Guido Menasci - poet, librettist and biographer

Respected writer and historian who found fame from an opera

Guido Menasci (right) with fellow librettist Giovanni
Targioni-Tozzetti, flanking composer Pietro Mascagni

The writer Guido Menasci, who is best known as a co-author of the libretto for composer Pietro Mascagni’s successful opera Cavalleria rusticana but was also a respected historian, was born on this day in 1867 in the Tuscan port of Livorno.

Menasci, a law graduate from the University of Pisa and briefly a prosecutor at the Court of Appeal in Lucca, wrote for a number of literary magazines in Italy and beyond and produced a biography of the German poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang Goethe that is considered a definitive work.

Fluent in French as well as Italian, he published books and gave lectures in Paris, often on the subject of art history, which was another of his fascinations.

Yet he was most famous for his work with Mascagni and his fellow librettist, Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, whom he met through his involvement with literary and cultural societies in Livorno, where all three grew up.

They collaborated on a number of operas, the most famous of which by some way was Cavalleria rusticana, which was performed for the first time in 1890, at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.

The tenor Roberto Stagno and soprano
Gemma Bellincioni in the premiere
of Cavalleria rusticana in Rome

Based on a novella of the same name by Giovanni Verga, Cavalleria Rusticana is a simple story of betrayal and revenge involving two men and two women in a Sicilian village. Its success turned Mascagni, a modest music teacher, into a composer of international fame, not least for the beautiful intermezzo that has become a popular piece standing alone from the opera.

Menasci inherited his gift for writing from his father, who was a shopkeeper but also a published author of a number of books of verse and was a councillor in Livorno involved with education.

He began to write poetry at the same time as he was studying law, amusing his fellow students by composing summaries of lectures in verse.

Soon, his poetry was appearing regularly in the pages of publications such as Lettere e arti, a well-known Bolognese magazine founded by Enrico Panzacchi, others in Italy and in foreign periodicals such as the French daily Le Siècle , the Austrians Neue Freie Presse and Neue Wiener Tagblatt, and the English monthly The English Illustrated Magazine.

His collaboration with Targioni-Tozzetti, whose father, Ottaviano, had taught him literary studies at high school, began in 1899 and included the libretti for several other operas in addition to Cavalleria rusticana, including I Rantzau and Zanetto, also by Mascagni, and Umberto Giordano’s Regina Diaz. He and Targioni-Tozzetti also edited an Italian version of Werther by Jules Massenet.

At the same time, Menasci was working independently for other composers, such as the Germans August Scharrer and Ignaz Brüll. During a lengthy stay in Germany he compiled his biographical study of Goethe (1899), which was considered remarkable even among the many works dedicated to the German poet.

Menasci devoted much time to the study of other German writers and to figures in French literary and civil history. He wrote elegantly in French and was able to address conferences and deliver lectures in Paris with full confidence in his command of the language.

His versatility extended to writing stories for children and numerous studies devoted to the history of art.

In his later years, he returned to Livorno and became a professor at the prestigious Naval Academy. He died in Livorno in 1925 after a period of declining health.

Livorno's elegant promenade Terrazza Mascagni was
named after the composer Pietro Mascagni

Travel tip:

The port of Livorno is the second largest city in Tuscany after Florence, with a population of almost 160,000. Although it is a large commercial port with much related industry, it has many attractions, including an elegant sea front – the Terrazza Mascagni - an historic centre – the Venetian quarter – with canals, and a tradition of serving excellent seafood.  The Terrazza Mascagni is named after the composer Pietro Mascagni, who was born in Livorno. Menasci is commemorated rather less grandly in the name of a fairly nondescript street in a residential area close to the city’s main railway station.

Find a Livorno hotel with Booking.com

The Teatro Costanzi, in Via del Viminale, a short distance from
Piazza della Repubblica, is now known as Teatro dell'Opera

Travel tip:

Known today as the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma - Rome’s main opera house - the Teatro Costanzi was built in 1879-80. Financed by Domenico Costanzi, a contractor, it was designed by the Milanese architect Achille Sfondrini, a specialist in the building and renovation of theatres. Built on the site of the house of the Roman emperor Elagabalus, the theatre was inaugurated in November 1880 with a performance of Semiramide by Gioachino Rossini.  Sfondrini paid particular attention to the acoustics of the theatre, the dome of which was adorned with frescoes by Annibale Brugnoli. As well as the world premiere of Cavalleria rusticana, the theatre staged the first production of Tosca by Giacomo Puccini in January 1900 and introduced Roman audiences to Puccini’s La fanciulla del West, Turandot and Il trittico, Richard Wagner’s Parsifal and Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov among other compositions that would become famous.

More reading:

How one opera was the making of Mascagni

Why Leoncavallo's Pagliacci is one of the world's favourite operas

Hooligans wreck the Rome premiere of The Barber of Seville

Also on this day:

1874: The birth of politician and winemaker Luigi Einaudi

1926: The birth of controversial playwright Dario Fo

1934: The birth of photographer Mimmo Jodice

(Picture credit: Teatro Costanzi by Lalupa)

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Francesco Solimena - painter

Neapolitan artist who influenced a generation

Francesco Solimena - a section from a self-portrait
painted in around 1730

Francesco Solimena, a prolific painter in the Baroque style who became one of the wealthiest and most influential artists in Europe, was born on this day in 1657 in Canale di Sereno, a village in Campania about 14km (9 miles) southeast of Avellino.

He spent most of his working life in Naples yet his fame spread far beyond and his work was in such demand among his wealthy patrons, including Prince Eugene of Savoy, Louis XIV of France and Pope Benedict XIII, that he acquired a considerable fortune, was given the title of baron and lived in a palace.

His workshop became effectively an academy, at the heart of the Naples cultural scene. Among many who trained there were the leading painters Francesco de Mura, Giuseppe Bonito, Corrado Giaquinto and Sebastiano Conca.

The Scottish portraitist Allan Ramsay was a pupil in his studio in around 1737-38.

Solimena’s own training came initially from his father, Angelo, a revered painter of frescoes, with whom he worked at the cathedral of Nocera in the province of Salerno, and at the church of San Domenico at Solofra, not far from his home village.  He often worked in Nocera later in life.

Solimena's spectacular Expulsion of Heliodorus from the
Temple can be seen in the church of Gesù Nuovo in Naples

By the time he was 17, however, he had settled in Naples, where he worked in the studio of Francesco di Maria and later Giacomo del Po. Cardinal Vincenzo Orsini - the future Pope Benedict XIII - became his patron at an early stage of his career and encouraged him to become an artist rather than take religious orders.

He modeled his art on the exuberant style of the Roman Baroque master Luca Giordano, whose work he admired while he was engaged in decorating the Sacristy of San Paolo Maggiore. His classical influences are attributed to Pietro da Cortona. Others whose techniques he adopted include Massimo Stanzione, Giovanni Lanfranco and Mattia Preti.

Solimena painted many frescoes and altarpieces in Naples, and was in demand for celebrations of weddings and courtly occasions.  He favoured simple settings so that attention would be concentrated on the figures in his paintings and their dress, often highlighted by his placing of those figures in pools of light. His representation of figures often derived from the work of Annibale Carracci, Domenichino, and Raphael.

The Madonna and Child with San
Gennaro that sold for $33,000 in 2017

He painted frescoes in many of the city's most important churches, including the vast and spectacular Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple (1725) in the church of Gesù Nuovo.

He became the unchallenged head of the Neapolitan school of painting during the first half of the 1700s, following the death of Giordano, and his influence remained in the aesthetic of Naples for many years.

Before his death at age of 89, in 1747 in Barra, then an area of grand villas to the east of Naples, Solimena had become very wealthy and had influenced a vast new generation of painters.

Today, his works are held, among other places, in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in London, and the Louvre Museum in Paris.

A Madonna and Child with San Gennaro by Solimena sold at auction in Rome in 2017 for $33,000 (about €28,700).

The Collegiata di San Michele Arcangelo in Solofra

Travel tip:

The villages of Serino and neighbouring Canale di Serino fall into an area of Campania that produces wines from the Aglianico grape, notably Taurasi, Aglianico del Taburno and Falerno del Massico. The production of chestnuts is also a strong part of the local economy. The area was badly hit by the earthquake in 1980 that brought devastation to the region, but the richly decorated 17th century Baroque church - the Collegiata di San Michele Arcangelo - in nearby Solofra, which contains 21 framed canvases painted by Giovanni Tommaso Guarino, has survived, following a number of reconstructions, as has the church of San Domenico, where a painting by Solimena can still be seen.

The Basilica of San Paolo Maggiore is a church that
can be found on the bustling Via dei Tribunali

Travel tip:

The Baroque-style basilica of San Paolo Maggiore, the burial place of Gaetano Thiene, known as Saint Cajetan, is located in the centre of Naples on Piazza Gaetano, just off Via dei Tribunali, the narrow, straight thoroughfare known as Spaccanapoli. The church was built on the site of the 1st-century temple of the Dioscuri. The decoration of the church in the early 18th century fell largely to Solimena and Domenico Antonio Vaccaro. The church suffered considerable bomb damage in the Second World War, sadly, with some frescoes by Massimo Stanzione almost completely destroyed.

More reading:

How the work of Annibale Carraci illuminates Rome

The prolific output of Luca Giordano

Why Domenichino's talent rivals Raphael

Also on this day:

The Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi

1720: The birth of artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi


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Luca Giordano – artist

Talented Neapolitan was renowned for being a fast worker

Luca Giordano was influenced by Caravaggio

Luca Giordano, the most celebrated and prolific Neapolitan painter of the late 17th century, was born on this day in 1634 in Naples.

His nicknames were Luca Fa Presto - "Luca work faster" - said to derive from the way his father, the copyist Antonio Giordano, used to admonish him, Fulmine (the Thunderbolt) because of his speed, and Proteus, because he was reputed to be able to imitate the style of almost any other artist.

Giordano’s output both in oils and in frescoes was enormous and he is said to have once painted a large altarpiece in just one day.

He was influenced at the start of his career by Jose de Ribera, who he was apprenticed to, and he also assimilated Caravaggio’s style of dramatic intensity.

But after Giordano had travelled to Rome, Florence and Venice, his style underwent a profound change. The influence of Pietro da Cortona’s frescoes in the Pitti Palace in Florence can be detected in Giordano’s huge ceiling fresco in the ballroom of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, which he completed in 1683, and he became noted for his showy use of colour.

He went to Spain in 1692 as court painter to Charles II and stayed there till 1702. The frescoes in El Escorial are often claimed to be his best works, but there are nearly 50 paintings by him in the Prado in Madrid, which are evidence of his huge output.

Detail from Giordano's ceiling fresco at
the Palazzo Medici-Riccardo in Florence

After his return to Naples he continued to paint prolifically. His last great work there was the ceiling of the Cappella del Tesoro in San Martino, begun on his return to the city in 1702 and completed in 1704.

Many of Giordano’s other works in Naples were destroyed during the Second World War.

His St Benedict cycle, painted in 1677 in the abbey of Monte Cassino in Lazio, was entirely destroyed.

But his painting of Christ expelling the Traders from the Temple, painted in the monastery church of Girolamini (or Gerolamini) next to the Duomo in Naples, miraculously survived. It is full of expressive lazzaroni, Neapolitan beggars, who Giordano would have seen every day in the surrounding streets while he was working at the church.

Giordano died in Naples in 1705 and was buried in a tomb in the Church of Santa Brigida, where he had previously painted the cupola. He was to have a profound influence on many Italian artists who came after him.

The Palazzo Medici-Riccardi

Travel tip:

Construction of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Florence was begun in 1444 to provide a home for the Medici family and the headquarters for their banking business. It was later sold to the wealthy Riccardi family. Part of the palace now open to the public includes the room where Giordano painted his frescoes between 1682 and 1685.

Travel tip:

The 17th century church of Santa Brigida in Naples had to have a dome that was no more than nine metres high, otherwise it would have obstructed artillery fire from Castel Nuovo. The fresco of a vivid sky executed by Giordano on the cupola cleverly creates a feeling of immense space. The artist’s tomb can be found in the left transept of the church.

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