Wescott, a renowned performer in the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales.

From this direct and living relationship between the personality of the violin maker and that of the musician, between the work of construction and that of performance and musical interpretation, came the natural modern development of classical violin making and every serious discourse on creative experimentation.

In 1972 you found yourself alongside Simone Fernando Sacconi during the final phase of writing The “Secrets” of Stradivari. What memories do you retain of that extraordinary experience?

It was precisely in Bissolotti’s workshop that I had the privilege of meeting and learning from one of the greatest modern violin makers and restorers: the Italian-American Maestro Simone Fernando Sacconi. Although Sacconi was not my direct teacher at the school, his influence proved decisive. My interactions with him, especially his profound knowledge of Stradivari’s construction “secrets,” had a major impact on my approach to the classical Cremonese method.

The opportunity to learn from Sacconi, who had dedicated his life to studying Stradivari and the great classical masters, allowed me to acquire a unique perspective and develop a full understanding of the art of violin making.

Sacconi, author of the fundamental text The “Secrets” of Stradivari, was in Cremona in the summer and autumn of 1972 precisely to complete his work, offering me direct exposure to his profound insights into the construction method of the supreme violin maker.

This interaction with Sacconi was not a simple formal lesson; it represented the unmediated transmission of Cremonese violin-making knowledge that in 2012 would later be recognized by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity.

Alongside the construction of tools in Bissolotti’s workshop, and with his help, Sacconi had begun preparing a new varnish that he wanted to resemble Stradivari’s and whose preparation process he later meticulously described in his book. He was constantly searching for natural substances, for resins then impossible to find in Cremona, as well as for violin-making tools that he had specially made by a blacksmith. In short, it was continuous experimentation.

He talked to me about violin making even while I drove him in my Fiat 500 to visit his wife Teresita, who was hospitalized in Cremona. I remember fondly that at first he seemed hesitant, as though afraid to get into such a tiny and fragile little car, but later, out of necessity, he took courage, and I never once heard him complain about the driver.

I was fascinated by his great love for antique instruments. He loved them more than anything else; when he took them in his hands, it was as if he were caressing them, while at the same time handling them with a certain firmness. He spoke of the instruments by name, as if they were people, and remembered every detail about them — he had an incredible memory. He said he would have liked to write a book on restoration as well, to explain all the techniques he had perfected over the years at Herrmann and later at Wurlitzer (great restoration houses in New York); unfortunately, he never had the time.

You later dedicated a book and numerous testimonies to Sacconi. Who was Sacconi really in the daily life of the workshop, beyond the myth of the great restorer and scholar?

In addition to the multilingual book From Violin Making to Music: The Work of Simone Fernando Sacconi, conceived and promoted by Bissolotti and myself and presented in 1985 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. (with testimonies from the greatest violin makers, restorers, and musicians who had known him), in June 2023, on the occasion of the celebrations marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Maestro’s death, I presented at the Violin Museum, together with museum curator Fausto Cacciatori and violin maker Marco Vinicio Bissolotti, the volume Simone Fernando Sacconi. Violin Maker, Restorer and One of the Greatest Experts of the Twentieth Century, edited by Marco Vinicio and myself. From these two publications emerges the figure of a great expert, but also of a kind and completely open person, unafraid to share his knowledge, especially with young people. Just as he did with me in Bissolotti’s workshop. In short, he was an adoptive father to young violin makers.

At the workbench, almost every day, Sacconi was busy with Bissolotti building a violin inspired by the Stradivari model known as the Cremonese 1715, always surrounded by people pestering him with requests for explanations and advice. During that period he was finishing his book The “Secrets” of Stradivari, and the assistants working on the manuscript often came to see him. However, he was so busy that after some time, in order to work more calmly, he began arriving at the workshop earlier than scheduled, in the early afternoon, when only I was present because, coming from outside Cremona, I spent my lunch break there.

Those were memorable moments of precious teachings. I addressed him naturally, without fear, certain that he would immediately grasp the meaning of my questions, even when they were imprecise. And he, although I was the newest arrival, spoke to me as if I were a colleague or a famous violinist; he explained things with simplicity, with a clarity that made them seem almost obvious. In doing so, he proved himself not only a great violin maker, but also a great teacher and a great man.

Is there an episode, a gesture, or a phrase from Sacconi that you feel you carried with you throughout your life in the way you build instruments and teach?

One of the most significant episodes dates back to an early summer morning in 1972 in Bissolotti’s workshop, when we received the daily visit of Sacconi, already elderly but still extraordinarily lucid.

Sacconi entered in silence and began observing a nearly finished violin on my bench. He picked it up delicately, slowly turned it under the natural light, and began making small observations:

— The curve of the top arching was “almost perfect,” but it could gain more visual tension.
— The f-holes were well cut, but he suggested I should also “feel” their vibration with my eyes. By “feel,” he meant that the violin maker’s eye must grasp the vibrational potential of those curves: it is not enough to verify their geometric architecture; one must visually perceive the sound energy that the design will release.
— The purfling of the top was precise, but Sacconi stressed that “precision is not enough — it also needs soul.”

Bissolotti, who knew Sacconi’s character well, remained silent, allowing me to be the one to engage in dialogue. Emotional but determined, I answered point by point, explaining my construction choices with clarity and passion. Sacconi smiled, nodded, and concluded with a sentence I have always carried with me: “Remember: the hand must be precise, but the eye must be even more severe.” Years later, I would recount that episode to my students at the Violin Making School, turning it into a lesson in method and humility.

You were among the first female violin makers to graduate in Cremona and the first Italian woman to achieve this milestone. Did you ever feel distrust or encounter obstacles because you were a woman in a traditionally male environment?

When I began, there were six of us in my class at the Violin Making School. It was the first year out of a total of four. Only two of us were Italian; the others were foreigners and over twenty years old. No other girl entered the school during my years of study, but I never felt treated worse than the others. Little by little, the school and Cremonese violin making gained prestige, and the number of students increased to fifteen in my final year.

Throughout your long teaching career, you trained students from all over the world. Beyond pure construction technique, what did you seek to pass on to young people?

Over the years I came to appreciate the importance of Sacconi’s lesson; I understood and personally experienced that his method of work (which before being technical is a mental attitude), and his desire to do things well, in the wake of the tradition of the old masters and in respect of the natural timing of craftsmanship, are the basis of a good result. A person must take pleasure in making an instrument: if they do it only because they can sell it in the end, or if they make five in a row because at that moment they need money, it is understandable, but it does no good for violin making.

That is the legacy Sacconi left me and that I tried to pass on to my many students during forty-four years of teaching at the International School of Violin Making, with the hope — or perhaps the illusion — of having scattered a fruitful seed, without however pretending that violin making should become everyone’s reason for living, as it was for Sacconi and as it is for me.

Today many digital technologies are entering artistic craftsmanship as well. In your opinion, which aspects of violin making can never be replaced by machines?

As Sacconi used to repeat, in violin making, to move forward one must go backward; one must deeply study the great classical masters. This is not about being against technology, but about placing it at the service of the violin maker, his culture, and his creativity. Today there are those who claim that within a few years artificial intelligence will make it possible to build perfect violins without any need for the violin maker. I am convinced instead that it will never replace the craftsman’s experience, aesthetic taste, or knowledge of wood, which is always different in its physical characteristics, seasoning, and much more. Certainly, if we think about factory-made violins, machines are already capable of producing endless copies. But is that really what we want for high-quality Cremonese violin making? Is that how we defend its prestige around the world?

Cremonese violin making has been recognized by UNESCO as an intangible heritage of humanity. In your opinion, has this recognition truly changed the way the craft of the violin maker is perceived and protected?

The importance of UNESCO recognition is fundamental, but it is not enough. In Cremona there are many well-known problems affecting violin making. From the protection of excellent master craftsmen, who find themselves competing with widespread illegal practices (the now infamous “white violins,” purchased unfinished abroad, varnished beneath the Torrazzo, and resold as made in Cremona), to the need to certify violin makers’ professionalism, to the need to increasingly promote high-quality Cremonese violin making in order to encourage and strengthen the direct relationship between violin maker and musician — or at least to open it to higher-level markets. In short, much still needs to be done to protect Cremona’s reputation in the world.

Looking to the future, what are the main challenges facing contemporary Italian violin making? And what advice would you give today to a young man or woman who wishes to enter this profession?

I am aware of the challenges posed by growing competition from other regions, such as China, where the quality of produced instruments is increasingly high while prices remain more affordable. Cremona must focus above all on quality and on maintaining its unique identity in order to remain competitive. Alongside the efforts already made, it remains urgent to find a concrete system to protect Cremonese violin making from illegal practices, ensuring that those who open a workshop in the city possess the necessary qualifications and certified training, without exploiting the name of Stradivari’s city for cheap commercial purposes. It is necessary to preserve the high artisanal standards associated with Cremona and protect the “Made in Cremona” brand, safeguarding its prestige and value in the global market. From the classical violin to the DOC violin.

To young people who, after leaving school, are beginning the profession, I would give only one piece of advice: find a good violin maker, undertake a solid apprenticeship in his or her workshop, and work with patience and dedication, without being dazzled by the quantity of instruments produced. A high-quality violin is worth far more — economically as well — than many quickly made violins produced for the satisfaction of merchants. One may begin by thinking of the child learning to play who needs an inexpensive instrument, but one should aspire one day to be worthy of the demands of a concert soloist.

Photo Gallery

Wanna Zambelli at the workbench in her workshop. Cremona, January 1983. Photo: © 1983 David Lees, Zambelli’s Studio

Violin maker Wanna Zambelli receives the gold medal and plaque of the “Simone Fernando Sacconi” Prize from the Mayor of Cremona, Senator Emilio Zanoni, at the 5th National Biennale of Bowed String Instruments. Cremona, September 21, 1973. Photo: © 1973 Zambelli Archive

Wanna Zambelli (front row, wearing a dark shirt) with her students on her final day of teaching, after forty-four years, at the “Antonio Stradivari” International School of Violin Making. Cremona, June 28, 2018. Photo: © 2018 The Strad, London, accompanying the feature “Female luthiers: And justice for all?” by Femke Colborne, November 2018.