Noemi Messora, Cultured Lecturer and Researcher, Passes Away at 56

She passed away quietly, as was her style of life: shy, reserved, sweet. Her death, therefore, went almost unnoticed. The exception was her closest family and friends. Yet Noemi Messora, 56 years old, university lecturer, writer, highly cultured woman, loved Desenzano very much, even though it was not her hometown. She loved it so much that she left her extraordinary book collection as an inheritance, divided between the local library and that of Brescia.

Additionally, she left a property located in via Vittorio Veneto (the street of the Nursing Home), intended for the Croce Rossa of Castiglione delle Stiviere, and another property located in via Tiepolo, in the residential area of the town, left to the parish of San Zeno.

Biography and career

Noemi Messora, originally from Como, arrived on the shores of Garda a decade ago, at the peak of a professional career full of satisfaction within the cultural world. She graduated in foreign languages with top honors from Bocconi University in Milan in 1968, during the year of the student movement.

Immediately afterward, she entered academia first as an assistant, then as a lecturer, moving to England and becoming part of University of Warwick and Cambridge. Noemi Messora earned her PhD with research on «Brescian Comedy», a remarkable and very rare work, shortly thereafter becoming an Italian language teacher for anglophone students and also publishing numerous works and translations for the most prestigious English publishing houses.

She also collaborated in the radio program «Good morning Italian»: an Italian language course. She later produced on compact disc the first Italian language course for foreigners for a well-known Milanese publishing company.

In just over thirty years of a luminous career, Noemi Messora was also a member of the International Association of Italian Professors and the Associated for language learning of Great Britain. She contributed to the writing of numerous English-Italian dictionaries, and in the field of literature, she wrote internationally significant essays on sixteenth-century comedy.

Research and recent interests

In the last two years, she began researching a priest who lived between Montichiari and Caravaggio, named Secco. She also focused on Veronese theater, collaborating with the universities of Brescia and Venice. One of her works represents a milestone in the history of theater: it is «Lombard theater under the Venetian Republic – Brescian comedy in the 1500s», the result of extensive and patient research.

Here is a brief curriculum of Noemi Messora, certainly not exhaustive of this woman’s figure; her activities, interests, and research were numerous. «She was a very sweet and extraordinary woman — says a friend, Claudia Gaddi from Como — because she left priceless signs of culture».

Few people in Desenzano knew her, because her existence was dedicated solely to study and research. Noemi Messora, after all, never married. Then, last year, she began to show the first symptoms of an incurable dark illness.

Aware of a destiny that had decidedly turned its back on her, Noemi began to reorganize her affairs, her loved ones, and her book collection. She also drafted her will. Among the people who supported her in her final times were the parish priest of San Zeno and some acquaintances.

Now, it is hoped that the city of Desenzano will welcome Noemi Messora among its cherished children.