Mara Venier - television presenter

Former actress became famous as face of Sunday afternoon

Mara Venier found fame as host of the
Sunday afternoon TV show Domenica In

Mara Venier, a familiar face on Italian television for more than 35 years, was born on this day in 1950 in Venice.

The former actress, who made her big-screen debut in 1973, is best known for presenting the long-running Sunday afternoon variety show Domenica In, which has been a fixture on the public TV channel Rai Uno since 1976.

Venier, born Mara Povoleri, hosted the show for nine seasons in four stints between 1993 and 2014. Only Pippo Baudo, something of a legendary figure in Italian television, has presented more editions.

Fronting Domenica In, which was on air for an incredible six hours, was not only a test of stamina for the presenter but came with a huge sense of responsibility. In fact, holding the attention of the viewers was a patriotic duty, the show’s format having been conceived by the Italian government, faced with the global oil crisis in the 1970s, as something to tempt citizens to stay at home rather than use precious fuel for their cars.

Venier had been a movie actress, known largely to audiences in Italy, for two decades before she was invited to host Domenica In.  She enjoyed some success, having made her debut with a nude scene in Sergio Capogna’s Diario di un Italiano in 1973, and gained good reviews for Abbasso tutti, viva noi (1974), directed by Gino Mangini, and for Nanni Loy’s comedy Testa o croce (1982).

It was Loy, in fact, who introduced her to television audiences as the host of an Italian version of Candid Camera on the Mediaset commercial channel Italia 1 in 1987.

Venier hosted Domenica In for nine seasons
and has fronted many other hit shows 

She became the lead presenter for Domenica In after spending one season working alongside Luca Giurato and proving a hit with the viewers.  Venier quickly became a host in-demand, held in such high regard that she was chosen as one of the five hosts – one for each day of the week – for the hit nightly game show Luna Park, alongside Baudo, Fabrizio Frizzi, Milly Carlucci and Rosanna Lambertucci, all of whom were high-profile names.

The two shows, and a good deal of other TV work, kept Venier very busy, although her career stalled in 1998 when she, Baudo and Lambertucci became embroiled in a scandal over payments made to promote particular products while on air.

After two years away from Rai, during which she made a number of programmes for Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset channels, she returned to the public broadcaster in 2000.

She had two more spells fronting Domenica In between 2001 and 2006, although the programme was less successful than it had been in its early years and Venier left the role in 2006 after failing to control an argument between two guests that descended into such foul-mouthed language that the programme was temporarily dropped from the schedule.

Venier’s presence on the small screen was almost constant, however, as the host of many concerts, special broadcasts, talk shows and prime-time regulars such as La vita in diretta – “Life live” and Telethon. 

Mara Venier in her movie acting days

She hosted Domenica In for the last time in the 2013-14 series, at the end of which she announced she was leaving Rai and rejoining Mediaset on a contract that included the hit Canale 5 shows L’Isola dei famosi – similar to the UK hit I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! – and Striscia la notizie, as well as a co-host role in the New Year’s Eve show Capodanno con Gigi D’Alessio.

Nowadays, she is often affectionately referred to as Zia Mara or “la zia d’Italia” – Italy’s aunt.

Born in Venice, the daughter of a railway worker, Venier moved to Mestre with her family and became a mother at the age of just 17 when her daughter, Elisabetta was born.  She married Francesco Ferracini, Elisabetta’s father, and moved to Rome, where he wanted to pursue an acting career.

The marriage did not last, however.  Venier had a son, Paolo, from a relationship with another actor, Pier Paolo Capponi, before making Jerry Calà, also an actor, her second husband in 1984.

They divorced in 1987 but since 2006 Venier has been happily married to the veteran film maker and publisher Nicola Carrara.

The Piazza Erminio Ferretto in Mestre, looking
towards the Torre Civica

Travel tip:

Mestre’s reputation as a grimly modern industrial centre is not undeserved and many travellers know little of it beyond the railway station, which offers trains not only across the lagoon into nearby Venice but to all places on the mainland.  As such, tourists arriving at Marco Polo airport – or Treviso, for that matter – pass through in large numbers. Some holidaymakers do use it, however, as a cheap alternative to staying in Venice and many workers in Venice commute daily from Mestre.  Its most appealing area for visitors is around the main square, the Piazza Erminio Ferretto, a large, rectangular open space lined with porticoes and pleasant cafes. Nearby is the 18^th-century church of San Lorenzo and the restored Torre Civica.

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is housed in the
Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal

Travel tip:

Mara Povoleri is believed to have taken Venier as a stage name after the noble Venetian family of the 14^th to 16^th centuries, three of whom were Doges – Antonio (1382-1400), Francesco (1554-56) and Sebastiano (1577-78) – and several of whom were appointed podestà – city ruler – of Padua. The Fondamenta Sebastiano Venier forms part of the waterfront along the Canareggio Canal in Venice, while the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the city’s famous modern art gallery, is housed in the family’s former palace, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni.

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Alessandro Safina – singer

Tenor who has blended opera and rock

Alessandro Safina has become a household name
in Italy after several successful albums

Alessandro Safina, a singer trained in opera who has expanded the so-called ‘crossover’ pop-opera genre to include rock influences, was born on this day in 1963 in Siena.

A household name in Italy, the tenor is less well known outside his own country but has recorded duets with international stars such as Sarah Brightman, South Korean soprano Sumi Jo, Rod Stewart, former Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde, Scottish actor and singer Ewan McGregor and the superstar Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.

Safina’s biggest album to date is Insieme a Te, which has sold more than 700,000 copies.

It was written in collaboration with the Italian pianist and composer Romano Musumarra, who helped realise Safina’s ambition of creating soulful rock-inspired music for the tenor voice.  He first performed songs from the album at the Olympia theatre in Paris in 1999.

Safina was born into an opera-loving family and earned money to pay for singing lessons by working in his father’s stationery business.  Set on becoming a professional singer from the age of nine, he began attending a music academy at 12 and was accepted for a place at the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory in Florence at 17.

In 1989, he won a competition – the Concorso Lirico Internazionale in Mantova, Italy – and made his opera debut the following year, appearing alongside soprano Katia Ricciarelli as Rodolfo in Puccini's La bohème.

Safina made his operatic debut in 1990 singing
alongside the soprano Katia Ricciarelli

Professionally, Safina’s singing remained focussed on the classic tenor operatic roles for much of the 1990s. Privately, his musical tastes were much less confined. He was late to discover rock music, but once he had he became a fan of such bands as U2, Genesis, Depeche Mode and even punk outfit The Clash.

His collaboration with Musumarra led to his debut album, simply called Alessandro Safina, in 2001, from which the single Luna became a hit. After he had performed the song live in The Netherlands, it reached number one in the Dutch singles charts and remained there for 14 weeks.

This success sparked numerous engagements over the coming years, including a duet singing Elton John’s Your Song with Ewan McGregor for the score of Moulin Rouge, an appearance in front of Queen Elizabeth at the 73^rd Royal Variety Performance in London (singing Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Music of the Night) and another rendition of Your Song, this time with Elton John, for the Sport Relief fund-raising campaign.

He made his acting debut in the role of the painter Mario Cavaradossi in a film based on Puccini’s Tosca and sang a duet with Rod Stewart on the latter’s album, As Time Goes By.

His links with South Korea began after he performed at the opening ceremony of the 2002 football World Cup.

Safina’s second album, Insieme a Te, consolidated his position as a star of the crossover genre, featuring his duet with Chrissie Hynde as well as Lloyd Webber’s classic Music of the Night.

In more recent years, Safina has recorded a duet with the British soprano Sarah Brightman for her album, Symphony, performed "O Sole Mio" with Andrea Bocelli.  He recorded his fifth album, Dedicated, in 2014.

The Palio di Siena delivers spectacular thrills 

Travel tip:

The city of Siena is famous for its twice-yearly horse race, Il Palio, which brings massive crowds both to watch the spectacular action as the horses, ridden bareback by colourfully adorned jockeys from 10 of the city’s contrade (wards), career around a track that follows the perimeter of Piazza del Campo.  Generally speaking, the race takes place on July 2, when it is contested as the Palio di Provenzano, in honour of the Madonna of Provenzano, and on August 16, when it is named the Palio dell'Assunta, in honour of the Assumption of Mary.

The Piazza del Campo is shaped like a scallop shell

Travel tip:

The Piazza del Campo is the heart of Siena’s medieval centre, one of the largest and most beautiful squares in Italy, shaped a little like a scallop shell, with a gentle slope towards the imposing Palazzo Pubblico.  From the square, some 11 narrow streets and alleyways radiate outwards into the city, which has a sense of charm and mystery that visitors find beguiling.

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Renzo Piano – architect

Designer of innovative buildings is now an Italian senator

Renzo Piano was born into a family of builders

Award-winning architect Renzo Piano was born on this day in 1937 in Genoa.

Piano is well-known for his high-tech designs for public spaces and is particularly famous for the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, which he worked on in collaboration with the British architect, Richard Rogers.

Among the many awards and prizes Piano has received for his work are the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for architecture in 1995, the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1998 and the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 2008.

Piano was born into a family of builders and graduated from the Polytechnic in Milan in 1964. He completed his first building, the IPE factory in Genoa, in 1968 with a roof of steel and reinforced polyester.

He worked with a variety of architects, including his father, Carlo Piano, until he established a partnership with Rogers, which lasted from 1971-1977.

The Shard in London is one of
Piano's landmark buildings

They made the Centre Georges Pompidou look like an urban machine with their innovative design and it immediately gained the attention of the international architectural community.

In Italy, Piano designed a new look for the old port of Genoa to transform it from a rundown industrial area into a cultural centre and tourist attraction. Other important commissions in Italy were the San Nicola Stadium in Bari, started in 1987 and completed in time for the 1990 football World Cup, and the Auditorium Parco della Musica, built between 1994 and 2002 in Rome.

One of his most celebrated 21st century projects, notable for its green architecture, was a new building for the California Academy of Science in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, which was completed in 2008.

Piano converted a massive Fiat factory in Turin into a convention centre and venue for the city’s trade fair. His design for the Shard in London made it the tallest building in western Europe when it was completed in 2012 and it now towers above the historical skyline of London.

In 2013 Piano was appointed Senator for Life in the Italian Senate by President Giorgio Napolitano.

Piano currently lives in Paris with his wife, Milly. They have four children.

Piano's harbour development in his native Genoa

Travel tip:

The old harbour in Genoa, porto antico, is the ancient part of the port which served the city when the main access to it was from the sea. Renzo Piano redeveloped the area for public access, restoring the historic buildings and creating new landmarks such as the Aquarium and the Bolla (Sphere).

The 'armadillo shells' of the Auditorium Parco della Musica

Travel tip:

The Parco della Musica in Rome is a complex of music venues located in the part of Rome that hosted the 1960 summer Olympics. Piano designed it to have three theatres, covered with what New York Times critic Sam Lubell described as 'weathered, armadillo-like steel shells', and an outdoor theatre set in a park. During construction, excavations uncovered the foundations of a villa and an oil press dating from the sixth century BC. Piano adjusted his design to accommodate the archaeological remains and included a small museum to house the artefacts that were discovered.

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Daniela Rocca – actress

Tragic beauty shunned after breakdown

Daniela Rocca broke into films after winning a beauty
contest in her native Sicily at the age of 15

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.

Divorce, Italian Style broke new ground
in Italian cinema

She subsequently entered Miss Italia, and although she did not win her looks made an impression on the movie talent scouts who took a close interest in such events, on the lookout for potential starlets.

Rocca’s acting debut came in 1957 in the French director Maurice Cloche’s film Marchand de Filles and after a series of roles as the glamorous love interest in various melodramas she began to acquire box office appeal.

Germi saw her in 1961 in Rome 1585, which was also known as I Masnadieri – the Mercenaries – the last film to be made by the veteran Italian director Mario Bonnard, by which time Rocca was popular enough with audiences to share top billing with Antonio Cifariello, an established star of romantic comedies and adventure movies.

The part Germi offered her in Divorce, Italian Style was a little different, however.

Although from a middle-class background in Liguria, Germi’s films were often realistic social dramas, usually with a Sicilian setting. He tackled serious subjects and though Divorzia all’Italiana was to be a comedy, his aim was to denounce what he saw as the absurdity of a society that would not allow a man to divorce his wife but would look leniently on him if he killed her in a so-called crime of passion, to protect his ‘honour’.

He chose Rocca to play Rosalia, the wife of Mastroianni’s character, an impoverished Sicilian nobleman called Ferdinando Cefalù, who wants to be free of the devoted but rather dowdy Rosalia so that he can marry his much younger and prettier cousin, Angela.

Rocca had enjoyed some success taking glamorous roles in
adventure movies before Germi's film showcased her acting 

The plot sees Cefalù concoct a scheme to push Rosalia into having an affair, so that he could discover her infidelity and kill her in a fit of impassioned rage at the stain on his honour.  Of course, his plan goes comically wrong.

Given her history of playing glamorous female leads, Rocca seemed an unusual choice to play a frumpy, oppressive housewife yet she gave a impressive performance, dressing in unflattering clothes and allowing make-up to give her a moustachioed top lip, allowing Angela (Stefania Sandrelli) to outshine her at every turn.

Divorce, Italian Style was ground-breaking in that it used comedy as a genre that allowed film directors to tackle controversial topics that would otherwise have been taboo in Italy. Other directors followed suit, producing movies that allowed Italians to laugh at themselves and which in some ways broke the ice surrounding difficult social problems that needed debate and resolution.

The movie won the Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay. Mastroianni was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role and many critics considered Rocca to be worthy of similar acclaim.  

It should have been the springboard to her recognition as a serious actress. Instead, it virtually ended her career.

Pietro Germi, pictured with Claudia Cardinale, had been
a successful actor before turning to directing

During the making of the film, despite their age difference – at 48, he was twice her age – she developed an infatuation with Germi. When it became clear to Rocca that his feelings about her did not match hers for him she tried to kill herself.

As a result, other directors quickly became reluctant to cast her, fearful that her mental state was too fragile. Offers of parts became few and far between and soon ceased altogether.  She fell into a state of severe depression and, after cutting her wrists in what was seen as another suicide attempt, was admitted to a mental institution in Palermo.

She remained there for several years, finally allowed to go home in 1975.  Later she said she felt abandoned by former colleagues and misunderstood by doctors, claiming they mistook a simple nervous breakdown for insanity.

The experience aged Rocca prematurely and she died from heart failure at the age of just 57, having moved into a retirement home in Milo, near Catania - although she did leave something of a creative legacy.

Remarkably, while living in the home, she wrote and had published three novels, a book on psychoanalysis and a volume of poetry.

Acireale's Piazza del Duomo is illuminated at night

Travel tip:

Daniela Rocca came from a working class neighbourhood but Acireale is a city with a wealth of culture and many beautiful buildings, some with clear Muslim influences dating back to the Arabic conquest of Sicily in the ninth century, after which the Muslim forces remained in charge until the Normans took control in the 11^th century. At the centre of the city is the beautiful Piazza del Duomo, where can be found not only the cathedral, dedicated to Maria Santissima Annunziata, but also the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul and the Town Hall.  The Zalantea art gallery showcases many local painters from the 17^th to the 20^th centuries.

The mighty Mount Etna, smoke emerging from its snow-
capped peak, dominates eastern Sicily

Travel tip:

Looming over Acireale and all the other communities, large and small, in the eastern part of Sicily, Mount Etna is one of the most active volcanoes in the world and by far the tallest of the three active volcanoes in Italy, at 3,329 metres (10,922 feet) some two and a half times the height of Vesuvius.  Across the whole of Europe and North Africa, only Mount Teide in Tenerife is taller.  Eruptions occur regularly and often last for long periods. One, starting on July 6, 2009, lasted 417 days, the longest since the 473-day affair between 1991 and 1993, and events lasting anything from three weeks to six months happen with relative frequency.  Despite its volatility, tourists can still take excursions to the summit. It is advisable to wear warm clothing, however. Visitors who board the cable cars in 25-30 degree summer temperatures are often surprised to it decidedly chilly at the top. 

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Cesare Pavese - writer and translator

Author introduced great American writers to Fascist Italy

Cesare Pavese translated the works
of many American novelists

Cesare Pavese, the writer and literary critic who, through his work as a translator, introduced Italy to the Irish novelist James Joyce and a host of great American authors of the 20^th century, was born on this day in 1908 in Santo Stefano Belbo, a town in Piedmont about 60km from Turin.

Pavese would become an acclaimed novelist after the Second World War but was frustrated for many years by the strict censorship policies of Italy’s Fascist government.

It is thought he devoted himself to translating progressive English-language writers into Italian as the best way by which he could promote the principles of freedom in which he believed.

Pavese’s translations would have given most Italians they first opportunity to read writers such as Herman Melville, William Faulkner, Charles Dickens, Gertrude Stein, John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos and Daniel Defoe, as well as Joyce, who would ultimately spend many years living in Italy.

The son of Eugenio Pavese, an officer of the law courts in Turin, Cesare had a fractured childhood. His father died when he was only six and his mother, Consolina, is said to have shown him little affection, as a result of which he grew up learning how to fend for himself.

He was born in Santo Stefano Belbo, situated in a picturesque vine-growing area east of Alba in southern Piedmont, because his parents were staying at their holiday home there when his mother went into Labour.  As soon as he was old enough, he moved to Turin and attended the lyceum – the Licio Classico Massimo d’Azeglio – where he was taken under the wing of the Italian anti-Fascist intellectual Augusto Monti.

Pavese hid in the hills outside Turin during the Second
World War occupation of the city by German soldiers

Monti was later imprisoned by the regime for his vociferous opposition, a fate that would befall Pavese not long after he had left the University of Turin, where he was mentored by Leone Ginzburg, husband of the author Natalia Ginzburg.

He had begun an affair with Tina Pizzardo, a young Communist he met at the sparsely-attended anti-Fascist meetings he used to frequent, and agreed for her to use his address as somewhere to which she could have correspondence delivered because her own movements were under surveillance.

However, when the authorities intercepted letters from Altiero Spinelli, a jailed anti-Fascist dissident, and found they were addressed to Pavese’s apartment, he was arrested and sent to a prison at Brancaleone in Calabria, almost 1,400km (870 miles) from Turin.

Pavese later wrote a book about his ordeal, although for many years his work remained unpublished by his own choice, rather than it be censored.  When a volume of his poetry was published during his incarceration, a number of poems were deleted by the Fascist authorities.

On his return to Turin after a little more than a year in jail, he found that Pizzardo had begun another relationship and countered his sadness by throwing himself into his work, again mainly in translating.  He became a close associate of Giulio Einaudi – father of the pianist and composer Ludovico Einaudi and son of the politician Luigi Einaudi – with whom he helped establish the Einaudi publishing house. Natalia Ginzburg also worked there.

The young communist Tina Pizzardo,
with whom Pavese had an affair

Pavese was conscripted to fight in Mussolini’s Fascist army but avoided front-line action because he suffered from asthma. Instead, he was confined to a military hospital for six months.

In his absence, German troops occupied Turin and on returning to civilian life when he was discharged on health grounds Pavese went into hiding in the hills around Serralunga di Crea, near Casale Monferrato, where he remained between 1943 and 1945.

Most of Pavese’s work, mainly short stories and novellas, was published by Einaudi, appearing between the end of the Second World War and his death. In that time he was a member of the Italian Communist Party and worked on the party’s newspaper L’Unità.

The main character in many of Pavese’s stories was often a loner, whose relationships with both men and women tended to be short-lived. The stories are often bleak yet he was admired for the tautness of his prose, which was favourably compared to that of Ernest Hemingway.

They tended to draw comparison with his own life. As well as his affair with Pizzardo, whom he felt deserted him, he had a brief relationship after the war with Constance Dowling, an American actress, but that too failed and is seen to have been a contributory factor in his death at the age of only 41.

It came at a moment when he appeared to be at the height of his career, hailed as one of Italy’s greatest living writers.

Works such as La casa in collina (The House on the Hill) and Il carcere (The Prison), which were published as a two-novella volume entitled Prima che il gallo canti (Before the Cock Crows) and based in his experiences in prison, were regarded as confirming his genius, as were Il Compagno (The Comrade), Dialoghi con Leucò (Dialogues with Leucò) - philosophical dialogues between classical Greek characters – and La luna e i falò (The Moon and the Bonfires), which he dedicated to Dowling.  

In 1950, he won the prestigious Strega Prize but two months after receiving the honour he was found dead in an hotel room in Turin, having swallowed an overdose of barbiturates.  Entries in his diary indicated that he had been profoundly depressed following his break-up with Dowling, which he took as a sign that he would never find happiness in marriage, or with other people.

The village of Santo Stefano Belbo

Travel tip:

Pavese’s life is commemorated in several ways in Santo Stefano Belbo, where there is a museum housed in the house his parents owned in what is now Via Cesare Pavese, while the Cesare Pavese Foundation, which was established in 1973 and has its headquarters in Piazza Confraternita off Via Cavour, promotes not only the work of Pavese but encourages and supports other writers.

A plaque marks where Cesare Pavese lived in Turin

Travel tip:

In Turin, Pavese lived in the same building for 20 years on the Via Alfonso Lamarmora, one of the elegant residential streets in the grid of criss-crossing thoroughfares that characterises the centre of the city.  Via Lamarmora links Corso Stati Uniti with Via Sebastiano Caboto, bisecting the busy Corso Luigi Einaudi. There is a wall plaque marking the building that contained his apartment.

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Ernest Hemingway – American novelist

War wounds sustained in Italy inspire the great American novel

Hemingway in the uniform he
wore while serving in Italy

An 18-year-old American Red Cross driver named Ernest Hemingway was severely wounded by shrapnel from an Austrian mortar shell on this day in 1918 at Fossalta di Piave in the Veneto.

Hemingway was taken to a field hospital in Treviso, from where he was transferred by train to a hospital in Milan. While in the hospital and recovering after two operations, he fell in love with his nurse, 26-year-old Agnes von Kurowsky.

His experiences of being wounded in Italy and falling in love later inspired him to write the novel, A Farewell to Arms.

On leaving school Hemingway had worked briefly as a reporter for The Kansas City Star before leaving for the Italian front in World War One to enlist as an ambulance driver.

While stationed at Fossalta di Piave he was bringing chocolates and cigarettes to the men on the front line when he was seriously injured by mortar fire. Despite his own wounds, Hemingway assisted some Italian soldiers to safety, for which he later received the Italian Silver Medal of Bravery.

Hemingway recuperating in hospital in Milan

After his release from hospital, he returned to the United States in January 1919. He and Agnes had agreed to get married in America, but two months later she wrote to say she had become engaged to an Italian army officer.

A Farewell to Arms, which was published in 1929, is a first-person account told by an American, Frederic Henry, who was serving as a lieutenant in the ambulance corps of the Italian Army. The novel focuses on a love affair between Henry and a woman he meets, Catherine Barkley, which is set against the backdrop of the First World War, with its cynical soldiers, combat and the displacement of populations.

A Farewell to Arms was Hemingway’s first best seller and is regarded as the finest American novel to depict World War One.

The Monument to Peace in Fosslalta, where the
memorial to Hemingway can be found

Travel tip:

Fossalta di Piave, where Hemingway was injured during the First World War, is a small town situated 64 km (38 miles) north of Venice, which is famous for the wine it produces. There is a memorial to Hemingway overlooking the river Piave.

Travel tip:

Treviso, where Hemingway was taken to hospital after he was wounded, is an historic, walled city in the Veneto region, with picturesque canals and water wheels. It is the headquarters of the clothing firm, Benetton, and is famous for producing Prosecco wine and the vegetable, radicchio.

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Vittorio De Sica - film director

Oscar-winning maestro behind 1948 classic Bicycle Thieves

Vittorio De Sica was one of the major figures
of Italian neorealism

Vittorio De Sica, the director whose 1948 film Bicycle Thieves is regarded still as one of the greatest movies of all time, was born on this day in 1901 in Sora in Lazio.

Bicycle Thieves, a story set in the poverty of post-War Rome, was a masterpiece of Italian neorealism, the genre of which the major figures, in addition to De Sica, were Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini and Giuseppe de Santis and, to a smaller degree, Federico Fellini.

The movie was one of four that landed Academy Awards for De Sica. Another of his great neo-realist movies, Shoeshine (1948), won an honorary Oscar, while Bicycle Thieves won a special award as an outstanding foreign language film in the days before the Best Foreign Language Film category was introduced.

De Sica would later win Oscars in that section for Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) – a comedy starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni – and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970). 

His Marriage Italian Style (1964), also starring Loren and Mastroianni, also earned a nomination as Best Foreign Language Film and for Loren as Best Actress. Loren did win Best Actress for her role in his 1961 movie La Ciociara, which was released outside Italy as Two Women.

Lamberto Maggiorani (left) and Enzo Staiola played
father and son in De Sica's acclaimed Bicycle Thieves

Born in Sora, which lies between Rome and Naples in the area known as Ciociaria, De Sica essentially grew up in Naples, to which his father, Umberto, who worked as a bank clerk with Banca d’Italia, was transferred in 1905.

During the First World War, De Sica had his first taste of the entertainment business when he joined a musical group that performed in military hospitals in Naples. He is said to have had an excellent singing voice.

He began acting in the 1920s and became something of a matinee idol on the stage. This was to lead to movie roles, mainly in light comedies. De Sica was box office for a while, chosen to star opposite female headliners such as Loren and Gina Lollobrigida.

When he turned to directing, he began with movies in a similarly frothy vein. So he took audiences and the critics by surprise with his fourth film, The Children Are Watching Us, released in 1944. An extraordinarily sensitive story about a child whose mother elopes with another man, leaving his father distraught, the film was the first product of De Sica’s collaboration with the screenwriter Cesare Zavattini.

Zavattini, a former law student, began to write screenplays when his employer, Angelo Rizzoli, moved from publishing books and magazines into producing films.  He and De Sica would work together on Shoeshine, Bicycle Thieves, Miracle in Milan (1951), which won a Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and Umberto D (1952).

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow won the
third of De Sica's four Academy Awards

Umberto D, a bleak study of the problems of old age, was a box-office flop, so much so that film historians saw it as the beginning of the end for neo-realism. Indeed, it prompted De Sica to return to lighter work.

Nonetheless, he continued to collect awards and after some commentators had written him off as past his peak he sprang another surprise with The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, based on a novel by Giorgio Bassani about the plight of Jews in Italy under Fascism, which won him another Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and a Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.

A compulsive gambler, De Sica often lost large sums of money and accepted work he might otherwise have turned down in order to settle debts.  He was married twice, first to the actress Giuditta Rissone, who bore him a daughter, and later to the Spanish actress Maria Mercader, with whom he had two sons.

His personal life was complicated, however. He made a pact with his first wife to maintain the pretence of marriage while their daughter was growing up and at Christmas would turn the clocks back two hours in his second wife’s house so he could celebrate with both families, one after the other.

De Sica was a member of the Italian Communist Party, and it was the cause of some discomfort to him that his relationship with Maria Mercader created an unwelcome link with Ramon Mercader, her brother, who was a Spanish communist but at the same time an agent for the Soviet secret police, on whose behalf he carried out the assassination of the Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1940.

Sora sits alongside the Liri river against the backdrop
of the Apennine mountains

Travel tip:

Built on a plain alongside the Liri river, in the shadow of the Monti Ernici range in the Apennines, the town of Sora can be found about 25km east of Frosinone in Lazio, about 120m  south-east of Rome and 140km north of Naples, close to the border with Abruzzo. A settlement since the fourth century BC, when it was occupied by the Volsci tribe, it has been at various times under the rule of Rome and Naples.  It lies at the heart of the Ciociaria, an area renowned for its cuisine and colourful and elaborate peasant costumes. Today its economy is a mix of industry and agriculture. It is a pleasant town with some pretty squares, including Piazza Santa Restituta, which sits in front of the church of the same name, just off Lungoliri Mazzini. On rocks above the town there are the remains of a walled fortification that dates back to the Volsci period.

The Toledo Metro station in Naples

Travel tip:

The Banca d’Italia building in Naples is in a fairly nondescript street linking Via Medina with Via Toledo, not on the tourist trail. Yet within a few metres is one of the city’s more unlikely must-see places, the Metro station Toledo. It is one of a number of so-called ‘art stations’ on the line linking Piazza Garibaldi and Piscinola. Toledo is famous for its breathtaking escalator descent through a vast mosaic by the Spanish architect Oscar Tusquets Blanca known as the Crater de Luz – the crater of light – which creates the impression of daylight streaming into a volcanic crater.

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Alberto Rabagliati - singer and actor

Performer found fame through radio

Alberto Rabagliati won a contest as
a Rudolph Valentino lookalike

The singer and movie actor Alberto Rabagliati, who became one of the stars of Italian radio in the 1930s and 40s, was born on this day in 1906 in Milan.

His movie career reached a peak in the post-War years, when he had roles in the Humphrey Bogart-Ava Gardner hit Barefoot Contessa and in Montecarlo, starring Marlene Dietrich.

The son of parents who had moved to Milan from the village of Casorzo, near Asti, in Piedmont, Rabagliati’s career in the entertainment business began when he entered a competition in 1927 to find a Rudolph Valentino lookalike.

To his astonishment he won.  The prize was to be taken to Hollywood to audition, so his life changed overnight.  Later he recalled his own wide-eyed incredulity as he sailed across the Atlantic, bound for a new life.  "For someone like me, who had never been beyond Lake Como or Monza Cathedral, finding myself on board a luxury steamer with three cases full of clothes, a few rolls of dollars, gran-duchesses and countesses flirting with me was something extraordinary".

He lived in America for the next four years but never achieved more than modest success and decided to return to Italy. During his time in America, however, he took the opportunity to get to know some new musical genres such as jazz, swing, and ‘scat’ singing, in which the vocalist uses his or her voice to make sounds rather than words, such as the ‘doo wah, doo wah, doo wah, doo wah’ lines repeated in It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Swing.

On coming home he was determined he would make a success as a singer and he realised his ambition in some style.

Rabagliati recording one of his radio shows in the 1940s

After joining a popular band called the Lecuona Cuban Boys, in which he performed with his face painted black, he met the songwriter Giovanni D'Anzi who arranged for him to have an audition with the Italian state radio station, EIAR, in Rome.

Rabagliati soon became a star and by 1941 had his own show, Canta Rabagliati ("Rabagliati sings"). It spurned a string of hits, including Ma l'amore no, Mattinata fiorentina, and Bambina innamorata.  He developed a huge following, mainly among women, and when he appeared on stage he would have hundreds of roses thrown at his feet.

He owned a large American car, which the Italian authorities at one time threatened to confiscate, because the Fascist regime banned all manifestations of foreign culture.

The Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, however, sensed he could use Rabagliati’s popularity to his own advantage and personally intervened to ensure the singer kept his car.  Mussolini persuaded Rabagliati to lend one of his songs to the government’s campaign to persuade Italians to buy into his vision of Fascist family life, adopting Sposi (c'è una casetta piccina) as an anthem for the campaign, celebrating newlyweds in their own "little house".

Rabagliati was lined up to work alongside
Raffaella Carrà in a new TV show

It is said that Mussolini privately despised Rabagliati’s music, with its heavy American influences, and reputedly flew into a rage one day when he discovered his mistress, Clara Petacci, listening to one of his records, dragging it off the turntable and smashing it.

Rabagliati used his fame as a singer to kick-start his film career and appeared in more than 20 films between 1940 and the mid-1960s, including Barefoot Contessa, Montecarlo, Il vedova (The Widow) and The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t, in which he played Santa Claus.

He began to act on stage too, landing many parts in musical revues and comedies.  It seemed he was about to break into television in a big way, too, making a guest appearance on a new show Milleluci, presented by Mina Mazzini and Rafaella Carrà.

He was so impressive that Mina wanted him to be on the show regularly and he was about to agree a deal on becoming a co-host in March 1974 when he collapsed and died from a cerebral haemorrhage. He was 67.

Rabagliati, who had married Maria Antonietta Tonnini in 1954, was buried at the Cimitero Flaminio in Rome, next to his mother.

The impressive Baroque cathedral at Asti

Travel tip:

Asti is one of the most important cities in Piedmont in terms of art and literature, notably as the birthplace of Vittorio Alfieri, the famous 18th century poet and dramatist. The town's historic centre, is charmingly quaint, the highlight of which is the triangular Piazza Alfieri, where the town’s famous Palio horse race is staged.   It has a wealth of palaces, towers and ancient churches, and a magnificent Gothic cathedral.

Travel tip:

The Cimitero Flaminio is in the Rome suburb of Prima Porta, which is so called because of an arch under an aqueduct carrying water across the Via Flaminia, which was considered a gateway into Rome from the north.  The Via Flaminia, which effectively begins at Piazza del Popolo in the centre of Rome, stretches all the way across the Apennines to what is now Rimini on the Adriatic coast.

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Claudio Capone – actor and dubber

The Italian voice of a host of stars

The dubbing professional Claudio Capone
 was the Italian voice of many stars 

Italy lost one of its most famous voices on this day in 2008 with the premature death of Claudio Capone.

The Rome-born actor was working in Scotland when he suffered a stroke. He was admitted to hospital in Perth but despite the best efforts of doctors he died two days later, at the age of only 55.

Although he began his career with the ambitions of any actor to reach the top of his profession, he was offered an opportunity only a few years out of drama school to do some voice-over work and found the flow of work in dubbing to be so consistent he ultimately made it his career.

Unlike some countries, Italian cinema and TV audiences have always preferred to watch imported films and TV shows with dubbed Italian voices rather than subtitles, which meant that a talented dubbing actor was seldom unemployed.

Capone was among the best and it was down to him that many foreign stars became famous in Italy, even though many did not speak a word of Italian.

The biggest example of this was the American actor Ronn Moss, who played the part of fashion magnate Ridge Forrester in the CBS soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful.

Moss, who had enjoyed a successful pop career as a member of a band he formed with friends in Los Angeles, called Player, was by no means an outstanding actor but when in 1990 the Italian station Rai bought the rights to The Bold and the Beautiful, which they repackaged as simply Beautiful, his fame took off – in Italy, at any rate.

The American actor Ronn Moss owed his fame
in Italy at least in part to Claudio Capone

He became a favourite with Italian TV audiences, although his appeal owed as much to Capone as his own good looks or acting ability.

Capone gave him a deep, husky voice that female viewers found irresistible. The show quickly built a following, and when it was bought by Silvio Berlusconi’s Fininvest in 1994 and broadcast on Canale 5, Capone continued in the role.

Moss became a star in Italy, yet when he was a celebrity dancer in the 2010 series of Ballando con le Stelle – the Italian equivalent of America’s Dancing with the Stars and the UK show Strictly Come Dancing – audiences were shocked that his own Italian was so limited he needed the show’s host, Milly Carlucci, to interpret for him.

There was much more to Capone’s career than simply being the voice of Ronn Moss, although he also dubbed his part in an Italian-made Romantic comedy, Christmas in Love, in which Moss appeared as himself.

Indeed, his movie credits read like a cinema who’s who, such was his versatility and ability to tailor his voice for an extraordinary range of diverse parts.

He was the voice of Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, of Brad Davis as Billy Hayes in Midnight Express, of Stephen Fry as Oscar Wilde in Wilde, of Steve Guttenberg as Carey Mahoney in the Police Academy series and of Martin Sheen as Carruthers Kit in Badlands.

Claudio Capone at work behind a microphone

Others for whom he was the Italian voice – and this list is by no means comprehensive – included John Travolta, Alan Alda, Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Walken, Chuck Norris, Michael Douglas, Jeff Bridges, Kyle MacLachlan, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Ralph Fiennes, Willem Dafoe and Michael York.

On the small screen, he dubbed for Don Johnson in Miami Vice and Michael Newman in Baywatch, and – again showing his versatility – for John Nettles as an English detective in Midsomer Murders (shown in Italy as Inspector Barnaby), a sitcom doctor played by Alexander Armstrong in TLC and the English vet in Africa (Stephen Tompkinson) in Wild at Heart, shown as Cuore D’Africa.

In addition to his film and TV drama roles, Capone’s other outstanding success was as the Italian voice of documentaries on the Discovery Channel, and as the narrator of the hit Italian science programme Quark.

He was in Scotland to narrate a documentary programme when he was taken ill.  The older of his two sons, David, also became a voiceover specialist.

Rome's Piazza del Popolo

Travel tip:

Claudio Capone’s funeral in Rome attracted many of his fans to pay their respects, with hundreds gathering as his coffin was carried through Piazza del Popolo.  The name of the large square at one end of the Via del Corso, the long, straight thoroughfare stretching north from Piazza Venezia, is often taken to mean the square “of the people”. In fact, many people believe Popolo derives from the Latin populus – poplar – after the trees from which the church of Santa Maria del Popolo is named.

The church of Santa Maria del Popolo

Travel tip:

The Basilica Parrocchiale Santa Maria del Popolo, which can be found on the north side of Piazza del Popolo, is a minor, parish basilica yet contains works by several famous artists, including Raphael, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Caravaggio and Donato Bramante.  There is a tradition of appointing Catholic ministers from around the world as Cardinal Priest of the church. In fact, there has not been an Italian appointment since 1886. The last six Cardinal Priests have included two Spaniards, an American, a Canadian, a Senegalese and the present incumbent, a Pole.

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Raffaella Carrà - entertainer and TV presenter

Much-loved star with long and varied career

Raffaella Carrà has been one of the most
popular entertainers on Italian TV for 35 years

Raffaella Carrà, the singer, dancer, television presenter, and actress often simply known as la Carrà or Raffaella, was born in Bologna on this day in 1943.

Carrà has become a familiar face on Italian TV screens as the host of many variety shows and, more recently, as a judge on the talent show The Voice of Italy.

She has also enjoyed a recording career spanning 45 years and was a film actress for the best part of 25 years, having made her debut at the age of nine.  Her best-known screen role outside Italy was alongside Frank Sinatra in the hit American wartime drama, Von Ryan’s Express.

Carrà was born Raffaella Maria Roberta Pelloni. Shew grew up in the Adriatic resort of Bellaria-Igea Marina, just north of Rimini, where her father ran a bar and her maternal grandfather an ice cream parlour.  At the age of eight, she won a place at the National Dance Academy in Rome and from there moved to the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografie, Italy’s oldest film school.

Her film career was never more than modestly successful. Although she has a long list of credits, she was cast mainly in small parts. Her most successful years were the 1960s, when she had more prominent roles in Mario Monicelli’s I compagnoni – the companions – which was a hit in Italy, and in Von Ryan’s Express, in which she played the part of the mistress of a German officer, which raised her profile with international audiences.

Carrà opposite Gian Maria Volontè in the 1963 film
Il terrorista, directed by Gianfranco De Bosio

It was at the suggestion of one of her directors, Dante Guardamagna, that she changed her name.  Carrà, in fact, was his choice, after the Futurist artist Carlo Carrà, who was a particular favourite of his.

She frequently appeared in the gossip columns, which excitedly reported an affair with Sinatra at around the time Von Ryan’s Express was being shot, and a longer relationship with the Juventus footballer Gino Stacchini, her partner for eight years.

Carrà also enjoyed some success in Italian TV dramas but it was her move into variety shows in the 1970s that would catapult her to bigger fame.  An uninhibited and daring dancer, she pushed the limits of what was acceptable on Italian TV screens at the time, achieving notoriety for a while as the first showgirl to reveal her belly button on camera, in the show Canzonissima, which attracting serious criticism from the Catholic Church, who felt it bordered in indecency.

Carrà became famous as a singer and dancer

Nonetheless, her career took off, both as a dancer and a singer, in Italy and in Spain, where she was almost as popular as in her home country.  The sensual Tuca tuca, written as a song and dance presentation by her long-term collaborator and boyfriend Gianni Boncompagni, gave her a first hit and others followed, including Chissa Se Va, A far l’amore comincia tu, and Tanti auguri, which was probably her most successful. 

She even had a hit in the United Kingdom, a difficult market for singers from Europe, with Do It, Do It Again. Years later, a video of the single featured in an episode of the sci-fi series Doctor Who.

Her move from performer to TV host came in the 1980s, when as the presenter of daytime TV show Pronto, Raffaella? for RAI, a game show in which viewers could speak to her directly by telephone, she displayed an ability to relate both to the celebrities who appeared as studio guests and ordinary members of the public.

More shows for RAI followed, her success bringing a move to the Fininvest channels owned by Silvio Berlusconi and a return to RAI, where in the mid-90s she became the host of the huge hit, Carràmba! Que Sorpresa, which reunited long-separated friends and relatives.

Carrà sometimes presented the television coverage of the Sanremo music competition and was Italy’s jury spokesman on their return to the Eurovision Song Contest in 2011, which ended the country’s 13-year absence.

She became the face of the Italian national lottery for many years, because her shows, starting with Canzonissima and continuing with Fantastico, Carràmba! Che Sorpresa and Carràmba! Che Fortuna would incorporate the lottery draw.

More recently, she presented Forte forte forte – a talent show on which she worked with long-time romantic partner Sergio Jacopo – as well The Voice of Italy.

Her Italian career ran in parallel with similar success in variety shows in Spain, who chose her to front a gala night in 2016 celebrating 60 years of Spanish public television.

The harbour area at Bellaria-Igea Marina

Travel tip:

Bellaria-Igea Marina is a popular resort about 14km (9 miles) from Rimini and 35km (22 miles) from Ravenna in Emilia-Romagna.  As well as extensive sandy beaches it has a charming harbour area on the site of the fishing village it once was. It began to develop as resort in the early 20^th century, with many tree-lined avenues running parallel with the shore. Interesting features include the Red House, the summer residence of the writer Alfredo Panzini, in the Via Panzini, and the ‘shell house’ in Via Nicolò Zeno, the entire walls of which are covered in shells attached by the owner.

Travel tip:

The Centro sperimentale di cinematografia, established in Rome in 1935, is the oldest film school in Western Europe. It is located close to the Cinecittà studios. Classes are limited to only six students, who train using classic 35mm equipment. Many of Italy’s finest actors and directors are former students.

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