The organ in Cagliari’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the second largest historical organ in Sardinia.
It was built in 1875 by the Tuscan organ-building house “Piacentini Battani,” and was placed, in place of the old organ, of counter-facade in the choir loft. Due to a long period when the church was unusable, the organ was temporarily placed in the church of St. Pius X in Cagliari in 1973. In 1990 the organ was restored by the Tamburini firm of Crema, and in 2001 it was returned to its original location, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which had been reopened for worship in December 1998.
The instrument is entirely mechanical, has an extensive manual and pedalboard, and has as many as 28 registers including some rarely heard ones such as “bass drum,” “Chinese horn,” and “angel voice,” making it one of the few examples of “organ-orchestra” on the island. On these instruments it was common to perform transcriptions and reductions of operatic music, which was in great demand in the nineteenth century especially by a section of the population that did not have access to theatrical performances of the famous operas of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi and others.
The instrument was recently overhauled and restored in every component by organ builder Giuseppe Fontana, a specialist at the Central Institute for Restoration in Rome.
