La cantante lirica e la radio. Il caso Rosetta Pampanini-Eiar (1938-1940), Filippo Vassalli e i diritti degli artisti esecutori in Italia/ The Opera Singer and the Radio. The Case Rosetta Pampanini v. Eiar (1938-1940), Filippo Vassalli and the Rights of Performers in Italy

The legal case between the soprano Rosetta Pampanini and the Italian radio (Eiar) in the years 1938-1940 presents singular features. The controversy led to the first decision of the Supreme Court of Cassation on the rights of performers, in a decisive phase of their discipline. In fact, the judges dealt with the problems raised by the 1928 broadcasting law, on the eve of the new copyright law (1941), which defined the issue at the end of a debate initiated by Italian doctrine also on international tables. This paper considers the Italian experience in both its scientific and jurisprudential perspective. The aim of the research is to draw attention to a significant fragment of this little-explored history and to ascertain the contribution that the defensive strategy elaborated by Filippo Vassalli and Giuseppe Ferri, as lawyers of Eiar, gave to the determination of the nature of the artists’ rights with respect to copyright.