23 October

Carlo Caracciolo - newspaper publisher

Left-leaning aristocrat who co-founded L’Espresso and La Repubblica 

The newspaper publisher Carlo Caracciolo, who was the driving force behind the news magazine L’Espresso and the centre-left daily La Repubblica, was born on this day in 1925 in Florence.  Caracciolo aligned himself politically with the Left and spent the last two years of World War Two fighting against the Fascists as a member of a partisan unit he joined at the age of 18.  Yet he was born into Italian aristocracy, inheriting the titles Prince of Castagneto and Duke of Melito with the death of his father in 1965. After his younger sister, Marella, married the Fiat chairman, Gianni Agnelli, in 1953, he became one of the best connected individuals in Italian society. His funeral in 2008 was attended by members of five of Italy’s most powerful dynasties: Agnelli, Caracciolo, Borghese, Visconti and Pasolini.  Handsome and effortlessly elegant, he could not disguise his refined roots but never flaunted them. Read more…

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Francesco Foscari – Doge of Venice

Ignominious ending to a long and glorious reign

After 34 years as Doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari was abruptly forced to leave office on this day in 1457.  Stripped of his honours, he insisted on descending the same staircase from the Doge’s Palace that he had climbed up in triumph more than a third of a century before, rather than leave through a rear entrance.  Eight days later the former Doge was dead. The story behind the downfall of Foscari and his son, Jacopo, fascinated the poet Lord Byron so much during his visit to Venice in 1816 that he later wrote a five-act play about it.  This play, The Two Foscari: An Historical Tragedy, formed the basis of Verdi’s opera, I due Foscari, and ensured that the sad story of the father and son was never forgotten.  Francesco Foscari, who was born in 1373, was the 65th Doge of the Republic of Venice.  Read more…

Alex Zanardi - racing driver and Paralympian

Crash victim who refused to be beaten

Alessandro 'Alex’ Zanardi, a title-winning racing driver who lost both legs in an horrific crash but then reinvented himself as a champion Paralympic athlete, was born on this day in 1966 in the small town of Castel Maggiore, just outside Bologna.  Zanardi was twice winner of the CART series - the forerunner of IndyCar championship of which the marquee event is the Indianapolis 500 - and also had five seasons in Formula One.  But in September 2001, after returning to CART following the loss of his contract with the Williams F1 team, Zanardi was competing in the American Memorial race at the EuroSpeedway Lausitz track in Germany when he lost control of his car emerging from a pit stop and was struck side-on by the car of the Canadian driver Alex Tagliani.  The nose of Zanardi’s car was completely severed as Tagliani's car slammed into Zanardi's cockpit. Read more…

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Saint John of Capistrano

Patron saint of lawyers and chaplains

The feast day of Saint John of Capistrano (San Giovanni da Capestrano) is being celebrated today in Abruzzo and is marked by Catholics in the rest of Italy and the world.  The patron saint of the legal profession and military chaplains, St John is particularly venerated in Austria, Hungary, Poland and Croatia as well as in different parts of America.  St John was born in Capestrano, about halfway between L’Aquila and Pescara in the Abruzzo region of Italy, in 1386.  He studied law at the University of Perugia and was then appointed Governor of Perugia by King Ladislaus of Naples.  When war broke out between Perugia and the Malatesta family in 1416, John was sent to broker peace, but ended up in prison.  While in captivity he decided not to consummate his recent marriage but to study theology instead.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Media and Politics in Contemporary Italy: From Berlusconi to Grillo, by Alessandro D'Arma

Media and Politics in Contemporary Italy is the first book to provide a comprehensive examination of the media system in Italy during the last twenty years. Seeing the rise of new political actors and the growing role of the Internet and social media, the general elections of February 2013 have symbolically closed a twenty-year period of Italian history dominated by Silvio Berlusconi politically and by television as a channel of political communication. The analysis focuses on change and continuity with past media structures, cultures and practices, and considers the “Berlusconi factor,” namely the impact of one man on the country’s media system, journalism, and political communication.  

Alessandro D’Arma is a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster, where he is Reader in Media and Communication and Director of the Doctoral Programme within that department.

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22 October

Ettore Boiardi - entrepreneur

Emilian immigrant who founded canned pasta brand

Ettore Boiardi, the former New York chef whose name lives on in the Chef Boyardee canned pasta products brand, was born on this day in 1897 in Piacenza, now part of the Emilia-Romagna region.  Boiardi, whose culinary skills first gained popularity when he was working in the kitchens of the iconic Plaza Hotel in New York, hit upon the idea of selling cook-at-home Italian food after opening his first restaurant while still in his 20s.  He and his brother, Paolo, built a company that employed 5,000 staff and filled 250,000 cans per day at its peak, making the Chef Boyardee brand a familiar sight in grocery stores across America.  They eventually sold the business for $6 million dollars in 1948 but the Chef Boyardee brand never went away. Today, Chef Boyardee products still carry Ettore Boiardi’s image on their packaging.  Read more…

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Valeria Golino - actress

Neapolitan starred with Hoffman and Cruise in Rain Man

The actress Valeria Golino, who found international fame when she played opposite Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise in the hugely successful movie Rain Man, was born on this day in 1965 in Naples.  Golino was cast as the girlfriend of Tom Cruise’s character, Charlie Babbitt, in Barry Levinson’s comedy, in which Babbitt’s estranged father dies and leaves most of his multi-million dollar estate to another son, an autistic savant named Raymond (Dustin Hoffman) whose existence Charlie knew nothing about. The 1988 movie won four Oscars and grossed more than $350 dollars. Although Golino was not nominated for her performance in Rain Man, she has won a string of other awards over a career so far spanning almost 35 years.  She is one of only three stars to win Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival on two occasions. Read more…

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Giovanni Martinelli – tenor

Singer made his fame abroad

One of the most famous tenors of the early 20th century, Giovanni Martinelli, was born on this day in 1885 in Montagnana in the province of Padua in the Veneto.  Martinelli began his career playing the clarinet in a military band and then studied as a singer with Giuseppe Mandolini in Milan. He made his professional debut at the Teatro del Verme in Milan in the title role of Giuseppe Verdi's Ernani in 1910.  Martinelli became famous for singing the role of Dick Johnson in Giacomo Puccini's La fanciulla del West, which he performed in Rome, Brescia, Naples, Genoa, Monte Carlo and also at La Scala in Milan.  He played Cavaradossi in Puccini's Tosca at the Royal Opera House in London and took on the same role for his first American engagement in 1913. That same year Martinelli portrayed Pantagruel in the world premiere of Jules Massenet’s Panurge in Paris.  Read more…

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Soave - an Italian classic wine

How the dry white from the Veneto earned its DOC status

Soave - at one time the world's most popular Italian wine - was officially granted a DOC classification on this day in 1968.  The DOC status - which stands for Denominazione di Origine Controllata - was introduced midway through the 20th century as part of a series of laws designed to safeguard the quality and authenticity of Italian wines.  Winegrowers had been pushing for such regulation because the increasing popularity of Italian wines around the world was impacting on quality as more and more producers sprang up to meet demand.  Soave was a case in point.  Originally limited to a small area of just 2,720 acres (1,100 hectares) in the hills to the north of the small towns of Soave and Monteforte d'Alpone, roughly 25km (16 miles) east of Verona in the Veneto region, production spread rapidly to an area more than six times as large.  Read more…

Roberto “Robertino” Loreti - singer and actor

Child prodigy who specialised in traditional Italian songs

The singer and actor Roberto Loreti, who performed under the stage name “Robertino”, was born on this day in 1946 in Rome.  Loreti, who sang live on Italian television earlier in 2022 at the age of 75, built popularity in many countries apart from Italy at his peak, his repertoire largely built on traditional Italian songs. He also appeared in acting roles in a number of films.  The fifth of eight children, he was only 10 years old when his father, Orlando, could not work for a long period because of illness. In order to help bring money into the household, Loreti had to give up school and find work.  He took a job as a delivery boy for a bakery which supplied pastries to restaurants. As he made his deliveries, he would amuse himself by singing folk songs.  The quality of his voice made an impression on people who heard him. Read more…

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Salvatore Di Vittorio – composer and conductor  

Musician has promoted his native Palermo throughout the world

Salvatore Di Vittorio, founding music director and conductor of the Chamber Orchestra of New York, was born on this day in 1967 in Palermo in Sicily.  Also a composer, Di Vittorio has written music in the style of the early 20th century Italian composer, Ottorino Respighi, who, in turn, based his compositions on the music he admired from the 16th and 17th centuries.  Di Vittorio has been recognised by music critics as respectful of the ancient Italian musical tradition and also as an emerging, leading interpreter of the music of Ottorino Respighi.  He began studying music when he was a child with his father, Giuseppe, who introduced him to the operas of Verdi and Puccini. He went on to study composition at the Manhattan School of Music and Philosophy at Columbia University.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American, by Ian MacAllen

In Red Sauce, Ian MacAllen traces the evolution of traditional Italian-American cuisine, often referred to as “red sauce Italian,” from its origins in Italy to its transformation in America into a new, distinct cuisine. It is a fascinating social and culinary history exploring the integration of red sauce food into mainstream America alongside the blending of Italian immigrant otherness into a national American identity. The story follows the small parlour restaurants immigrants launched from their homes to large, popular destinations, and eventually to commodified fast food and casual dining restaurants. Some dishes like fettuccine Alfredo and spaghetti alla Caruso owe their success to celebrities, and Italian-American cuisine generally has benefited from a rich history in popular culture. Drawing on inspiration from Southern Italian cuisine, early Italian immigrants to America developed new recipes and modified old ones. Ethnic Italians invented dishes like lobster fra Diavolo, spaghetti and meatballs, and veal parmigiana, and popularized foods like pizza and baked lasagna that had once been seen as overly foreign. Eventually, the classic red-checkered-table-cloth Italian restaurant would be replaced by a new idea of what it means for food to be Italian, even as ‘red sauce’ became entrenched in American culture. This book looks at how and why these foods became part of the national American diet, and focuses on the stories, myths, and facts behind classic (and some not so classic) dishes within Italian-American cuisine.

Ian MacAllen is a writer and book critic. His maternal grandfather was born in Bagnoli del Trigno in Molise, Italy and his maternal grandmother’s family was from Naples and Sicily. He lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife and son.

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21 October

NEW - Giuseppe Giacosa – poet and playwright

Writer produced polished libretti for composer Giacomo Puccini

One of Italy’s most prominent 19th century playwrights, Giuseppe Giacosa, was born on this day in 1847 in Colleretto Parella, which is now called Colleretto Giacosa, around 40km (25 miles) north of Turin. Along with his plays, he is remembered for his success as a librettist for the opera composer Giacomo Puccini. Giacosa, who was the son of an attorney, obtained a law degree from the University of Turin and practised law for a while from his father’s office, while also writing plays. But after his play Una partita a scacchi - A Game of Chess - was a success in 1871, Giacosa concentrated on writing for the stage. His plays were mainly set in Piemonte and had themes that addressed contemporary bourgeois values. In 1885, Giacosa was appointed as professor of history and literature at the Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, but he would often go to stay in the town of Ivrea, which was near the village he was born in, and he would spend long periods writing.  Read more...

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Domenichino - Baroque master

Artist whose talents rivalled Raphael

The painter Domenico Zampieri, in his era spoken of in the same breath as Raphael, was born on this day in 1581 in Bologna.  Better known as Domenichino (“Little Domenico”), the nickname he picked up early in his career on account of his small stature, he painted in classical and later Baroque styles in Rome, Bologna and Naples.  Noted for the subtle, almost serene lighting and understated colours of his compositions, he painted portraits, landscapes, religious and mythological scenes and had a prolific output. Among his most notable works were significant frescoes commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese for the Badia (monastery) at Grottaferrata, outside Rome, and for Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini at the Villa Belvedere (also known as the Villa Aldobrandini) in nearby Frascati, as well as Scenes from the Life of Saint Cecilia at the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. Read more…

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Prince Amedeo, Duke of Aosta

Cousin of Italy's wartime monarch died in a POW camp

Prince Amedeo, Duke of Aosta, who died in a British prisoner-of-war camp after leading the defeated Italian Army in the East Africa Campaign of the Second World War, was born on this day in 1898 in Turin.  After distinguished military service in the First World War and seeing action as a pilot in the pacification of Italian Libya in the early 1930s, Amedeo had been appointed by Mussolini as Viceroy of Ethiopia and Governor-General of Italian East Africa in 1937, replacing the controversial Marshal Rodolfo Graziani.  Italy’s entry into the Second World War on the side of Germany in June 1940 meant the Duke of Aosta became the commander of the Italian forces against the British in what became known as the East African Campaign.  As such, he oversaw the Italian advances into the Sudan and Kenya and the Italian invasion of British Somaliland.  Read more…

Edmondo De Amicis - writer and journalist

Author whose most famous work became a staple text in Italian schools

The writer, journalist and former soldier Edmondo De Amicis, famous as the author of Cuore, his imagined diary of a schoolboy in Turin, was born on this day in 1846 in Oneglia, now part of modern Imperia in Liguria.  Through its daily diary entries by the book’s central character, Enrico, interspersed with uplifting stories told by one of his teachers, Cuore - published for the first time in 1886 - came to be seen as something of a moral compass for young people growing up in post-unification Italy.  At a time when the newly-formed Italian State was keen to impose its authority over a Catholic Church that had vehemently opposed unification and still refused to recognise the Kingdom of Italy, Cuore’s emphasis on values such as patriotism, compassion, diligence, and respect for authority, resonated deeply with the new secular government.  Read more…

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Giuseppe Pinelli - anarchist

His 'accidental death' inspired classic Dario Fo play

Giuseppe 'Pino' Pinelli, the railway worker from Milan who inspired Dario Fo to write his classic play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, was born on this day in 1928.  Pinelli fell to his death from a fourth floor window of the Milan Questura - the main police station - on December 15, 1969, three days after a bomb exploded at a bank in Piazza Fontana in Milan, killing 17 people and wounding 88.  A known anarchist during a period of growing political and social tension in Italy, Pinelli had been picked up for questioning, along with a number of other activists, over the Piazza Fontana bomb.  The story put out first by police was that Pinelli had jumped, willing to take his own life rather than face prosecution. Yet three police officers who had been interrogating Pinelli were put under investigation.  Read more… 

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Book of the Day: La bohème: Original libretto with side-by-side English translation, by Giacomo Puccini, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa 

Step into the vibrant and unforgiving world of 1830s Paris with Giacomo Puccini’s timeless masterpiece, La bohème. This is the story of the "four Musketeers" - the poet Rodolfo, the painter Marcello, the philosopher Colline, and the musician Schaunard - who navigate a "gay and terrible life" balanced between the freezing cold of a Latin Quarter attic and the intoxicating euphoria of the Caffè Momus. Amidst the naive enthusiasm of their "brief youth," a fragile and tragic love blossoms between Rodolfo and the gentle seamstress Mimì, creating one of the most profoundly moving stories in the history of opera.With La bohème, Puccini broke away from the dominant trends of his time to invent a revolutionary musical language. Through the technique of "sung conversation" (conversazione cantata), the melody flows seamlessly from everyday dialogue, elevating simple objects - such as a lost key or a pink bonnet - into poignant, universal symbols of love and loss. Experience the original Italian within a unique bilingual format. For Anglo-American opera lovers, students, and performers, fully grasping the nuances of Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa’s libretto has never been easier.

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) was an Italian composer known primarily for his operas. He was widely regarded as the greatest and most successful proponent of Italian opera after Giuseppe Verdi. Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica wrote the libretti for some of his most successful works.

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Giuseppe Giacosa – poet and playwright

Writer produced polished libretti for composer Giacomo Puccini

A magazine illustration of Giuseppe
Giacosa in his studio in Milan

One of Italy’s most prominent 19th century playwrights, Giuseppe Giacosa, was born on this day in 1847 in Colleretto Parella, which is now called Colleretto Giacosa, around 40km (25 miles) north of Turin.  Along with his plays, he is remembered for his success as a librettist for the opera composer Giacomo Puccini.

Giacosa, who was the son of an attorney, obtained a law degree from the University of Turin and practised law for a while from his father’s office, while also writing plays.

But after his play Una partita a scacchi - A Game of Chess - was a success in 1871, Giacosa concentrated on writing for the stage. His plays were mainly set in Piemonte and had themes that addressed contemporary bourgeois values.

In 1885, Giacosa was appointed as professor of history and literature at the Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, but he would often go to stay in the town of Ivrea, which was near the village he was born in, and he would spend long periods writing. He enjoyed brief trips to southern Italy and Sicily, as well as visits to France and Germany, but he preferred to spend most of his time living in northern Italy.

Giacosa moved to Milan in 1888, where he was appointed director and lecturer at the Academy of Dramatic Arts and professor of dramatic literature at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi, Milan’s college of music. While living in Milan he had the opportunity to hear many operas at La Scala and he became a close friend of the librettist and composer Arrigo Boito.

Having written a play in French, La dame de Challant, for the actress Sarah Bernhardt, Giacosa accompanied the actress on a tour of America with the play in 1891. He wrote an account of his journey, which took him to the Midwest of America and Toronto, in Impressioni d’America, which was published in Milan in 1899.

The Italian actress Eleonora Duse appeared in two premieres of plays by Giacosa, and in 1891 she took part in the premiere in Turin of La signora di Challant, the Italian version of his play for Sarah Bernhardt.

Giacosa became a close friend of Émile Zola and Giovanni Verga and turned towards naturalism in his writing and became the most important representative of verismo on the Italian stage.

A poster advertising an early production of Puccini's
La bohème, with Giacosa and Luigi Illica credited

Among his wide-ranging work, Giacosa wrote stories, verse dramas and about the history and people of his region, Piemonte, and, as a keen alpinist, he wrote about his wanderings among the mountains around the Aosta valley.

Giacosa’s drama Tristi Amori was a failure at its premiere in Rome in 1887, but Eleonora Duse turned it into a triumphant success when she performed in it a few months later in Turin. It is now considered one of his finest works, along with Come le foglie - Like Falling Leaves - a psychological  drama about people in crisis, which has been compared to Chekov’s Cherry Orchard.

The playwright wrote the final, polished version of the libretto for Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, which had been started by other libretto writers, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Marco Praga, Domenico Oliva, and Luigi Illica. He also wrote the libretti used by Puccini for La bohème, Tosca and Madame Butterfly, in collaboration with Illica. His contribution was to turn Illica’s plots and dialogue into polished verses.

Giacosa adapted his own play, Una partita a scacchi, for a one-act-opera for the composer Pietro Abba Comaglia.

In the last few years of his life, and right up to his death, Giacosa was director of the literary magazine, La lettura, which was published with Corriere dell Sera in Milan. He died at the age of just 58 in his home village of Colleretto Giacosa in 1906.

Although Giacosa is best known outside Italy for his libretti for Puccini, he was appreciated during his own lifetime as a playwright in Italy, as well as in Germany and Austria, where many of his plays were performed and he also gave lectures on the theatre.

Giacosa's drama, Tristi amori, has been adapted for the cinema twice. The first time was  by Giuseppe Sterni in 1917,  and later it was by Carmine Gallone in 1943. Gallone's version, which was also known by the English title, Sad Loves, starred Jules Berry, Gino Cervi, and Andrea Checchi. It was one of the last films produced at the Cinecittà studios in Rome before they were shut down toward the end of World War II.

The house in which Giuseppe Giacosa was born
is marked by a plaque on an outside wall

Travel tip:

Colleretto Parella, where Giuseppe Giacosa was born, is a village and municipality in Piemonte, located about 40km (25 miles) north of Turin. The comune changed its name to Colleretto Giacosa in honour of the playwright in 1953. The house in which Giacosa was born, at the junction of Via Provinciale and Via Giuseppe Giacosa, is marked with a plaque on the wall. The rolling hills and Alpine backdrop of the area heavily influenced his early works, and his collection of regional stories, Novelle e paesi valdostani, which celebrated the resilience of local mountaineers. The region of Piemonte is the second largest after Sicily. It borders France, Switzerland and the Italian regions of Lombardia, Liguria, Valle d’Aosta and a small part of Emilia-Romagna. Piemonte was acquired by Otto of Savoy in 1046 and its capital was established at Chambéry, which is now in France. The Savoy territory became the Duchy of Savoy in 1416 and the seat of the Duchy was moved to Turin in 1563 by Duke Emanuele Filiberto. After Victor Amadeus II became King of Sardinia in 1720, Piemonte became part of the Kingdom of Sardinia and Turin grew in importance as a European capital city. 

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The Castello d'Ivrea, built in the 14th
century, retains three of its four towers

Travel tip:

Ivrea, where Giuseppe Giacosa established himself for intensive periods of writing, is a town in the Piemonte region, about 50km (31 miles) north of Turin. It has a partially restored 14th century castle, with three of its original four towers still intact, and the ruins of a 1st century Roman theatre that would have been able to hold 10,000 spectators. The town’s cathedral, which originated from a church that was built on the same site in the 4th century, which itself had been built on the site of a pagan temple, was reconstructed in around 1000 AD in Romanesque style and, in 1785, rebuilt again in a Baroque style. The current neoclassical façade was added in the 19th century. Ivrea hosts an annual carnival before Easter, which includes the Battle of the Oranges, where teams of locals on foot throw oranges at teams riding in carts. In the 20th century, Ivrea gained international recognition after it became the headquarters of the Olivetti company, which was a pioneer in technological innovation and became well known for creating some of the first computers. 

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More reading:

Ferdinando Fontana, the journalist who was Puccini’s first librettist

Arrigo Boito, writer and patriot who fought for a free Venice

The brilliant actress Eleonora Duse

Also on this day:

1581: The birth of painter Domenichino 

1846: The birth of writer and journalist Edmondo De Amicis

1898: The birth of Prince Amedeo, Duke of Aosta

1928: The birth of anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli

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