Francesco Balilla Pratella

Born in Lugo, and deeply impressed by the folk-music he heard in his childhood in his native Romagna (now part of Emilia-Romagna), Pratella entered Pesaro Conservatory and studied with Vincenzo Cicognani and Pietro Mascagni.

[2] An early project drawn from Pratella's interest in indigenous folksong was the opera La Sina d'Varguõn (1909), which attracted the attention of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the father of Italian futurism.

Pratella was less than enthusiastic about the use of Intonarumori, but he agreed to utilize their resources in his opera L'aviatore Dro (1911–1914) which was written in close collaboration with Marinetti.

At the end of World War I, Pratella broke with the futurists; L'aviatore Dro opened in 1920 and proved popular with critics and audiences alike, but its impracticality and odd storyline doomed it to certain obscurity.

In the face of this mediocrity and conservatism, Pratella unfurled "the red flag of Futurism, calling to its flaming symbol such young composers as have hearts to love and fight, minds to conceive, and brows free of cowardice".

Pianist Daniele Lombardi has recorded some of Pratella's futurist piano music, and in 1996 the La Scala opera house in Milan revived L'aviatore Dro for the first time in 75 years.