Giovanni Martinelli – tenor

Singer made his fame abroad

Giovanni Martinelli was seen as the
successor to Enrico Caruso

One of the most famous tenors of the 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.

He attracted favourable reviews when he played Rodolfo in Puccini's La Bohème at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He went on to sing 36 different roles for the theatre over 32 seasons.

Martinelli on stage in a production of
Rossini's opera William Tell

In 1937 Martinelli returned to London to sing opposite the English soprano Eva Turner at Covent Garden.

He retired from the stage in 1950, but gave one final performance in 1967 at the age of 82 as Emperor Altoum in Puccini's Turandot in Seattle.

At the peak of his career Martinelli had a strong high C and exceptional breath control.  In America he was regarded as Enrico Caruso’s successor, even though their voices were different.

He made a number of recordings for Edison and the Victor Talking Machine.

Martinelli was married to Adele Previtali with whom he had three children. He died in 1969 at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City.

Montagnana's walls are some of the best
preserved in the whole of Europe

Travel tip: 

Montagnana, where Martinelli was born, is one of the borghi più belli d’talia - an association of the most beautiful small towns in Italy - because it has some of the best preserved medieval walls in Europe. The cathedral has a fresco that has recently been attributed to the artist Giorgione.

The Teatro del Verme in Milan, where Martinelli
made his operatic debut in 1910

Travel tip:

The Teatro del Verme in Milan, where Martinelli made his operatic debut, is in Via San Giovannni sul Muro and was built on the site of a previous theatre. It was used for plays and operas throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Today the theatre is a venue for concert, plays and dance performances as well as exhibitions and conferences.

More reading:

Why some still regard Caruso as the greatest of them all

What made Giacomo Puccini one of Italy's all-time finest composers

Baritone Antonio Scotti's 35 seasons at the Met

Also on this day:

1965: The birth of the actress Valeria Golino

1968: Soave wine granted DOC status


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Nick Gentile - mafioso

Sicilian mobster defied code of silence by publishing memoirs

Nick Gentile was
rarely photographed

The mafioso Nicola Gentile, known in the United States as Nick, who became notorious for publishing a book of memoirs that revealed the inner workings of the American Mafia as well as secrets of the Sicilian underworld, was born on this day in 1885 in Siculiana, a small town on the south coast of the Sicily, in the province of Agrigento.

Gentile’s book, Vita di Capomafia, which he wrote in conjunction with a journalist, was published in 1963 and provided much assistance to the American authorities in their fight against organized crime.

As a result Gentile was sentenced to death by the mafia council in Sicily for having broken the code of omertà, a vow of silence to which all mafiosi are expected to adhere to protect their criminal activities.  Siculiana, in fact, was a mafia stronghold, where the code was usually enforced with particular rigour.

Yet the mobsters from the city of Catania who were tasked with carrying out the sentence declined to do so, for reasons that have not been explained. In the event, Gentile died in Siculiana in 1966 of natural causes, having spent his last years as an old, sick man who appeared to have very little money and was kept alive by the kindliness of neighbours.

The file the American FBI kept on Gentile's
criminal activity and personal details

The book was also a source of embarrassment for the American government, revealing how US forces collaborated with criminals across Sicily to help facilitate the invasion of the island in 1943 and the subsequent push up the Italian peninsula, helping the Sicilian Mafia rebuild after the damage it suffered during the Fascist era.

Gentile - known in his home country as 'Zio' or 'Zu Cola' (Uncle Nicola) - went to America as an illegal immigrant at the age of 19, having been invited there by a small crime clan made up of Sicilians from Siculiana, acting in New York as well as Philadelphia and Kansas City.

He developed a reputation for being able to mediate in disagreements between rival Mafia families and subsequently travelled regularly from state to state as a peacemaker, while at the same time capitalising on the respect he gained from others by forming strategic alliances.

In the 1920s. Gentile was the head of criminal smuggling cartels plus the mafia families of Kansas City, Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

Gentile returned frequently to Sicily, sometimes to visit relatives, at other times to escape his enemies and the law. Ultimately, his criminal activities in America were based in New York, where he became involved with narcotics operations headed by Charles 'Lucky' Luciano.

He returned to Sicily permanently after being arrested in New Orleans in 1937 on drug charges, fleeing the country on $15,000 bail.

Charles "Lucky" Luciano was an associate of Gentile
both in the United States and in Sicily

Gentile then rose to a top-level position in the Sicilian Mafia and was one of the mob figures who collaborated with the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, helping the military set up a new civil administration in return for being appointed to prominent positions in local government.

He became involved with a Sicilian separatist movement and claimed to have been approached by a US special agent to rally support for the monarchy in the referendum on June 2, 1946.

When Lucky Luciano was extradited to Italy in 1946, he also is said to have been a collaborator with the US military. In Sicily he was again able to team up with Gentile and questions have been raised since over how he and Gentile had the freedom to organise drug trafficking routes to the US.

Quite why, in 1963, Gentile decided to write his memoirs, with the help of Italian journalist Felice Chilanti, is not clear.  In describing the internal organization of the Mafia, or l'onorata società - the Honoured Society - as Gentile called it, he ignored the code of omertà in a way not seen until the pentito Tommaso Buscetta began to reveal secrets more than 20 years later.

Ultimately, the American law enforcement agencies used the detail in Gentile’s book to corroborate the evidence of another repentant mobster, Joe Valachi, who told them that Gentile’s descriptions were accurate.

The marina area at Siculiana is part of an unspoilt stretch
of Sicilian coastline in the southeast of the island

Travel tip:

Siculiana, a town thought to have Greek and Arab roots, is situated on the south-facing coast of the island, about 24km (15 miles) from Agrigento. The Chiaramonte family built a castle, parts of which are still visible, on the ruins of an Arab fortress that was destroyed in 1087 during the conquest of Sicily by the Normans. A 13km (8 miles) stretch of unspoilt coastline northwest of Siculiana is now a protected nature reserve.

A view across the port of Porto Empedocle, where
Andrea Camilleri based his Montalbano novels

Travel tip:

Only 13km (8 miles) from Siculiana along the coast in the other direction, on the way to Agrigento, is Porto Empedocle, the birthplace of the author Andrea Camilleri and the port town on which he based Vigàta, the fictional home of his famous detective, Inspector Montalbano. Camilleri’s Montalbano books have become international best-sellers, with many of them turned into episodes of the crime drama TV series starring Luca Zingaretti as Montalbano. Many scenes from the TV series were filmed around Porto Empedocle, which has now changed its name to Porto Empedocle Vigàta to encourage Camilleri fans to visit the area.

More reading:

How Charles 'Lucky' Luciano became one of organised crime's most powerful figures

Andrea Camilleri - the creator of Inspector Montalbano

The story of anti-mafia crusader Giovanni Falcone


Also on this day:

1675: The death of Charles Emmanuel II, notorious Duke of Savoy

1922: The birth of astrophysicist Margherita Hack

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Dorando Pietri - marathon runner

Athlete who made his fortune from famous disqualification

Dorando Pietri with the silver cup
presented to him by Queen Alexandra

The athlete Dorando Pietri, who found fame and fortune after being disqualified in the 1908 Olympic marathon, was born on this day in 1885 in Mandrio, a hamlet near Carpi, in Emilia-Romagna.

In an extraordinary finish to the 1908 race in London, staged on an exceptionally warm July day, Pietri entered the White City Stadium in first place, urged on by a crowd of more than 75,000 who were there to witness the finish, only for his legs to buckle beneath him.

He was helped to his feet by two officials only to fall down four more times before he crossed the finish line.  Each time, officials hauled him to his feet and walked alongside him, urging him on and ready to catch him if he fell.  The final 350 yards (320m) of the event accounted for 10 minutes of the two hours, 54 minutes and 46 seconds recorded as his official time.

Eventually, a second athlete entered the stadium, the American Johnny Hayes, but Pietri had staggered over the line before he could complete the final lap.

The American team was already unpopular with the British crowd, partly because of a row about a flag at the opening ceremony. They lost even more support after they lodged an objection to the result. 

Pietri, a small man of 5ft 2ins who looked older than his 22 years, was hailed for his pluckiness by the White City crowd, who felt he deserved the gold medal.  But the Games organisers were obliged to uphold the American complaint, on the grounds that the Italian had received assistance.

Pietri races ahead of the field in
the 1908 Olympic Marathon

The outrage at this decision extended even as far as the British Royal Family.  Queen Alexandra had taken a particular interest in the race, even arranging for the start line, originally set for a street outside Windsor Castle, to be moved inside the castle grounds so that her children could watch. This extended the distance to 26 miles 385 yards, which has remained the official distance for marathons ever since.

Inside the stadium, with the finishing line placed directly in front of the Royal Box, Queen Alexandra is said to have been so thrilled to see Pietri stagger across the line and be acclaimed the winner that she joined the applause of the crowd by banging her umbrella on the floor of the box.

When she learned he had been disqualified, the story goes that she was so disappointed on his behalf that she insisted his efforts be recognised and arranged for a silver and gilt cup to be inscribed, which she presented to him during the closing ceremony.

This gesture caught the public imagination to such a degree that the Daily Mail began a fund for him, which the celebrated author Arthur Conan Doyle, who had been commissioned by the newspaper to write a report of the race, launched by donating five pounds.

The Mail told its readers that money raised would help Pietri, a pastry chef by trade, to open a bakery in Carpi. In the event, the appeal realised £300, which in 1908 was a sum comparable with more than £28,000 today.

Pietri is helped across the line at the finish of the race

With that money and his subsequent earnings as a professional – he was invited to compete in lucrative races all over the world, including a 22-race tour of the United States – he was able eventually to open an hotel.

Apart from making his fortune, cashing in on celebrity status that extended even to having a song written about him by Irving Berlin, Pietri was able to use his American tour to remove any doubt that he was a worthy winner in London.

In a rematch staged over 262 laps of a special track built at Madison Square Garden in New York in November, 2008, in front of a 20,000 crowd, Pietri defeated Johnny Hayes, repeating the win four months later.  In all the Italian won 17 of the 22 races on the tour.

Pietri retired from competition in 1911, after a career lasting just seven years, which had been interrupted by two years of national service.

Sadly, the Grand Hotel Dorando in Carpi was not a success and in time was closed, after which Pietri moved to the Ligurian resort of San Remo, where he ran a taxi business until he died in 1942, having suffered a heart attack.

The Piazza Martiri is Italy's third largest square

Travel tip:

Carpi, situated 18km (11 miles) north of Modena in the Padana plain, became a wealthy town during the era of industrial development in Italy as a centre for textiles and mechanical engineering. Its historic centre, which features a town hall housed in a former castle, is based around the Renaissance square, the Piazza Martiri, the third largest square in Italy. Italy’s national marathon has finished in Carpi in 1988 in honour of Dorando Pietri, who is also commemorated with a bronze statue by the sculptor Bernardino Morsani, erected in 2008 on the 100^th anniversary of the London Olympic marathon, at the junction of Via Ugo da Carpi and Via Cattani, about 2.5km (1.5 miles) from the centre of the town.

Luxury yachts in the harbour at San Remo

Travel tip:

San Remo, the main resort along Liguria’s Riviera dei Fiori – Riviera of Flowers – is a town steeped in old-fashioned grandeur with echoes of its heyday as a health resort in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, with broad streets lined with palm trees and luxury villas.  The harbour is still filled with expensive yachts and the casinos attract wealthy clientele. San Remo also has an old town of narrow streets and alleyways and is famous as the home of an annual pop music contest, the Sanremo Festival, where winning is still a considerable career advantage for up-and-coming Italian performers.

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Angelo Cerica - Carabinieri general

First job was to arrest Mussolini

General Cerica was hand-picked as the
Carabinieri commander to arrest Mussolini

General Angelo Cerica, the police commander tasked with arresting the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini after he was deposed as party leader in 1943, was born on this day in 1885 in Alatri, in the Ciociaria region of Lazio, about 90km (56 miles) south of Rome.

Mussolini was arrested on July 25 as he left his regular meeting with the King, Vittorio Emanuele III, the day after the Fascist Grand Council had voted to remove him from power.  The monarch had informed him that General Pietro Badoglio, former chief of staff of the Italian army, would be replacing him as prime minister.

Cerica had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Carabinieri, Italy’s para-military second police force, only two days previously, succeeding General Azolino Hazon, who had been killed in a bombing raid.

He was hand-picked for the job by General Vittorio Ambrosio, who was party to secret plot among Carabinieri officers to depose Mussolini irrespective of the Grand Council vote.  They wanted a commander who would not oppose the anti-Mussolini faction and would carry out the arrest.

Cerica, in fact, shared their view of il Duce, blaming him for leading Italy into a ruinous alliance with Germany in the Second World War and eager for him to be removed, so that Italy could seek an armistice with the Allies.

He was comfortable, therefore, to position himself with a brigade of Carabinieri to arrest the dictator as he stepped out of the Palazzo Quirinale following the meeting with the King.

Cerica fought with partisans after
German army swept into Rome

He then instructed his officers to ready themselves for any public backlash against the arrest, although in the event the news was generally well received.

Later in the year, after the Badoglio Proclamation of September 8 informed the Italian population of the switch of allegiance, Cerica led a battalion of Carabinieri in a battle with German troops on the Via Ostiense in Rome.

The Germans’ superior firepower won the day but Cerica escaped and went into hiding, eventually joining up with partisans in Abruzzo and fighting on the side of the Italian Resistance movement.

Once the Allies had liberated the area, he rejoined the mainstream military, heading a department in the Army of the South, also known as the Italian Liberation Corps, until the end of the war.

In 1945, in Florence, commissioned by the Minister of War Alessandro Casati, he directed the liberation struggle against the Germans. After the war was over, he was presented with the Medal for Freedom Silver Palm by the US President, Harry S Truman. 

Cerica, born to Pietro Felice Cerica and Luisa Villa in Alatri, was set on a military career from an early age, entering a military academy soon after leaving school. In 1906, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant and joined the 74th Infantry Regiment, being promoted to full lieutenant in June 1909.

During June 1912, he was transferred to the Carabinieri Corps. He participated in the First World War, attaining the rank of captain. In September 1920, he was promoted to major and became a lieutenant colonel in 1927.

Allied tanks arrive in Rome

During the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, Cerica was appointed commander of the Carabinieri Legion in Asmara, an office he held from September 1936 to June 1939, eventually promoted to colonel.

Due to exceptional merit, he received the rank of brigadier general later that year, becoming the chief of Carabinieri forces in Italian East Africa. He served in the same capacity in Italian North Africa from July 1940 until February 1941. Cerica was posted back to Italy, attained the rank of Divisional General in June 1942.

After leaving the Carabinieri, Cerica served as the President of the Supreme Military Court from May 1947 to September 1951. He was also a Member of the Senate for the Christian Democrats.  

He died in Rome in April 1961, aged 75.

The church of Santa Maria Maggiore 

Travel tip:

Alatri is a town in southern Lazio in the Ciociaria region notable for its acropolis, a Roman citadel built on the top of a hill surrounded by polygonal walls.  The old town within the walls contains many churches and ancient architectural structures, including the Cathedral of San Paolo, which dates back to the 10^th century.  Outside the citadel, the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, in the main square, built on the site of an early Christian temple of the fifth century, has a facade in the Romanesque-Gothic style and hosts a number of works of art, including a wooden statue of the Madonna di Costantinopoli of the 13th century and a fine triptych by Antonio da Alatri (15th century), in the left nave.

Porta San Paolo, where Via Ostiense leaves Rome

Travel tip:

The Via Ostiense follows the route of the Via Ostiensis, an important road in ancient Rome that ran west 30km (19 miles) from the city of Rome to its sea port of Ostia Antica, from which it took its name. The road began near the Forum Boarium, ran between the Aventine Hill and the Tiber River along its left bank, and left the city's Servian Walls through the Porta Trigemina. When the later Aurelian Walls were built, the road left the city through the Porta Ostiensis (Porta San Paolo). The modern Via Ostiense is the main connecting route between Rome and Ostia, passing the important basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.

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Luigi Russolo – painter and composer

Futurist artist who invented 'noise music'

Luigi Russolo, pictured at the time he
published his manifesto, in 1916

Luigi Russolo, who is regarded as the first ‘noise music’ composer, was born on this day in 1885 in Portogruaro in the Veneto.

Russolo originally chose to become a painter and went to live in Milan where he met and was influenced by other artists in the Futurist movement.

Along with other leading figures in the movement, such as Carlo Carrà, he signed both the Manifesto of Futurist Painters and the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting as the artists set out how they saw Futurism being represented on canvas, and afterwards participated in Futurist art exhibitions.

Russolo issued his own manifesto, L’arte dei rumori, - The Art of Noises - in 1913, which he expanded into book form in 1916.

He stated that the industrial revolution had given modern man a greater capacity to appreciate more complex sounds. He found traditional, melodic music confining and envisioned noise music replacing it in the future.

Russolo invented intonarumori - noise-emitting machines - and conducted concerts using these machines. The audiences reacted with either enthusiasm or hostility to the style of music he produced.

Luigi Russolo (left), his fellow Futurist Ugo Piatti, and a
collection of the intonarumori machines he used for his music

None of these machines survived although they have since been reconstructed for use in performances.

The Art of Noises classified noise-sound into six groups, which included roars and thunderings, whistling and hissing, whispers and murmurs, beating different surfaces to make noises, voices of animals and people, and screeching, creaking, rustling, buzzing, crackling and scraping.

When Italy entered the First World War, Russolo volunteered to fight but was seriously wounded in 1917 and had to spend 18 months in hospital.

After he recovered, Russolo held three Futurist concerts in Paris during 1921 that were acclaimed by Stravinsky, Diaghilev and Ravel.

Russolo invented a series of musical instruments, rumorarmoni, which appeared in Futurist films for which he composed the music. These films have since been lost.

Russolo (left) with other Futursts in Paris in 1912

He held his last concert in 1929 at the opening of a Futurist show in Paris and then went to live in Spain for a while and studied occult philosophy.

When Russolo returned to Italy in 1933, he settled in Cerro on Lake Maggiore and took up painting again in a realist style that he called classic-modern. He died at Cerro in 1947.

Antonio Russolo, Luigi’s brother and another Futurist composer, produced a recording of two works featuring the original intonarumori. The phonograph recording made in 1921 included works entitled Corale and Serenata, which combined conventional orchestral music set against the sound produced by the noise machines. It is the only surviving contemporaneous recording of Luigi Russolo’s noise music.

The church of the Abbey of Summaga at Portogruaro

Travel tip:

Portogruaro, where Russolo was born, was officially founded in 1140 when the local Archbishop gave a group of fishermen the right to settle there and build a river port. It was the medieval successor to the Roman town of Concordia Saggitaria and many Roman remains found there are now displayed in the Museo Concordiese. In 1420 Portogruaro’s citizens requested membership of the Republic of Venice. Portogruaro was then under Austrian control from 1815 until 1866 when it became part of the newly-unified Kingdom of Italy. It is now in the Veneto region on the main road linking Venice with Trieste. Among the many historic sights is the 11th century Abbey of Summaga, which has 11th and 12th century frescoes.

The harbour of Leveno-Mombello, of which Cerro is a hamlet

Travel tip:

Cerro, where Luigi Russolo died, is a hamlet of Laveno-Mombello on Lake Maggiore in the province of Varese. Laveno-Mombello is a port town that connects Verbania and the Borromean Islands with Varese and has beautiful views of the lake and islands.

More reading:

How Futurist painter Carlo Carrà captured violence at the funeral of an anarchist

Canaletto's images of Venice were sought after by wealthy travellers 

The strange sounds of avant-garde composer Luigi Nono

Also on this day:

1572: The death of the saint who excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I

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