NEW - Filippo Buonarroti – revolutionary conspirator
Writer paved the way for the 1848 revolutions in Europe
Filippo Buonarroti, whose political writing inspired many other famous socialists, including Karl Marx, was born on this day in 1761 in Pisa. Sometimes referred to as Philippe Buonarroti because he spent many years living in France, working to further the cause of the revolution there, the writer was born into a noble family. His father was a direct descendant of the brother of the artist Michelangelo Buonarroti. Filippo Buonarroti studied Law at the University of Pisa, where he founded what was seen at the time as a subversive newspaper, the Gazetta Universale. It is thought that he joined a Masonic Lodge at about the same time. Although he was kept under surveillance by the authorities in Italy, Buonarroti expressed support for the French Revolution when it broke out in 1789. Buonarroti travelled to Corsica to spread the revolutionary message through a newspaper, Giornale Patriottico di Corsica, which was the first newspaper written in the Italian language that supported the French Revolution openly. There, he became a friend of the Buonaparte family, from which Napoleon originated. Read more…
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Luca Zingaretti - actor
Found fame as TV detective Inspector Montalbano
The actor Luca Zingaretti, best known for his portrayal of Inspector Montalbano in the TV series based on Andrea Camilleri's crime novels, was born on this day in 1961 in Rome. The Montalbano mysteries, now into a 10th series, began broadcasting on Italy's RAI network in 1999 and has become a hit in several countries outside Italy, including France, Spain, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Zingaretti has played the famously maverick Sicilian detective in all 28 feature-length episodes to date, each one based on a novel or short story collection by the Sicilian-born author Camilleri. Although he had established himself as a stage actor and had appeared in a number of films, it was the part of Montalbano that established Zingaretti's fame. Yet he had hoped to become a star on another kind of stage as a professional footballer. Growing up in the Magliana neighbourhood in the southwest of Rome, he spent as much time as he could out in the streets kicking a ball and played for a number of junior teams. Read more…
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Alessandro Mussolini - socialist activist
Father whose politics were Fascist leader’s early inspiration
Alessandro Mussolini, the father of Italian Fascist founder and leader Benito Mussolini, was born on this day in 1854, in Montemaggiore di Predappio, a hamlet in Emilia-Romagna, then still part of the Papal States in pre-unification Italy. A blacksmith by profession, he was a revolutionary socialist activist who had a profound influence on his son’s early political leanings. Although his embrace of nationalism was not as full as that of his son, Mussolini senior nonetheless greatly admired Italian nationalist figures such as Carlo Pisacane, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Giuseppe Garibaldi, whom he perceived as having socialist or humanist tendencies. Regularly in trouble with the police for acts of criminal damage and sometimes violence against opponents, Alessandro was eventually held under house arrest and granted his release only when he announced he wished to marry his girlfriend, a local schoolteacher who was a devout Catholic. Alessandro was born in a house in Montemaggiore di Predappio that once hosted Giuseppe and Anita Garibaldi as they made their way towards Venice from San Marino. Read more…
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Andrea Zani – violinist and composer
Musician who ushered in the new classical era
Andrea Teodora Zani, one of the earliest Italian composers to move away from the Baroque style, was born on this day in 1696 in Casalmaggiore in the province of Cremona in Lombardy. Casalmaggiore, nicknamed ‘the little Venice on the Po’, was a breeding ground for musical talent at this time and Zani was an exact contemporary of Giuseppe Guarneri, the most famous member of the Guarneri family of violin makers in Cremona. He was just a bit younger than the violinist composers, Francesco Maria Veracini, Giuseppe Tartini and Pietro Locatelli. Zani’s father, an amateur violinist, gave him his first violin lessons and he later received instruction from Giacomo Civeri, a local musician, and Carlo Ricci, who was at the time court musician to the Gonzaga family at their palace in Guastalla. After Zani played in front of Antonio Caldara, who was capellmeister for the court of Archduke Ferdinand Charles in nearby Mantua, he was invited to go to Vienna to be a violinist in the service of the Habsburgs. A lot of Zani’s work has survived in both published and manuscript form, some of it having been recovered from European libraries. His early works show the influence of Antonio Vivaldi. Read more…
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Victor Emmanuel III
Birth of the King who ruled Italy through two world wars
Italy’s longest reigning monarch, Victor Emmanuel III (Vittorio Emanuele III di Savoia), was born on this day in Naples in 1869. The only child of King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Savoy, he was given the title of Prince of Naples. He became King of Italy in 1900 after his father was assassinated in Monza. During the reign of Victor Emmanuel III, Italy was involved in two world wars and experienced the rise and fall of Fascism. At the height of his popularity he was nicknamed by the Italians Re soldato (soldier King) and Re vittorioso (victorious King) because of Italy’s success in battle during the First World War. He was also sometimes called sciaboletta (little sabre) as he was only five feet (1.53m) tall. Italy had remained neutral at the start of the First World War but signed treaties to go into the war on the side of France, Britain and Russia in 1915. Victor Emmanuel III enjoyed popular support as a result of visiting areas in the north affected by the fighting while his wife, Queen Elena, helped the nurses care for the wounded. But the instability after the First World War led to Mussolini’s rise to power. Read more…
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Germano Mosconi – sports writer and presenter
Short-tempered journalist who became the news
Germano Mosconi, who became a well-known television personality, was born on this day in 1932 in San Bonifacio in the Veneto. Mosconi became notorious for his short temper and swearing on air and was regarded as a bit of a character on local television. But he became known all over Italy and throughout the world after a video of him someone posted anonymously on the internet went viral. In the 1980s Mosconi delivered sports reports on Telenuovo in Verona and in 1982 he received the Cesare d’Oro international award for journalistic merit. But he later became known for his excessive swearing and blaspheming. The anonymous video showed his irate reactions to various problems he encountered while broadcasting, such as people unexpectedly entering the studio, background noises and illegible writing on the news sheets he received. His use of swear words, blasphemy and insults in both Italian and Venetian dialect and his other humorous antics made the video compulsive viewing all over the world. Read more…
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Book of the Day: Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution, by Martyn Lyons
Martyn Lyons is emeritus professor of history and European studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Born in London and brought up in Lancashire and North Wales, he has lived in Australia since 1977.
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