22 April

NEW - Rita Levi-Montalcini - neurobiologist

Scientist overcame many obstacles to win Nobel Prize

Rita Levi-Montalcini, a neurobiologist whose important discovery about nerve growth helped to advance medical knowledge, was born on this day in 1909 in Turin. Levi-Montalcini was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.  She lived until the age of 103, having become the first Nobel laureate to reach the age of 100. Despite Mussolini’s racial laws preventing Levi-Montalcini from having an academic or professional career in Italy, she carried out research in her bedroom at home that led to her discovering nerve growth factor. This discovery paved the way for future research in neurobiology, which demonstrated that the nervous, immune, and endocrine systems are linked, and had profound implications for understanding neurodegenerative diseases. Levi-Montalcini was born to Italian Jewish parents and had a twin sister, Paola. Read more…

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Alida Valli - actress

Scandal dogged star admired by Mussolini

The actress Alida Valli, who was once described by Benito Mussolini as the most beautiful woman in the world after Greta Garbo, died on this day in 2006 at the age of 84.  One of the biggest stars in Italian cinema in the late 1930s and 40s, when she starred in numerous romantic dramas and comedies, she was best known outside Italy for playing Anna Schmidt, the actress girlfriend of Harry Lime in Carol Reed’s Oscar-winning 1949 classic The Third Man.  She was cast in the role by the producer David O Selznick, who shared the Fascist leader’s appreciation for her looks, and who billed her simply as Valli, hoping it would create for her a Garboesque enigmatic allure.  Later, however, she complained that having one name made her “feel silly”.  Valli was born in Pola, Istria, then part of Italy (now Pula, Croatia), in 1921. Read more…

Vittorio Jano - motor racing engineer

Genius behind the success of Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Ferrari

Born on this day in 1891, Vittorio Jano was among the greatest engine designers in motor racing history.  Jano's engines powered cars for Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Ferrari during a career that spanned four decades, winning numerous Grand Prix races.  The legendary Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio won the fourth of his five Formula One world championships in Jano's Lancia-Ferrari D50, in 1956.  Almost 30 years earlier, Jano's Alfa Romeo P2 won the very first Grand Prix world championship in 1925, while its successor, the P3, scored a staggering 46 race wins between 1932 and 1935.  He worked for Ferrari from the mid-50s onwards, where his greatest legacy was the V-8 Dino engine, which was the staple of Ferrari cars on the track and the road between 1966 and 2004.  Jano's parents were from Hungary, but settled in Italy. Read more…

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Fiorenza Cossotto - operatic mezzo-soprano

Career overshadowed by story of ‘row’ with Maria Callas

Fiorenza Cossotto, a singer considered one of the greatest mezzo-sopranos of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1935 in Crescentino in Piedmont.  Cossotto was hailed for her interpretations of the major mezzo and contralto roles from mid-19th-century Italian operas, particularly those of Giuseppe Verdi such as Aida, Il trovatore and Don Carlos, but also Gaetano Donizetti, Amilcare Ponchielli, Vincenzo Bellini and the other important composers of the day.  Yet she is often remembered for a supposed spat with Maria Callas that led the Greek-American soprano to walk off the stage during her final performance at the Opéra in Paris of her signature role in Bellini’s Norma in 1965.  The incident in question took place immediately after Callas, as Norma, and Cossotto, as Adalgisa, had joined in their duet ‘Mira, o Norma’.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Rita Levi-Montalcini: Pioneer & Ambassador of Science, by Francesca Valente

“My experience in childhood and adolescence of the subordinate role played by the female in a society run entirely by men had convinced me that I was not cut out to be a wife.” - Rita Levi-Montalcini.  Self-assured from an early age, Rita knew that she was cut out for a number of other roles and the difference she could make in the lives of others. Prevailing over her father’s traditional values, she attended medical school and continued to study the development of the nervous system after graduating. But as a Jew in Fascist Italy, her work came to a halt with discriminatory race laws and again later, when she was forced into hiding from the Nazis. In a makeshift lab built from black-market items, Rita continued her research in a small space she shared with her family. Rita Levi-Montalcini: Pioneer & Ambassador of Science describes how her courage to accept a fellowship in the United States when she didn’t speak the language was repaid when her six-month stay stretched into 33 years. When, at 77 years old, she and Stanley Cohen won the Nobel Prize for their discovery of nerve growth factor - now used in search of cures for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases - Rita felt like her life was just beginning. Over the next two decades, she spoke around the globe as an ambassador for science and humanitarianism and accomplished more than most do during an entire lifetime.

Dr Francesca Valente is an author, journalist, cultural mediator, editor, film-maker and translator. She has lectured at universities in California and Rome. 

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Rita Levi-Montalcini - neurobiologist

Scientist overcame many obstacles to win Nobel Prize

Even in her late 90s, Levi-Montalcini was still
making appearances as a guest speaker

Rita Levi-Montalcini, a neurobiologist whose important discovery about nerve growth helped to advance medical knowledge, was born on this day in 1909 in Turin.

Levi-Montalcini was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.  She lived until the age of 103, having become the first Nobel laureate to reach the age of 100.

Despite Mussolini’s racial laws preventing Levi-Montalcini from having an academic or professional career in Italy, she carried out research in her bedroom at home that led to her discovering nerve growth factor. 

This discovery paved the way for future research in neurobiology, which demonstrated that the nervous, immune, and endocrine systems are linked, and had profound implications for understanding neurodegenerative diseases.

Levi-Montalcini was born to Italian Jewish parents and had a twin sister, Paola. They were the youngest of four children.

She once considered becoming a writer. After seeing a close family friend die of stomach cancer, however, she decided to go to the medical school of Turin University instead, where she first became interested in the nervous system.

After graduating in medicine and surgery with the highest distinction in 1936, Levi-Montalcini stayed on at the university as an assistant, until her career was ended by Mussolini’s 1938 Manifesto of Race, which banned Jews from holding professional positions.

Determined to continue her work, even after Italy entered World War Two, she set up a laboratory in her bedroom, where she studied the growth of nerve fibres in chicken embryos.  

When Germany invaded Italy in 1943, her family fled to Florence, where they survived the Holocaust by using false identities and were protected by non-Jewish friends.

Levi-Montalcini pictured in 1930, when
she enrolled at the University of Turin

After the liberation of Florence, Levi-Montalcini volunteered for the Allied Health Service and helped to provide critical care for people injured during the war.

When the war was over, Levi-Montalcini published the results of her home laboratory experiments. As a result, she was offered a research position at Washington School of Medicine, a post she was to hold for the next 30 years, and it was there she made her vital discovery about nerve growth factor. 

Eventually she established a second laboratory in Rome, and was then able to divide her time between working in Italy and the United States.

In 1986  Levi-Montalcini earned her Nobel prize, which she shared with the American biochemist Stanley Cohen, for their research into nerve growth factor.

After she became director of neurobiology of the National Research Council of Italy, she was one of the first scientists to point out the importance of the mast cell in human pathology.

The president of Italy, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, made her a senator for life in 2001. In 2006, at the age of 97, she attended the opening ceremony of the Senate, at which the upper house of the Italian parliament was to elect its president. She declared her support for the centre-left candidate, Franco Marini, who defeated former prime minister Giulio Andreotti in the vote.

That year she held the deciding vote in the Italian parliament in a budget dispute and threatened to withdraw her support for the government unless they reversed their decision to cut science funding. The funding was put back in and the budget passed, despite the opposition’s attempts to silence her by mocking her age.

In 2009, a party was given at Rome’s Palazzo Senatorio - also known as City Hall - in Piazza del Campidoglio to honour her achievement of becoming the first Nobel laureate to reach the age of 100.

During her life, Rita Levi-Montalcini had faced many obstacles but had been motivated to succeed anyway. She once said: ‘If I had not been discriminated against, or had not suffered persecution, I would never have received the Nobel Prize.’

Her twin sister, Paola, who had been a popular artist in Italy, died at the age of 91. Rita Levi-Montalcini died at her home in Rome at the age of 103 and she was later buried in the grave with her twin sister at the Monumental Cemetery in Turin.

One of the entrances to Turin's huge Monumental
Cemetery, reputed to contain 400,000 graves

Travel tip:

The Monumental Cemetery of Turin - previously known as the General Cemetery  - is the largest cemetery in the city and one of the biggest in Italy, said to be the last resting place of more than 400,000 people in a 60-hectare site.  Located in the northeast of Turin’s historic centre, it contains numerous historic tombs and 12km (7 miles) of porticoes, adorned with sculptures of artistic value. Opened in 1829 to replace the cemeteries of San Lazzaro and San Pietro in Vincoli, it was built thanks to the philanthropist Marquis Carlo Tancredi Falletti di Barolo. The cemetery has become something of a tourist attraction because of the number of famous Italians whose graves lie within it. These include the Holocaust survivor Primo Levi and several other writers, including  Edmondo De Amicis, Mario Soldati and Carolina Invernizio. Several scientists are buried there in addition to Levi-Montalcini, including Cesare Lombroso and Galileo Ferraris. Other notable graves include those of 19th century politician Massimo d’Azeglio, the operatic tenor Francesco Tamagno, actor and singer Fred Buscaglione, food canning pioneer Francesco Cirio, racing driver Nino Farina, the car designer Battista Pininfarina, football coach Nils Liedholm and some members of the Grand Torino football team killed in the Superga disaster of 1949. 

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Piazza del Campidoglio, designed by Michelangelo,
was commissioned by Pope Paul III

Travel tip:

The building colloquially known as Rome’s City Hall, the Palazzo Senatorio, is one of three main buildings grouped around Piazza del Campidoglio, a beautiful public square built in the 16th century to a design by Michelangelo. The others are the Palazzo dei Conservatori and the Palazzo Nuovo, which form the Capitoline Museums.  Situated at the top of the Capitoline Hill, overlooking the Roman Forum, it was commissioned by Pope Paul III, who wanted a symbol of his 'new' Rome to impress the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, who was expected to visit Rome in 1538. Michelangelo’s plans involved a new facade for the Palazzo Senatorio, including a double staircase, and a new facade for the Palazzo dei Conservatori. The Palazzo Nuovo, as the name suggests, was a brand new building, designed to mirror the Palazzo dei Conservatori. The striking centrepiece of the square, for which Michelangelo produced an oval design, included a complex spiralling pavement with a twelve-pointed star at its centre. Palazzo Senatorio today houses the Rome Mayor’s office and has been the seat of the City Council since 1870. It was the home of the Roman Senate - not to be confused with the Senate of Ancient Rome - from the 12th century.

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More reading:

Novelist Grazia Deledda, Italy’s first female Nobel laureate

The Garibaldi supporter who won a Nobel Peace prize

How a civil engineer won a Nobel prize writing poetry in spare time

Also on this day:

1891: The birth of auto engine designer Vittorio Jano

1935: The birth of opera singer Fiorenza Cossotto

2006: The death of actress Alida Valli

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21 April

Alessandro Moreschi - the last castrato

Only singer of his type to make solo recordings

Alessandro Moreschi, the singer generally recognised as the last castrato, and the only castrato of whom solo recordings were made, died on this day in 1922 in his apartment in Rome.  Suffering from pneumonia, Moreschi passed away in his apartment in Via Plinio, just a few minutes walk from the Vatican, where he sang for 30 years as a member of the Sistine Chapel choir.  Castrati were male classical singers with voices that were the equivalent of the female soprano, mezzo-soprano or contralto, but which carried much greater power. As the name suggests, these vocal qualities in men were produced through castration, which had to take place before puberty to prevent normal development.  The procedure impaired the development of the larynx, so that the pre-pubescent vocal range was retained, and altered bone development, which led castrati to have very long ribs and, consequently, enhanced lung capacity.  Read more…

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The birth of Rome

City said to have been founded on April 21, 753 BC

Three days of celebrations in Rome mark the annual Natale di Roma Festival, which commemorates the founding of the city in 753BC.  The traditional celebrations take place largely in the large open public space of Circus Maximus, which hosts many historical re-enactments.  In past years a costumed parade has toured the city, featuring more than 2,000 gladiators, senators, vestal virgins and priestesses.  City museums traditionally offer free entry and many of the city’s restaurants have special Natale di Roma menus.  After dark, many public places are lit up, torches illuminate the Aventine Hill, and firework displays take place by the Tiber river.  According to legend, Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, founded Rome on the site where they were suckled by a she-wolf as orphaned infants.  Read more…

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Silvana Mangano - actress

Star who married the producer Dino De Laurentiis

The actress Silvana Mangano, who was decried as a mere sex symbol and later hailed as a fine character actress during a quite restricted career, was born on this day in 1930 in Rome.  She found fame through Giuseppe De Santis’s neorealist film Bitter Rice, in which she played a female worker in the rice fields in the Po Valley who becomes involved with a petty criminal, Walter, played by Vittorio Gassman.  Mangano’s character was a sensual, lustful young woman and the actress, a former beauty queen, carried it off so well that she was hailed by one critic as “Ingrid Bergmann with a Latin disposition” and likened also to the American glamour queen Rita Hayworth.  She went on to work with many of Italy's leading directors, including Alberto Lattuada, Vittorio De Sica, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Luchino Visconti, but she made only 30 films. Read more…

Cosimo I de' Medici

The grand designs of a powerful archduke

The second duke of Florence and first grand duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I de' Medici, died on this day in 1574 at the Villa di Castello near Florence.  Cosimo had proved to be both shrewd and unscrupulous, bringing Florence under his despotic control and increasing its territories.  He was the first to have the idea of uniting all public services in a single building. He commissioned the Uffizi - offices - a beautiful building that is now an art gallery in the centre of Florence.  Cosimo was the great-great-grandson of Lorenzo the Elder, whose brother was Cosimo the Elder but played no part in politics until he heard of the assassination of his distant cousin, Alessandro.  He immediately travelled to Florence and was elected head of the republic in 1537 with the approval of the city’s senate, assembly and council.  He also had the support of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Read more…

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Pietro Della Valle – travel writer

Roman wrote unique accounts of 17th century Persia and India 

Composer, musicologist, and writer Pietro Della Valle, who travelled to the Holy Land, Persia and India during the Renaissance and wrote about his experiences in letters to a friend, died on this day in 1652 in Rome.  Della Valle was born in Rome into a wealthy and noble family and grew up to study Latin, Greek, classical mythology and the Bible. Another member of his family was Cardinal Andrea Della Valle, after whom the Basilica Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome was named.  Having been disappointed in love, Pietro Della Valle vowed to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He sailed from Venice to Istanbul, where he lived for more than a year learning Turkish and Arabic.  He then travelled to Jerusalem, by way of Alexandria, Cairo, and Mount Sinai, where he visited the holy sites. He wrote regular letters about his travels to Mario Schipano, a professor of medicine in Naples, who later published them in three volumes.  Read more…

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Gino Strada - surgeon and charity founder

‘Maestro of humanity’ built hospitals for war victims

The surgeon and founder of the medical and humanitarian charity Emergency, Gino Strada, was born on this day in 1948 in Sesto San Giovanni, a town that is now effectively a suburb of Milan.  Emergency has provided free healthcare to more than 11 million people in 19 different countries, including locations severely affected by conflict such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen.  It also operates in Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Sudan, Cambodia, Serbia, Nicaragua and Sri Lanka.  The hospitals set up by the organisation - some designed with the help of Strada’s friend, the world-renowned architect Renzo Piano - are built to the highest standards, with the aim of providing world-class treatments and after-care. Strada was said himself to have performed more than 30,000 operations on direct or indirect victims of conflict. Read more…

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Book of the Day: World of the Castrati: The History of an Extraordinary Operatic Phenomenon, by Patrick Barbier

Patrick Barbier's entertaining and authoritative book is the first full study of the subject in the context of the Baroque period. Covering the lives of more than 60 singers from the end of the 16th century to the 19th, he blends history and anecdote as he examines their social origins and backgrounds, their training and debuts, their brilliant careers, their relationship with society and the Catholic Church, and their decline and death. The castrati became a legend that still fascinates us today. Thousands flocked to hear and see these singing hybrids - part man, part woman, part child - who portrayed virile heroes on the operatic stage, their soprano or contralto voices weirdly at variance with their clothes and bearing. The sole surviving scratchy recording tells us little of the extraordinary effect of those voices on their audiences - thrilling, unlike any sound produced by the normal human voice.  Illustrated with photographs and engravings, World of the Castrati ranges from the glories of patronage and adulation to the darker side of a fashion that exploited the sons of poor families, denied them their manhood and left them, when they were old, to decline into poverty and loneliness. It is a story that will intrigue opera-lovers and general readers alike, superbly told by a writer who has researched his subject with the thoroughness of a true enthusiast.

Patrick Barbier is a French writer, historian, writer, professor and lecturer at the West Catholic University in Angers. He specialises in the history of opera. He is also the author of Venice: The Enchanted Mirror.

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20 April

Ivanoe Bonomi – statesman

Liberal socialist was a major figure in transition to peace in 1945

The anti-Fascist politician Ivanoe Bonomi, who served as prime minister of Italy both before and after the dictator Benito Mussolini was in power, died on this day in 1951.  He was 77 but still involved with Italian political life as the first president of the Senate in the new republic, an office he had held since 1948.  Bonomi had briefly been head of a coalition government in 1921, during which time he was a member of one of Italy’s socialist parties, but his major influence as an Italian statesman came during Italy’s transition to peace after the Second World War.  Having stepped away from politics in 1922 following Mussolini’s March on Rome, he resurfaced almost two decades later when he became a leading figure in an anti-Fascist movement in 1942.  He founded a clandestine anti-Fascist newspaper and became a member of an elite committee who would meet in the Seminario Romano. Read more…

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Pietro Aretino – writer

Satirist was both admired and feared by the nobility

Poet, playwright and prose writer Pietro Aretino was born on this day in 1492 in Arezzo in Tuscany.  Aretino became famous for his satirical attacks on important figures in society and grew wealthy from the gifts he received from noblemen who feared being exposed by his powerful pen.  Although he was the son of an Arezzo shoemaker, he pretended to be the natural son of a nobleman and took his name from Arretium, the Roman name for Arezzo.  He moved to Perugia while still very young and lived the life of a painter, but in 1517 when he was in his early twenties, Aretino moved on to Rome, where he secured the patronage of the rich banker, Agostino Chigi.  When Pope Leo X's pet elephant, Hanno, died, Aretino wrote a satirical pamphlet, The Last Will and Testament of the Elephant Hanno, cleverly mocking the leading political and religious figures in Rome at the time. Read more…

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Massimo D’Alema – former prime minister

Journalist and politician first Communist to lead Italy

Massimo D’Alema, who was prime minister of Italy from 1998 to 2000, was born on this day in 1949 in Rome.  He was the first prime minister in the history of Italy, and the first leader of any of the NATO countries, to have been a Communist Party member.  After studying philosophy at the University of Pisa, D’Alema became a journalist by profession. He joined the Italian Young Communists’ Federation in 1963, becoming its general secretary in 1975.  D’Alema became a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), part of which, in 1991, gave origin to the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), and, in 1998, to the Democrats of the Left (DS).  D’Alema has also served as the chief editor of the daily newspaper, L’Unità, the official newspaper of the Communist Party.  In October 1998, D’Alema became prime minister of Italy, as the leader of the Olive Tree centre left coalition.  Read more…

Sant’Agnese of Montepulciano

Miraculous life and death of young nun

Dominican prioress Agnese Segni, who was reputed to have performed miracles, died on this day in 1317 in Montepulciano in Tuscany.  She was canonised by Pope Benedict XIII in 1726 and her feast day is celebrated every April 20 on the anniversary of her death.  Agnese was born into the noble Segni family in Gracciano, a frazione - parish - of Montepulciano.  At the age of nine she convinced her parents to allow her to enter a Franciscan sisterhood. She had to have the permission of the pope to be accepted into this life at such a young age, which normally would not be allowed under church law.  After a few years she was one of a group of nuns sent to start a new monastery near Orvieto. When she was just 20 years old she was chosen to be abbess of the community.  She gained a reputation for performing miracles. Read more…

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Book of the Day: Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Dictatorship, 1915-1945, by Richard Bosworth

For almost all nations the First World War was an unparalleled disaster, but the Italian experience especially was to have catastrophic consequences. Weakened and embittered, trying and failing to come to terms with 600,000 dead and with an entire generation of men militarized by fighting, Italy gave birth to a new form of political life: Fascism.  Richard Bosworth brings to life the period when Italians participated in a vast and ultimately ruinous political experiment under their dictator, Benito Mussolini, and his fascist henchmen. The fascists were the first totalitarians, aiming to reshape Italy and its people utterly. Their regime was based on a cult of violence and obedience. Yet, despite this, Italians found ingenious ways of adapting, limiting, undermining and ridiculing Mussolini's ambitions for them. The heart of this book is its engagement with the life of these ordinary Italians and their families, struggling through terrible times. In Mussolini’s Italy: Life Under the Dictatorship, Bosworth creates a powerful, plausible and entertaining picture of Italian life and a regime which - as the world hurtled towards the cataclysm of the Second World War - was to force humiliation, defeat, invasion and the utter collapse of the nation state.

Richard Bosworth is one of the world’s leading writers on Italy under the Fascists.  He is a former professor of history at the University of Western Australia and a senior research fellow in history at Jesus College, Oxford.

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