City Renames Street After Enzo Oppi to Honor Garda Ichthyologist
A road named after Enzo Oppi. The city council, during the last session of the Comencini administration, decided to dedicate a street to the Gardesano ichthyologist who passed away prematurely in 1988 at the age of forty-two. Oppi Street will be a cross street of Monte Baldo.
Mathematics teacher in Verona, but also and above all a skilled scholar of the fauna of Lake Garda, Enzo Oppi left behind numerous writings that constitute a fundamental heritage for the understanding of the lake environment. In fact, he was the continuer of the work of Floreste Malfer, the ichthyologist who died in 1932.
All of Oppi’s works were collected posthumously in the volume «Research on the Fish of Lake Garda», published by the Cooperative of Garda Fishermen, the Benacense Territory Study Center, and the provincial administration.
Remembering Oppi and His Work
«I believe that Enzo Oppi’s great passion for ichthyology and related environmental issues — wrote Ugo D’Accordi in 1989 — had unconsciously entered his blood when he was a child, spending much of his days on Garda in contact with fishing friends».
This was followed by studies under the guidance of Sandro Ruffo and Ettore Grimaldi. Studies that, echoing D’Accordi again, «transformed his passion into real science».
For years, Oppi collaborated with the agriculture and environment sector of the Province of Verona. He was also a partner at the Natural History Museum.
«A man of few words but rich in humor and human warmth, a serious researcher, passionate scholar — recalled Lorenzo Sorbini — Oppi became more and more connected to our Museum, becoming one of its main collaborators».
The fishermen of Garda themselves, despite long and heated disputes with him over fishing regulations, remember him affectionately. I consider him just as much one of them.
Moreover, Carlo Pasotti, then president of the Cooperative, in the volume already mentioned that collects all of Enzo Oppi’s work, remembered that «there is no doubt that our fate mattered to him», even if he «kept saying that we fishermen of Garda do not know how to do our job and do not know how to sell our product».
But then, the fishermen listened to him, followed him: they even, on his suggestion, limited sardine fishing voluntarily. «How many times — added Pasotti — we would have preferred he kept quiet with his scientific sermons. Now, in the long and silent days on the lake, his voice becomes ever more distant and faint; no one will come to scold us anymore for our way, entirely Garda-style, of understanding fishing».
But it was precisely to ensure a future for professional fishing that Oppi fought so hard. And now Garda pays homage to him. «A proper and deserved tribute», says Fabio Gaggia, who was a friend and collaborator of Oppi, and together with him founded the Benacense Territory Study Center.
