Emilia Romagna
The magical luthier's hole in Calbano, Romagna
In Calbano, Romagna, is the workshop of a luthier, Elvis Moro, who makes guitars using traditional techniques and fine materials. Each instrument takes six months to make. The tale of his work.
By Anna de Fazio Siciliano | 20/03/2025 15:36
In Calban, Romagna, there is a luthier who collects resin from trees. He personally fetches it in Trentino to build his finest instruments, Italian guitars and violas, the old-fashioned way. He, Elvis Moro, uses not only resin but also animal glues and one by one sets the most delicate strings to put his instruments together piece by piece, while immersed in an unreal silence, necessary to his craft, he cultivates the unusual gift of slowness.
His only company is a cat that sometimes peeks out to spy on rare passersby from the little balcony above the entrance to his house-shop located in a narrow alley of the small medieval village of Calban. It is in cases like these that we can speak of trades that survive, that resist fashion, despite the speed of modern times, so much so that even in a land like Romagna that we mistakenly know only for its noisy and lively Riviera, there are those who dare to spend their lives aggregating beauty with music. In cases like these, almost by magic, scattered fragments of a cosmic universe have reassembled to dive inside the workshop of a luthier who, to build his instruments, babbles strange mathematical formulas and bizarre quantum codes. Everything is held in the secrecy of universal harmony.
As for the guitars he composes, they are custom-built: "the magical luthier" literally takes measurements of the hands of the musicians who commission him to make the guitar, the same ones who will then make it vibrate in concert in the spell of his silk strings. The time it takes him to make a guitar is about six months, since one must possess the capacity for anticipation in order to see it and then play it and make it throb. That same waiting, however, is soon rewarded, for the music that comes out of those strings is unparalleled.
In Calban's workshop, I heard Elvis Moro do a C turn and perform a song reinterpreted by De André: it seemed to come from a choir of angels come down to touch, if only for a few moments, psychè, our soul. On the same occasion, to learn more about it, I talked to him about it. Out of curiosity to know how this passion that he did not inherit from his family came about, how long he has been cultivating it, how he managed to make it a way of life, what this choice entailed, and most importantly, how he builds, day after day, instruments, who are the musicians who buy his guitars and violas.
"Music, partly for fun, partly by accident, has always been a part of my life," says Elvis Moro. "I must admit that the predisposition to get involved in violin making was nothing more than a consequence, the prodigious effect that the power of music triggered within me. In the meantime, it must be said that in reality a great many luthiers, and I for one, contrary to popular belief, did not receive this passion as an inheritance; it is something that usually arises spontaneously, something that cannot be explained solely by an interest in wood. To ignite a spark of this magnitude, to make it a reason for living, a simple attraction is not enough. Instead, what it arouses, and what also produced such a transposition in me, was a dispassionate love for music, whatever it may be, from classical music to ancient romances or dances or for pieces like Geordie that Fabrizio De André reinterpreted wonderfully and that I timidly played the day your editorial staff visited my workshop. So it is always love that prompted me to choose a path of research away from contemporary lutherie, thus favoring musical construction criteria more distant in time, from the second half of the eighteenth century, in particular. This choice entailed others, the systematic study, for example, of different practices and disciplines than today's standards. This is what I have attempted to document with the book I have written and will soon be published, Universal Code, Hermetic Lutherie between the 16th and 19th centuries."
It is not enough to know thewooden element, says the Calban luthier. Instead, it is necessary to learn and master as much as possible such subjects as alchemy, metaphysics, sacred geometry, numerology and the various mathematical disciplines, subjects that Elvis Moro has been nurturing daily in his workshop for more than 20 years. Needless to say, how today all this knowledge is not contemplated at all and how unpopular it is to devote oneself to a trade such as luthier of antique instruments. What's more, the guitars Elvis Moro builds, calibrated for light tension and therefore armed with gut strings, all strictly from the Italian school, are part of other eras, designed for the cultured repertoire of other times, are made, he says, "by means of 'outdated' procedures, with dilated construction times that inevitably affect the final cost of the instrument, and this means that the only ones who can buy it are concert players or collectors. To give a few examples, the mere procedure of preparing glues, as reported in ancient texts since the 14th century, requires multiple days of 'tenuous firing.' The same can be said for the baking of paints, which can only be declared ready after weeks of organization and months of curing. All this leads to a real celebration of ancient practices, which then, ultimately, are the same ones that have made our Italian luthiers undisputed magisteri throughout the world of this age-old art."
That of the luthier from Calban is a story of beauty, expertise, knowledge and passion that sometimes, by sheer coincidence, ends up meeting with the favor of enthusiasts and experts, always in the name of the benevolence of the Muses.
