Tullio Serafin – opera conductor
Toscanini’s successor furthered the career of Callas
The man who helped Maria Callas develop her singing talent, musician and conductor Tullio Serafin was born on this day in 1878 in Rottanova near Cavarzere in the Veneto, on the Adige river just south of the Venetian Lagoon. Serafin studied music in Milan and went on to play the viola in the orchestra at Teatro alla Scala under the baton of Arturo Toscanini. He was later appointed assistant conductor and then took over as musical director at the theatre when Toscanini left to go to New York. Serafin conducted at La Scala between 1909 and 1914, from 1917 to 1918 and then returned briefly at the end of the Second World War. He became a conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1924 and stayed with them for ten years before returning to Italy to become artistic director at the Teatro Reale in Rome. Read more…
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Michele Giuttari – crime writer and police officer
Cop-turned-novelist with inside knowledge of police investigations
Michele Giuttari, who headed the police in Florence and used his experience working on investigations into Mafia activities and dangerous criminals to become a successful crime writer, was born on this day in 1950 in Novara di Sicilia, a village in the province of Messina in Sicily. After studying for a degree in Jurisprudence at the University of Messina, Giuttari qualified as a lawyer. He joined the Polizia di Stato as a commissario in 1978 and later rose through the ranks to take charge of the Florentine police between 1995 and 2003. Giuttari first served in Calabria, where he held positions in the Squadra Mobile of Reggio Calabria and Cosenza. He then joined the Anti-Mafia investigation department and served first in Naples and then in Florence, where he became head of the Judicial Investigation section, and succeeded in jailing several key Mafia figures. Read more…
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Scipione Borghese – Cardinal and art collector
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Pope’s nephew used position to acquire wealth to buy art
Cardinal Scipione Borghese, who was a patron of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Caravaggio and established a magnificent art collection during his life, was born on this day in 1576 in Artena just outside Rome. As the nephew of Pope Paul V, Borghese was given the official title of Cardinal Nephew - cardinale nipote - and he had great power as the effective head of the Vatican government. He amassed an enormous fortune through the papal fees and taxes he gathered and he acquired vast amounts of land. He was able to use his immense wealth to assemble a large and impressive art collection. When Cardinal Borghese’s father suffered financial difficulties, his uncle, Camillo Borghese, stepped in to pay for his education. After Camillo Borghese was elected as Pope Paul V, he made his nephew a Cardinal and gave him the right to use the Borghese name. Read more…
Vittorio Gassman - actor
Stage and screen star once dubbed ‘Italy’s Olivier’
Vittorio Gassman, who is regarded as one of the finest actors in the history of Italian theatre and cinema, was born on this day in 1922 in Genoa. Tall, dark and handsome in a way that made him a Hollywood producer’s dream, Gassman appeared in almost 150 movies but he was no mere matinée idol. A highly respected stage actor, he possessed a mellifluous speaking voice, a magisterial presence and such range and versatility in his acting talent that the Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham once called him ‘the Lawrence Olivier of Italy’. He enjoyed a career that spanned five decades. Inevitably, he is best remembered for his screen roles, although by the time he made his movie debut in 1945, he had appeared in more than 40 productions of classic plays by Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Ibsen, Tennessee Williams, and others. Read more…
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Guido Deiro - vaudeville star
Accordion player who wowed America
The musician Guido Deiro, who was the first artist to become a star playing the piano-accordion, was born on this day in 1886 in an Alpine village north of Turin. For a while, in the early part of the 20th century, he and his brother Pietro were among the highest-paid performers on the booming American vaudeville circuit. Using his stage name, which was simply ‘Deiro’, he made more than 110 recordings, which sold in large numbers. He ‘covered’ many popular hits and well known classical and operatic pieces and wrote compositions of his own, the most famous of them the song Kismet, which became the theme song for the Broadway musical and was used in two film versions of the story, which was based on a play by Edward Knoblauch. Deiro became something of a celebrity and was seldom short of glamorous female company. Read more…
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Book of the Day: The New Book of Opera Anecdotes, by Ethan Mordden
Ethan Mordden, born in Pennsylvania and raised in Venice, Italy, and Long Island, New York, is an American author and musical theater scholar.