Wind instruments
Fine musical instruments since 1836
History
ORSI FACTORY
Orsi Wind Instruments Factory was born in early 1800 from the collaboration between Prof. Romeo Orsi, Clarinet Teacher at Royal Conservatory of Milan as well as important figure in the musical world for decades, and Paolo Maino, known manufacturer of wood wind instruments. The foundation of the company actually took place towards the end of 1870, and formally since 1894.
The factory, thanks to Orsi’s initiative and ability, developed rapidly so much that in 1898 it was already producing all the range of wind instruments, as reflected by an illustrated catalog of the factory.
Romeo Orsi was also a skilled innovator, patenting, among others, innovative instruments such as two-tone clarinets in 1881. Since 1906 the factory became the property of the only Romeo Orsi, and towards 1918 took the name “Prof. Romeo Orsi”, name which still identifies the current factory, based in Tradate.
PROF. ROMEO ORSI
Prof. Romeo Orsi (1843-1918) was born in Como and he came young in the Royal Conservatory of Milan, where he got a Diploma just when he was 20. His career began in this way, at the Theatre "alla Scala" in Milan as a concertist, where he first became Assistant Principal and then himself President. Moreover he was nominated Clarinet Teacher at Royal Conservatory of Milan. Orsi invented the double-tonality Clarinet which had a great success, and, thanks to several orders of this instrument, he joined Paolo Maino's modest factory giving birth to Maino & Orsi factory. The happy activity of Orsi solved the problem of reducing all wind instruments from old to "diapason" or normal tuning fork; the War Minister entrusted this arrangement to him for militar bands instruments. For the special instruments of their works, Masters Mascagni, Puccini, Leoncavallo, Giordano, Montemezzi, Giuseppe Verdi and many others applied to Prof. Orsi' s industrial-artistic capacities, to whom, then, they always expressed their best recognizations.
Today, the founder's traditional craftsmanship lives together with the new construction technologies of its masters craftsmen. The factory still keeps a copy of every wind instrument created and produced by his craftsmen during over 140 years of its fascinating history, along with their constructive plans and diagrams. This makes Prof. Romeo ORSI be the only one in the world today to produce any kind of wind instruments of its unique and vaste collection, including hundreds of models.