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NEW - Elisabetta Canalis – Sardinian actress
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Star who once dated American actor George Clooney
Actress and TV personality Elisabetta Canalis was born on this day in 1978 in Sassari in Sardinia. She has had roles in several films and taken part in many long-running television programmes for Italian channels. While Canalis was the girlfriend of the American actor, George Clooney in 2011, she and Clooney were both witnesses in the two-year trial of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi in Milan, who was alleged to have paid for sex with an underage prostitute. Her father, Cesare Canalis, was a clinical radiologist at the University of Sassari, and her mother, Bruna, was a teacher. Educated at the liceo classico Domenico Alberto Azuni in Sassari, Canalis went on to study foreign languages at the University of Milan, but left the course without graduating when she was 21, to work as a dancer for Canale 5, a TV Channel owned by Berlusconi. Read more…
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Nazis free captive Mussolini
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Extraordinary daring of Gran Sasso Raid
One of the most dramatic events of the Second World War in Italy took place on this day in 1943 when Benito Mussolini, the deposed and imprisoned Fascist dictator, was freed by the Germans. The former leader was being held in a remote mountain ski resort when 12 gliders, each carrying paratroopers and SS officers, landed on the mountainside and took control of the hotel where Mussolini was being held. They forced his guards to surrender before summoning a small aircraft to fly Mussolini to Rome, from where another plane flew him to Austria. Even Winston Churchill, Britain's wartime prime minister, professed his admiration for the daring nature of the daylight rescue. Known as the Gran Sasso Raid or Operation Oak, the rescue was ordered by Adolf Hitler himself after learning that Mussolini's government had passed a resolution that he be replaced as leader. Read more…
Eugenio Montale - poet and translator
Influential writer one of six Italians to win Nobel Prize in Literature
Eugenio Montale, who became one of the most influential Italian writers of the 20th century and was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1975, died on this day in 1981 in Milan at the age of 84. Montale's most famous work is often considered to be his first, a collection of poems he published in 1925 under the title Ossi di seppia - Cuttlefish Bones. These poems established his use of stark imagery, his introspective tone and his fascination with themes such as desolation, alienation and mortality, and the search for elusive meaning in a fragmented world. Later collections such as Le occasioni (1939) - The Occasions - and La bufera e altro (1956) - The Storm and Other Things - reinforced his reputation as one of Italian literature’s 20th century greats. Montale was born in 1896 in a building overlooking the botanical gardens of the University of Genoa. Read more…
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Lorenzo II de’ Medici – Duke of Urbino
Short rule of the grandson of Lorenzo Il Magnifico
Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, was born on this day in 1492 in Florence. The grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Lorenzo II ruled Florence from 1513 to 1519. Niccolò Machiavelli addressed his work, The Prince, to Lorenzo II, advising him to accomplish the unification of Italy under Florentine rule by arming the whole nation and expelling its foreign invaders. When Lorenzo was two years old, his father, who became known as Piero the Unfortunate, was driven out of Florence by Republicans with the help of the French. The Papal-led Holy League, aided by the Spanish, finally defeated the rebels in 1512 and the Medici family was restored to Florence. Lorenzo II’s uncle, Giuliano, ruled Florence for a year and then made way for his nephew. Another uncle, Pope Leo X, made Lorenzo the Duke of Urbino after expelling the legitimate ruler of the duchy, Francesco Maria della Rovere. Read more…
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Daniela Rocca – actress
Tragic star shunned after breakdown
The actress Daniela Rocca, who starred in the hit big-screen comedy Divorce, Italian Style, was born on this day in 1937 in Sicily. The movie, in which she starred opposite Marcello Mastroianni, won an Academy Award for its writers and acclaim for former beauty queen Rocca, who revealed a notable acting talent. Yet this zenith in her short career would in some ways also prove to be its nadir after she fell in love with the director, Pietro Germi. The relationship she hoped for did not materialise and she subsequently suffered a mental breakdown, which had damaging consequences for her career and her life. Born in Acireale, a coastal city in eastern Sicily in the shadow of the Mount Etna volcano, Rocca came from poor, working class roots but her looks became a passport to a new life. She entered and won the Miss Catania beauty contest before she was 16. Read more…
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Book of the Day: The Italian Cinema Book, edited by Peter Bondanella
Peter Bondanella, who was Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Italian, Comparative Literature and Film Studies at Indiana University, wrote a number of groundbreaking books, including Hollywood Italians, The Cinema of Federico Fellini, and The Films of Roberto Rossellini. He also won acclaim for his translations of Italian literary classics.
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