At the end of August, Professor Marco Riva died suddenly, leaving the University of Gastronomic Sciences he helped to found. His intelligence and great spirit of collaboration had a fundamental role for the cultural development of the University and for this journal, in which we publish his last contributions. The members of the University and the editorial staff of the journal join Professor Albert Capatti in his moving tribute.

In Memory of Marco Riva

Marco died on August 25 but I dreamt of him on the night of September 8. He was with a group of people a little way away from me. I was worried about his state of health and wanted to tell him to take care of himself. I don’t know whether to interpret the dream as a working-through of the bereavement or as a pure and simple repression, but I do feel that the worst way to remember Marco is a university obituary. A technologist-gastronome, a former Communist Refoundation militant, a retiring Christian, a fellow writer, a fellow reader, a fellow countryman (we were both born in Como)—he was all these things but the Marco I wish to remember is the generous host who, in Pollenzo of an evening, used to invite home resident and visiting professors. He would do the shopping, order the best cuts of meats, teach those present about the microwave oven he liked to use and ask me to do the cooking. We would have dinner and after the last course and the first grappa we would sing or recite poetry. We had worked for four years on a project, the University of Gastronomic Sciences, and we were following it in its operational phase. But what bound us together were all the loose threads of our lives, a tangle of 25 years of thoughts and words, in Como, in Milan and in Pollenzo, that twists in my head and that I can’t unwind. Because Marco is no longer here and now I can only meet him in my dreams.

Alberto Capatti