Twenty Minutes - Viva la Musica! Viva il Duce!

William Ward, an authority on 20th-century Italian politics and culture, talks to historians and musicians to ask if Respighi's famously colourful Fountains of Rome, Pines of Rome and Roman Festivals are just a series of picture postcards designed to please any tourist? Or do they reflect a proto-fascist and fascist agenda? Illuminating this little-known corner of European cultural history from the 1920s, 30s and 40s, William makes some some surprising discoveries, such as the contrast between Nazi and fascist policy, and the baleful shadow fascism's legacy still casts over contemporary Italian musical life.