Carolei

Carolei has 3,462 inhabitants in the Serre Cosentine, south-west of Cosenza, with a territory that rises from the two hundred and seventy metres of the valley floor to just over a thousand on the ridge. On the name there are two schools: those who derive it from the Caroleo family and those who take it from the Latin Caralis, which is the ancient name of Cagliari. Some point instead to the Oenotrian town of Ixias as the first settlement, others to the Greek-Byzantine Karalea.

From here came Alfonso Rendano, born in 1853, who taught himself to play on an old family spinet and on the organ of the church of the Immaculate Conception, which is still standing in the town. He was composing at eight; at ten he sat the entrance examination of the Naples conservatory, where he drew the interest of Sigismund Thalberg, who sent him to Paris with a recommendation to Rossini, who got him a scholarship. He studied with a pupil of Chopin, in 1880 he met Liszt and became his friend, and he invented the piano's independent pedal, which is still called the Rendano pedal. He gave his last concert in Rome in 1925, playing pieces of his own built on Calabrian folk songs.