25 July

NEW - Mussolini removed from power

Dictator ousted and placed under arrest

The Fascist regime that had ruled Italy for 21 years was ousted on this day in 1943 when Benito Mussolini was arrested by King Victor Emmanuel III, hours after a meeting of the Grand Council of Fascism at the Palazzo Venezia in Rome had passed a vote of no confidence in their leader.  With most Italians desperate to see an end to their country’s participation in a world war in which defeat now looked certain, the Grand Council had been asked to vote on a motion proposed by Count Dino Grandi, a former Blackshirt who had become increasingly disillusioned with the self-styled Duce’s decision-making.  The motion, which Grandi prefaced by launching a scathing attack on his former ally’s leadership, was that the king would be asked to resume his full constitutional authority, effectively removing Mussolini from office.  Read more…

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Alfredo Casella – composer

Musician credited with reviving popularity of Vivaldi

Pianist and conductor Alfredo Casella, a prolific composer of early 20th century neoclassical music, was born on this day in 1883 in Turin.  Casella is credited as being the person responsible for the resurrection of Antonio Vivaldi’s work, following a 'Vivaldi Week' that he organised in 1939.  Casella was born into a musical family. His grandfather had been first cello in the San Carlo Theatre in Lisbon and he later became a soloist at the Royal Chapel in Turin.  His father, Carlo, and his brothers, Cesare and Gioacchino, were professional cellists. His mother, Maria, was a pianist and she gave the young Alfredo his first piano lessons. Their home was in Via Cavour, where it is marked with a plaque.  Casella entered the Conservatoire de Paris in 1896 to study piano under Louis Diemer and to study composition under Gabriel Fauré.  Read more… 

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Carlo Bergonzi – operatic tenor

Singer whose style was called the epitome of Italian vocal art

Carlo Bergonzi, one of the great Italian opera singers of the 20th century, died on this day in 2014 in Milan.  He specialised in singing roles from the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, helping to revive some of the composer’s lesser-known works.  Between the 1950s and 1980s he sang more than 300 times with the Metropolitan Opera of New York and the New York Times, in its obituary, described his voice as ‘an instrument of velvety beauty and nearly unrivalled subtlety’.  Bergonzi was born in Polesine Parmense near Parma in Emilia-Romagna in 1924. He claimed to have seen his first opera, Verdi’s Il trovatore, at the age of six.  He sang in his local church and soon began to appear in children’s roles in operas in Busseto, a town near where he lived.  He left school at the age of 11 and started to work in the same cheese factory as his father in Parma.  Read more… 

Agostino Steffani – composer

Baroque musician and cleric who features in modern literature

A priest and diplomat as well as a singer and composer, Agostino Steffani was born on this day in 1654 in Castelfranco Veneto near Venice.  Details of his life and works have recently been brought to the attention of readers of contemporary crime novels because they were used by the American novelist, Donna Leon, as background for her 2012 mystery The Jewels of Paradise.  Steffani was admitted as a chorister at St Mark’s Basilica in Venice while he was still young and in 1667 the beauty of his voice attracted the attention of Count Georg Ignaz von Tattenbach, who took him to Munich.  Ferdinand Maria, Elector of Bavaria, paid for Steffani’s education and granted him a salary, in return for his singing.  In 1673 Steffani was sent to study in Rome, where he composed six motets. The original manuscripts for these are now in a museum in Cambridge.  Read more… 

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Battle of Molinella

First time artillery played a major part in warfare

An important battle was fought on this day in 1467 at Molinella, near Bologna.  On one side were infantry and cavalry representing Venice and on the other side there was an army serving Florence.  It was the first battle in Italy in which artillery and firearms were used extensively, the main weapons being cannons fired by gunpowder that could launch heavy stone or metal balls.  The barrels were 10 to 12 feet in length and had to be cleaned following each discharge. Leading the 14,000 soldiers fighting for Venice was the Bergamo condottiero Bartolomeo Colleoni. He was working jointly with Ercole I d’Este from Ferrara and noblemen from Pesaro and Forlì. Another condottiero, Federico da Montefeltro, led the army of 13,000 soldiers serving Florence in an alliance with King Ferdinand II of Aragon and the rulers of Milan and  of Bologna.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Fall of Mussolini: Italy, the Italians, and the Second World War, by Philip Morgan

In this powerful history, Philip Morgan tells the dramatic story of Mussolini's fall from power in July 1943, illuminating both the causes and the consequences of this momentous event. Morgan recounts how King Victor Emmanuel first ousted Mussolini and how Germany then succeeded in putting him back in place, this time as a puppet of the Nazis. The resulting chaos included fighting by anti-Fascist rebel groups and mini civil wars throughout the country. The Fall of Mussolini shines light on how ordinary people responded to and coped with wartime living and with the invasion, occupation, and division of their country by warring foreign powers. Morgan includes vivid eye-witness reports from people who hid Jews, fought in the resistance, and killed collaborators. The book debunks the myths that arose after the war, which depicted the nation as almost entirely anti-Fascist, with the heroes of the resistance movement fighting to rid their country first of Mussolini, then of their German occupiers. In truth, the situation surrounding Mussolini's removal from power, return to power, and eventual execution was far more complicated. 

Philip Morgan is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary European History at the University of Hull. His other publications include Italian Fascism, 1919-1945 and Fascism in Europe, 1919-1945.

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