Antonio Parente, Parente Fireworks: Italian tradition and emotion ahead of the 2019 Gold Master

On 21 September 2019, the Compiegne racecourse hosted an evening eagerly awaited by pyrotechnics enthusiasts: the grand final of the Gold Master. Three winners from previous editions were gathered there to defend their vision of fireworks before the jury and the public. Among them, Parente Fireworks, the Italian house that had won the Silver Master in 2016, returned with the ambition of confirming its standing. A few weeks before this final, Antonio Parente, chief designer of the show presented in Compiegne, shared his vision of an art in which technique matters only if it serves emotion.

Parente Fireworks, the Italian house expected in Compiegne

In the European pyrotechnic landscape, the name Parente occupies a singular place. The company is part of a long family history, born in Italy around the manufacture and staging of fireworks. The house claims a complete mastery of its craft: it does not merely design shows, it also produces part of its own pyrotechnic articles. This command of the material, from the laboratory to the sky, gives its creations a recognizable identity, nourished by the great Italian fire tradition.

Parente Fireworks had already carried this tradition high during the first edition of Masters de Feu, in 2016. Faced with European competitors, the Italian team won over the jury and took the Silver Master. Three years later, that success opened the doors to the 2019 Gold Master, alongside Nanos Fireworks, representing Greece, and Grand Final, representing France. The final therefore promised a clash of styles, cultures and pyrotechnic signatures, in a setting now familiar to leading fireworks artists: the Compiegne racecourse.

The memory of the Silver Master 2016

For Antonio Parente, the 2016 victory remained above all a moment of collective pride. The Italian fireworks artist highlighted the work of his entire team and the responsibility of representing his country in an international competition. In a field where each show demands months of preparation, precise artistic choices and flawless execution, a trophy never rewards a single man. It honors a method, a discipline, workshop culture and the ability to turn an imposed theme into a moving experience.

Returning to Compiegne for a grand final nevertheless changed the perspective. It was no longer simply about convincing once, but about returning to a venue, a public and an even higher level of expectation. Antonio Parente approached the event with caution and determination. His goal was not to impress through the sheer power of the setup, but to draw spectators into a world. Fireworks, in his view, must create immediate engagement: the audience must enter the idea of the show, understand its movement, and feel its breathing.

Pyrotechnics guided by emotion

In the interview, Antonio Parente stressed one essential point: pyrotechnics are not a cold display of technical means. Of course, design software, firing systems and synchronization capabilities have profoundly transformed the discipline. Today they make it possible to build highly refined choreographies, multiplying angles, rhythms and effects. But the tool must never replace the intention. For Parente Fireworks, a successful show is first and foremost a clear, expressive one, capable of moving spectators without losing them in excess.

This stance gives his approach a particular elegance. Where some shows seek accumulation, Antonio Parente advocates balance: the precision of the gesture, the accuracy of the colors, the sense of rhythm and the quality of transitions between tableaux. The aim is not to do less, but to do it right. A sequence can be spectacular through its scale; it can also be so through a silence, an anticipation, a shift in tone or a sudden opening of the sky. The power of fireworks often lies in this alternation between tension and release.

Composing a show from music

The 2019 Gold Master final imposed a gala theme on the fireworks artists: The Great Classics. Such a framework demanded a fine relationship between music and pyrotechnic effects. For Antonio Parente, the soundtrack forms the foundation of creation. Once the works have been chosen and the musical architecture settled, the designer imagines the visual forms capable of extending its momentum. It is not a matter of mechanically illustrating each note, but of translating an impression: an orchestral rise, a break, a vibration, an emotional color.

The Italian fireworks artist explained that he mentally places himself on the public’s side. This approach is valuable, because it reminds us that the pyrotechnic show truly exists only when it is shared. The designer knows the firing plans, the families of effects, the timings and the constraints; the spectator, for his part, receives a luminous story in real time. The challenge is therefore to make that story clear, fluid and memorable. For Antonio Parente, this is precisely where the beauty of the craft lies: releasing emotions through fire.

The racecourse, a playground to master

The Compiegne site also plays a part in the design of a show. The racecourse offers scale, depth and visibility that allow vast light architectures to be imagined. After a successful first experience in 2016, the Parente team returned with a better knowledge of the venue. This familiarity was meant to allow a finer adjustment of the choreography to the site: distances, heights, the opening of the visual field, and the relationship between the firing lines and the audience’s gaze.

In an international competition, this adaptation to the site becomes an artistic criterion in its own right. The same show does not produce the same effect whether it is fired above water, in an urban setting or in a large open space. In Compiegne, the sky becomes a monumental stage, but that stage demands precise writing. Fireworks artists must occupy the space without overwhelming it, play with depth, create contrasts and preserve the overall readability. Parente Fireworks arrived with this advantage: that of an experienced team, accustomed to major events and attentive to the unique qualities of each location.

Tradition and innovation, the Parente thread

The singularity of Parente Fireworks ultimately lies in its relationship with tradition. Antonio Parente does not reject innovation; he knows how much recent technologies have expanded the pyrotechnic vocabulary. But he warns against the risk of an art that forgets its artisanal origins. In the Italian culture of fire, manufacture, color, material and transmitted gesture matter as much as digital control. Modernity then becomes an extension of know-how, not its replacement.

This message resonates particularly well within Masters de Feu, a competition where technical excellence must always serve poetry. For the young enthusiasts dreaming of pyrotechnics, Antonio Parente also recalled the demands of the profession: one needs deep passion, great rigor and awareness of a sometimes difficult world, where safety is inseparable from creation. But when that passion is there, it gives fire a rare power: the power to gather thousands of gazes around a shared emotion.

On the eve of the 2019 Gold Master, Parente Fireworks thus stood out as a leading contender, carried by a family history, a culture of beautiful craftsmanship and a strong conviction: fireworks are never just a performance. They are a language. And in that language, Antonio Parente intended to let Italy’s voice be heard, between brilliance, restraint and fidelity to tradition.