Mezzo Secolo a Colle Labirinto.

Mezzo secolo a Colle Labirinto – Zagarolo

The Indian scholar and musicologist Alain Daniélou, having spent almost 20 years in India, found for his Swiss photographer friend Raymond Burnier an 11-hectare property on Colle Labirinto – the hill of the Labyrinth – where he settled in 1958. Burnier had recently divorced, but his divorced wife asked to keep his name. She became international president of the Theosophical Society, which she still heads today.

It was at this time that Daniélou and Burnier met Angelo Frontoni. It was through them that Angelo became a photographer, and settled at Colle Santa Teresa (formerly Colle di Pietra Ficcata), also at Zagarolo, in the early 1960s. Here’s the dedication Frontoni wrote in one of his books: “To Raymond Burnier and Alain Daniélou, who sensed my vocation for photography as early as 1956 and helped me turn it into a passion”.

In 1960, Alain Daniélou purchased two neighboring houses on a much smaller plot of land. He didn’t really live there until 1980, when he retired from the music institutes he had founded in Venice and Berlin. In 1961, a meeting of the International Music Council, UNESCO’s non-governmental organization, was held here, attended by musicologist Giorgio Nataletti from the nearby village of Gallicano, Peter Crossley-Holland, Jack Bornoff, Charles Duvelle and Narayana Menon. From this date onwards, the houses were expanded year by year to form a beautiful residential complex where many personalities came to work, write, compose and paint. Many of them can be found in the pages of this photo album, although it has not been possible to name them all or find iconographic documents from half a century ago. For example, we regret that we were unable to find photos of Pierre Gaxotte, historian and member of the prestigious Académie française, a regular guest in the 1960s and 1970s, or of Umberto Bindi, who was present at some of the private concerts held at Colle Labirinto. Nor Augusto Verginelli, Alain Daniélou’s physician since the 1960s. Long, peaceful discussions brought them together despite their differences, one expressing his monotheism, the other his polytheism…