22 December 2023

22 December

Giacomo Manzù – sculptor

Shoemaker’s son who became internationally acclaimed sculptor

Sculptor Giacomo Manzù was born Giacomo Manzoni on this day in 1908 in Bergamo in Lombardy.  The son of a shoemaker, he taught himself to be a sculptor, helped only by a few evening classes in art, and went on to achieve international acclaim.  Manzoni changed his name to Manzù and started working in wood while he was doing his military service in the Veneto in 1928.  After moving to Milan, he was commissioned by the architect, Giovanni Muzio, to decorate the Chapel of the Sacred Heart Catholic University.  But he achieved national recognition after he exhibited a series of busts at the Triennale di Milano.  The following year he held a personal exhibition with the painter, Aligi Sassu, with whom he shared a studio.  He attracted controversy in 1942 when a series of bronze bas reliefs about the death of Christ were exhibited in Rome. They were criticised by the Fascist government after they were interpreted as an indictment of Nazi-Fascist violence and Manzù had to go into hiding for a while, fearful of arrest.   Manzù had started teaching at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, but during the war he went back north to live in Clusone, to the north of Bergamo.  Read more…

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Giovanni Bottesini - double bass virtuoso

Musician was also a composer and conductor

The composer, conductor and double bassist Giovanni Bottesini was born on this day in 1821 in Crema, now a city in Lombardy although then part of the Austrian Empire.  He became such a brilliant and innovative performer on his chosen instrument that he became known as “the Paganini of the double bass” - a reference to the great violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini, whose career was ending just as his was beginning.  Bottesini was one of the first bassists to adopt the French-style bow grip, previously used solely by violinists, violists and cellists.  He was also a respected conductor, often called upon to direct performances at the leading theatres in Europe and elsewhere, and a prolific composer, particularly in the last couple of decades of his life.  A close friend of Giuseppe Verdi, he wrote a dozen operas himself, music for chamber and full orchestras, and a considerable catalogue of pieces for double bass, for accompaniment by piano or full orchestra, or duets.  When conducting opera, Bottesini would often bring his double bass on stage to play fantasies based on the evening's opera, of his own composition, during the intermission.  Read more…

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The Totonero betting scandal

Match-fixing scheme saw players banned and clubs relegated

Italian football fans learned the full list of punishments handed down as a consequence of the Totonero match-fixing scandal on this day in 1980. Two Serie A clubs - AC Milan and Lazio - were relegated to Serie B. Three others in Serie A and two in Serie B were handed a penalty in the form of a five-point deduction in their respective league tables.  Of 20 players banned, some indefinitely, by the Italian Football Federation (FIGC), half had represented the Italy national team. The most famous were Paolo Rossi, who would go on to be part of the Azzurri team that won the World Cup in Spain in 1982, and Enrico Albertosi, who had been goalkeeper in the Italian team that won the European championships in 1968.   Rossi, who scored six goals in Spain ‘82, would have missed the tournament had his sentence not been reduced, somewhat controversially, from three years to two.  Felice Colombo, then president of AC Milan, was banned from football for life, although the disqualification was later reduced to six years.  Read more…

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Giacomo Puccini – opera composer

Musical genius who took the baton from Verdi

Giacomo Puccini, one of the greatest composers of Italian opera, was born on this day in 1858 in Lucca in Tuscany.  He had his first success with his opera, Manon Lescaut, just after the premiere of Verdi’s last opera, Falstaff. Manon Lescaut was a triumph with both the public and the critics, and he was hailed as a worthy successor to Verdi.  Puccini was born into a musical family who encouraged him to study music as a child while he was growing up in Lucca.  He moved to Milan to continue his studies at the Milan Conservatory, where he was able to study under the guidance of the composer, Amilcare Ponchielli.  He wrote an orchestral piece that impressed Ponchielli and his other teachers when it was first performed at a student concert. Ponchielli then suggested that Puccini’s next work might be an opera.   Puccini’s first attempt at opera was successful enough for it to be purchased by a firm of music publishers and after some revisions it was performed at Teatro alla Scala in Milan.  His next opera, Edgar, which also made its debut at La Scala, was not so well received but his third composition, Manon Lescaut, was a triumph when it was first performed in Turin in 1893.  Read more…

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Alessandro Bonvicino – Renaissance painter

Talented artist from Brescia acclaimed for sacred paintings and portraits

Alessandro Bonvicino, who became famous for the altarpieces he painted for churches in northern Italy, died on this day in 1554 in Brescia in Lombardy.  Nicknamed Il Moretto da Brescia - the little moor from Brescia - Bonvicino is known to have painted alongside the Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto in Bergamo. The portrait painter Giovanni Battista Moroni from Albino, in the province of Bergamo, was one of his pupils.  Bonvicino, sometimes known as Buonvicino, was born in Rovato, a town in the province of Brescia, in about 1498. It is not known how he acquired his nickname of Il Moretto.  He studied painting under Floriano Ferramola, but is also believed to have trained with Vincenzo Foppa, a painter who was active in Brescia in the early years of the 16th century.  It is thought he may also have been an apprentice to Titian in Venice and it is known that he modelled his portrait painting on the Venetian style. Bonvicino is believed to have admired Raphael, although there is no evidence he ever travelled to Rome. He specialised in painting altarpieces in oils rather than in fresco.  At the height of his career, Bonvicino was considered one of the most acclaimed painters working in Brescia. Read more…

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Giuseppe Bergomi – footballer

World Cup winner who spent his whole career with Inter

The footballer Giuseppe Bergomi, renowned as one of the best defenders in the history of Italian football and a member of the World Cup-winning Azzurri side of 1982, was born on this day in 1963 in Milan.  Bergomi spent his entire club career with the Milan side Internazionale, spanning 20 years in which he made 756 appearances, including 519 in Serie A, which was a club record until it was overtaken by the Argentine-born defender Javier Zanetti, who went on to total 856 club appearances before he retired in 2014.  In international football, Bergomi played 87 times for the Italian national team, of which he was captain during the 1990 World Cup finals, in which Italy reached the semi-finals as hosts.  Alongside the brothers Franco, of AC Milan, and Giuseppe Baresi, his team-mate at Inter, and the Juventus trio Gaetano Scirea, Antonio Cabrini and Claudio Gentile, he was part of the backbone of the Italian national team for much of the 1980s.  He made his Azzurri debut in April 1982, only a couple of months before the World Cup finals in Spain, aged just 18 years and 3 months, making him the youngest player to feature in a match for Italy since the Second World War.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Foul Play: The Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport, by Mike Rowbottom 

There is cheating. And then there is cheating. But where does one end and the other start?  Doping. Fixing. Sledging. Intimidating. Time-wasting. Diving. Ever since sporting contests began there have been rules, and for many competitors those rules have been there to be broken. Or maybe just bent a little. Foul Play offers an inside track on the dark arts employed in sport to gain an unfair advantage - on the football or rugby field, on the tennis or squash court, on the athletics track and the golf course, even on the bowling green or the Subbuteo table.  Some cheating in sport is considered virtually par for the course, while other forms are completely unacceptable. But who, ultimately, makes that judgement? From ball-tampering and bribery in cricket to rugby union's 'Bloodgate' scandal; from Diego Maradona's Hand of God to Alex Ferguson's managerial mind games; from the dodgy dealing of the ancient Greeks and the wily cunning of W.G. Grace to the doping scandals engulfing Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong, it's all here. Foul Play - sometimes funny, sometimes shocking - provides all the evidence you'll ever need that the sporting world is often anything but.

Mike Rowbottom is a freelance journalist who writes widely on sport, and whose current job titles include chief features writer on www.insidethegames.biz. He covered the summer Olympics and Winter Olympics for The Independent, and worked also for the Daily Mail, The Observer, The Times, The Guardian and the Sunday Correspondent. 

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