Alfonso Rendano

Alfonso Rendano (1853 – 1931) was an Italian pianist and composer. He is mostly renowned for inventing the "third pedal", which augmented the interpretative resources of the piano.

Rendano was born at Cosenza, Calabria. He was particularly precocious and at the age of ten he was admitted to the Naples Conservatoire, where he was noticed by Sigismund Thalberg who sent him to Paris, recommending him to Rossini.

In 1866 he studied under Georges Mathias, Chopin's pupil. For about fifteen years, he carried out an intense musical activity; he then devoted himself to teaching: first at the Naples Conservatoire, then in Rome.

Rendano wrote the opera "Consuelo", successfully staged in Turin and in Germany. He held his last concert at Rome's Teatro Valle in 1925. He died in Rome in 1931.

The main theatre of Cosenza is named after him.