Showing posts with label 2007. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2007. Show all posts

27 March 2019

Joe Sentieri - singer and actor

Joe Sentieri began his career on ocean liners in the 1950s, soon becoming popular with holiday-makers
Joe Sentieri began his career on ocean liners in the 1950s,
soon becoming popular with holiday-makers

Career remembered for international hit song


The singer, songwriter and actor Joe Sentieri, who released seven albums and around 100 singles over the course of a career spanning more than a quarter of a century, died on this day in 2007 in the Adriatic coastal city of Pescara.

Although he enjoyed considerable success in his own right, he tends to be remembered most for his association with an Italian song that became an international hit after it was translated into English.

Sentieri’s 1961 song Uno dei tanti - One of the Many - was given English lyrics by the American producing partners Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and repackaged as I (Who Have Nothing).

Sentieri enjoyed a number of hits in Italy but is best known for a song that brought success for others
Sentieri enjoyed a number of hits in Italy but is best
known for a song that brought success for others
A hit first for the American soul and R&B star Ben E King, it was covered with considerable success by the British artists Tom Jones and later Shirley Bassey. The Jones version reached No 14 in the Billboard Hot 100 chart, while Bassey’s climbed to No 6 in the UK singles chart in 1963 and became a staple of her concert repertoire.

Countless other cover versions were released over time, by performers as diverse as Petula Clark and Joe Cocker, Katherine Jenkins and Gladys Knight.  The song has also featured in the hit US television series, The Sopranos.

Sentieri was born Rino Luigi Sentieri in Genoa in March 1925. He grew up in a working-class neighbourhood in the port area and was sent out to work at a young age, going into the mountains above the city where there were opencast coal mines, loading bags of coal on to a truck to be sold by his father.

His musical talent emerged after he was given a mandolin as a present and taught himself to play. He learned the accordion, too, and helped supplement the family income by busking. He also developed a good singing voice, and in the early 1950s began to find work on the cruise ships and transatlantic liners that regularly sailed from Genoa to the Americas.

Sentieri with Wilma De Angelis at the 1960 Festival di San Remo
Sentieri with Wilma De Angelis at the 1960
Festival di San Remo
Modelling himself on Elvis Presley with a touch of Little Richard thrown in, he became a very popular performer, especially in South America and in New York, where he would stay for long periods. He ended each performance with a trademark jump, apparently the legacy of a show he gave during a particularly rough voyage, when right at the end of his closing number the ship rolled suddenly and he instinctively jumped to stop himself falling.

Back in Italy he made his debut on dry land in 1956 as a singer of the orchestra of Corrado Bezzi, with whom he also recorded some 78rpm records for the Italian RCA label, under the name of Rino Sentieri.

His career accelerated after he took part in the Festival of Musichiere at the Arena di Verona in 1959, with a song written by Domenico Modugno, who also provided him with the winning entry - Piove (ciao ciao bambina) - at the prestigious Canzonissima song contest of the same year, by which time he had decided on Joe as a stage name.

As well as making numerous records, Sentieri was also chosen to sing the theme song for the 1960 Olympic Games of Rome, entitled Welcome To Rome, and gained a number of parts in movies, including a couple for the director Damiano Damiani, one of which - La moglie più bella (The Most Beautiful Wife) - featured the screen debut at 14 of the future star Ornella Muti.

He decided to end his career in the 1980s so that he could devote more time to his love of painting, a hobby he had maintained since childhood. He and his partner, Dora, moved to Pescara, where he would exhibit from time to time. He accepted some invitations to sing or appear on television and actually released a collection of Genovese songs in 1996, although he preferred a quiet life.

He ended his days in considerably reduced circumstances compared with peak of his career, mainly as a result of bad luck with his investments. He spent 40 million lire on some land at Rapallo which was then compulsorily purchased by the government for 16 million, saw his record shop go bust and had his fingers burnt on another property investment, in a country club outside Genoa.

As a result, he was left to live on little more than a €700-a-month state pension, before premier Silvio Berlusconi decided he should benefit to the tune of an extra €1,000 per month as a result of the Becchalli Law, which allows governments to provide special help to “illustrious citizens” who have fallen on hard times.

Sentieri died in a clinic in Pescara a few weeks after suffering a stroke, at the age of 82.

Gabriele D'Annunzio's childhood home in Pescara contains a museum dedicated to his life
Gabriele D'Annunzio's childhood home in
Pescara contains a museum dedicated to his life 
Travel tip:

Pescara, a city of almost 120,000 people on the Adriatic in the Abruzzo region, is known for its 10 miles of clean, sandy beaches, yet is only 50km (31 miles) from the Gran Sasso mountain range, the snow-capped peaks of which are visible even from the coast on a clear winter’s day. The city is the birthplace of the poet, patriot and military leader, Gabriele D’Annunzio. His childhood home, the Casa Natale di Gabriele D’Annunzio, which can be found in the historic centre of the city on the south side of the Fiume Pescara, which bisects the city, houses a museum about his life and works. The Museo delle Genti d'Abruzzo has exhibitions on regional industries like ceramics and olive oil. Pieces by Miró and Picasso are on view at the Vittoria Colonna Museum of Modern Art.

The Piazza de Ferrari in the centre of Genoa is always a hub of lively activity
The Piazza de Ferrari in the centre of Genoa is
always a hub of lively activity
Travel tip:

The port city of Genoa, known in Italy as Genova, is the capital of the Liguria region. It has a rich history as a powerful trading centre with considerable wealth built on its shipyards and steelworks, but also boasts many fine buildings, many of which have been restored to their original splendour.  The Doge's Palace, the 16th century Royal Palace and the Romanesque-Renaissance style San Lorenzo Cathedral are just three examples.  The area around the restored harbour area offers a maze of fascinating alleys and squares, enhanced recently by the work of Genoa architect Renzo Piano, and a landmark aquarium, the largest in Italy.

More reading:

Patty Pravo - the '60s star still performing today

Italy's biggest-selling recording artist of all time

How Domenico Modugno wrote the iconic Italian ballad Volare

Also on this day:

1799: The birth of Alessandro La Marmora, founder of Italy's Bersaglieri corps

1968: The birth of popular politician Luca Zaia

1969: The birth of Gianluigi Lentini, once the world's most expensive footballer


(Picture credit: D'Annunzio house by Rae Bo; Fountain by Roberta de roberto; via Wikimedia Commons) 

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30 July 2018

Michelangelo Antonioni - film director

Enigmatic artist often remembered for 1966 movie Blowup


Michelangelo Antonioni was described as one of Italian cinema's 'last greats'
Michelangelo Antonioni was described
as one of Italian cinema's 'last greats'
The movie director Michelangelo Antonioni, sometimes described as “the last great” of Italian cinema’s post-war golden era, died on this day in 2007 at his home in Rome.

Antonioni, who was 94 years old when he passed away, was a contemporary of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti.

Remarkably, three of that trio’s most acclaimed works - Fellini’s La dolce vita, Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers and Antonioni’s L’avventura - appeared within a few months of one another.

Antonioni’s genius lay in the way he challenged traditional approaches to storytelling and drama and the way people viewed the world in general.

His characters were often intentionally vague, his most favoured themes being social alienation and bourgeois ennui, reflecting his view that life left many people emotionally adrift and unable to find their bearings.  His movies often had no strong plot in a conventional sense, were dotted with unfinished conversations and seemingly disconnected incidents. His style was seen as a rejection of neorealism, his films more a metaphor for human experience, rather than a record of it.

He divided opinions. At the Cannes Film Festival in 1960, when L’avventura was shown, half the audience booed and jeered. But Antonioni’s fellow director Roberto Rossellini sprang to his defence, hailing the movie, about a young woman's disappearance during a boating trip and how her lover and her best friend join forces to search for her but eventually begin having an affair, as a work of genius.

The actress Monica Vitti in a scene from L'eclisse (1962)
The actress Monica Vitti in a scene from L'eclisse (1962)
L’avventura (1960) was the first of three films, with Le notte (1961) and L’eclisse (1962), that were described as his “trilogy on modernity and its discontents”. All starred a young Roman actress called Monica Vitti, who was at the time Antonioni’s lover.  Some critics argue that the exquisite, mysterious qualities that Vitti brought to her acting were the key to the trilogy’s success and Antonioni’s breakthrough with large international audiences. His first film in colour, The Red Desert (1964) explored similar themes.

He and Vitti stayed together for 10 years, their relationship falling between his two marriages. His third wife, Enrica Fico, was also a director.

Antonioni made a number of films in English, the most famous of which were Zabriskie Point (1970) and The Passenger (1975) and, above all, Blowup (1966), a movie starring David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave that was shocking at the time for its sex scenes, which was loosely based on the life of David Bailey, the photographer who captured the Swinging Sixties with more style and impact than any of his contemporaries.

Antonioni was honoured with numerous awards for his films
Antonioni was honoured with numerous
awards for his films
Born in Ferrara, in the Po valley, Antonioni came from a family that enjoyed largely self-made prosperity thanks to his father’s efforts, though taking evening classes alongside his day job, to establish a career that was paid well enough for him to rise above his working-class roots.

Growing up, Antonioni loved music and drawing, with a fascination for architecture, and had he not fallen in love with the cinema he might have been an accomplished violinist. He went to university in Bologna, where he obtained a degree in economics, before beginning work for Il Corriere Padano, a newspaper based in Ferrara, where he wrote film reviews.

In his 20s he played tennis, winning amateur championships in northern Italy, and moved to Rome. During the Second World War he fought against the Fascists as a member of the Italian Resistance.

In 1942, Antonioni ventured into film-making for the first time, co-writing A Pilot Returns with Roberto Rossellini. He made his own debut with Gente del Po (1943), a short film about poor fishermen in the Po valley. His earliest feature films, many of which were lost after Rome was liberated by the Allies, were neorealist in style, before he broke away from that genre in the 1950s to make films with the theme of social alienation that would become common in his work.

Antonioni received numerous film festival awards and nominations throughout his career. He is one of only three directors to have won the Palme d'Or (Cannes), the Golden Lion (Venice) and the Golden Bear (Berlin), and the only director to have won these three and the Golden Leopard (Locarno). He received an honorary Academy Award in 1995.

The Este Castle dominates the centre of Ferrara
The Este Castle dominates the centre of Ferrara
Travel tip:

The city of Ferrara in Emilia-Romagna is about 50km (31 miles) northeast of Bologna. It was ruled by the Este family between 1240 and 1598. Building work on the magnificent Este Castle in the centre of the city began in 1385 and it was added to and improved by successive rulers of Ferrara until the end of the Este line. Apart from the castle, the city has other architectural gems, including many the striking Renaissance building Palazzo dei Diamanti, so-called because the stone blocks of its facade are cut into the shape of diamonds.

The Archiginnasio is the oldest part of Bologna University
The Archiginnasio is the oldest part of Bologna University
Travel tip:

Bologna University, where Antonioni studied, was founded in 1088 and is the oldest university in the world. The oldest surviving building, the Archiginnasio, is now a library and is open Monday to Friday from 9 am to 7 pm, and on Saturdays from 9 am to 2 pm. It is a short walk away from Piazza Maggiore and the Basilica di San Petronio in the centre of the city.

More reading:

Fellini's legacy to Italian cinema

Luchino Visconti - the aristocrat of Italian cinema

Why Roberto Rossellini is known as the 'father of neorealism'

Also on this day:

1626: The Naples earthquake that killed 70,000 people

1909: The birth of chemist Vittorio Erspamer, the scientist who discovered serotonin



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6 November 2016

Enzo Biagi - author and journalist

Much respected presenter taken off air by Berlusconi


Enzo Biagi, pictured in 2006
Enzo Biagi, pictured in 2006
Enzo Biagi, the distinguished print and television journalist and author of more than 80 books, died in Milan on this day in 2007, at the age of 87.  

A staunch defender of the freedom of the press, Biagi himself was the victim of censorship from the highest level of the Italian government in 2002 when prime minister Silvio Berlusconi effectively sacked him from the public broadcaster RAI for what he called "criminal use" of the network.

In what became known as il Editto bulgaro - the Bulgarian Edict - because he made the pronouncement during a state visit to Sofia, Berlusconi named another journalist, Michele Santoro, and the satirical comedian, Daniele Luttazzi, as guilty of similar conduct and said it was his duty to "not to allow this to happen".

It meant that the last years of Biagi's life were marred somewhat by an absence from the screen that lasted five years.  He made an emotional comeback in April 2007, seven months before his death, when Romani Prodi had begun his second stint as PM and saw to it that he was reinstated.

Berlusconi's disapproval of Biagi was thought to have related to two interviews he conducted during the run-up to the 2001 elections.

In the first, he appeared to be sympathetic to Berlusconi's opponent, Francesco Rutelli. The second - just two days before polling - was with Roberto Benigni, the actor-director and comedian, who poked fun at what he saw as a conflict between Berlusconi's political ambitions and his business interests.

Silvio Berlusconi banished Biagi from  Italian state TV network RAI
Silvio Berlusconi banished Biagi from
Italian state TV network RAI
Biagi had interviewed Berlusconi himself before he first stood for prime minister, grilling him over his relationship with Bettino Craxi at the time the former prime minister was convicted of corruption and illegal funding of the Italian Socialist Party.

Born in 1920 in Lizzano in Belvedere, an Apennine village in Emilia-Romagna, the son of a warehouse guard, he began working for the Bologna newspaper Il Resto del Carlino at the age of 18. An opponent of Fascism, he joined the Italian partisans in 1943 and was a member of an anti-Fascist political movement at the time but during his journalistic career he never adhered to any political party.

After the Second World War, he moved to Milan and between 1952 and 1960 was editor of the magazine Epoca. He started working regularly for RAI in the 1960s, while continuing to write for leading newspapers.

He hosted many magazine programmes for the station, interviewing leading political leaders from Margaret Thatcher to Muammar Gadaffi, as well as key figures from his other great love, the cinema.

Biagi published more than 80 books, many about history and current affairs, as well as a biography of his friend, the actor Marcello Mastroianni.  His 1987 book, Il boss è solo, based on interviews with the Mafia pentito (state witness) Tommaso Buscetta, won the Premio Bancarella literary prize.

The snow capped Corno alle Scale mountain is close to Biagi's home village of Lizzano in Belvedere
The snow capped Corno alle Scale mountain is close
to Biagi's home village of Lizzano in Belvedere
Travel tip:

Lizzano in Belvedere, in a mountainous area on the border between the provinces of Modena and Pistoia, offers all-year-round attractions, from skiing on the nearby Corno alle Scale peak in winter to trekking and mountain biking in the spring and summer, with the village centre well stocked with restaurants specialising in local dishes.  The ancient round church, known as 'Rotonda' or 'Delubro', is an interesting feature.


Travel tip:

Bologna is the historic capital of Emilia-Romagna, at the centre of which is the spacious Piazza Maggiore, the social hub of the city, surrounded with arched colonnades, many attractive cafes and fine medieval and Renaissance buildings, including the Palazzo Comunale, the Fountain of Neptune and the imposing Basilica di San Petronio, which dominates the square.


More reading:


How journalist Bruno Vespa opened door to late-night political debate

Maurizio Costanzo - journalist host of Italy's longest running TV show

Roberto Benigni - Oscar-winning star and director of Life is Beautiful

Also on this day:



(Picture credits: Enzo Biagi by Stefano Vesco; Berlusconi by paz.ca; Corno alle Scale by Adriano Petrachi - all via Wikimedia Commons)

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