Giuseppe Giacosa – poet and playwright

Writer produced polished libretti for composer Giacomo Puccini

A magazine illustration of Giuseppe
Giacosa in his studio in Milan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Travel tip:

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

Stay in Colleretto Giacosa with Hotels.com

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

Travel tip:

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

Find accommodation in Ivrea with Expedia

More reading:

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

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

The brilliant actress Eleonora Duse

Also on this day:

1581: The birth of painter Domenichino 

1846: The birth of writer and journalist Edmondo De Amicis

1898: The birth of Prince Amedeo, Duke of Aosta

1928: The birth of anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli

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Lina Poletti - writer and feminist

One of first Italian women to come out as gay

Poletti was an intellectual and
a feminist campaigner

The writer, poet and playwright Lina Poletti, who was one of the first gay Italian women to openly declare their sexuality, was born on this day in 1885 in Ravenna.

Poletti, an active campaigner for the emancipation of women, had relationships with a number of high-profile partners, including the writer Sibilla Aleramo and the actress Eleonora Duse.

Her own works included the epic Il poemetto della guerra (The War Poem), many essays and lectures on her literary heroes, including Dante Alghieri, Giovanni Pascoli and Giosuè Carducci, and a number of collections of poetry.

One of four daughters born to Francesco Poletti and his wife Rosina Donati, who ran a business making ceramics, Lina’s birth name was Cordula.  She was said to be a rebellious child, misunderstood by her sisters and something of a loner, often disappearing into the attic of their house in Via Rattazzi, or hiding in the tree house in the garden.

After finishing high school in Ravenna, she enrolled against her family’s wishes at the University of Bologna, where she became acquainted with Pascoli, a fellow student, and wrote a celebrated thesis on the poetry of Carducci.

By this time, she had changed her name, rejecting Cordula, which she disliked, in favour of Lina. She adopted an androgynous appearance, wearing her hair cut short and dressing in men’s clothes.

Sibilla Aleramo, who Poletti met
at a congress for women in 1908

She became part of the growing women’s movement in the early part of the 20th century, attending the First National Congress of Women hosted by the Consiglio Nazionale delle Donne Italiane (National Council of Italian Women) in Rome in 1908, where delegates agreed on a commitment to women's suffrage and full recognition of women's legal and civic rights.

It was there that she met Aleramo, whose novel, Una donna, about the life of an oppressed woman in 19th century Italy, is regarded as the country’s first feminist novel. 

The two shared a commitment to changing the subordinate position women held in Italian society and worked together on projects to provide education to rural peasants, as well as joining in with relief efforts in Calabria and Sicily following the catastrophic earthquake of December 1908.

Aleramo was in a relationship with Giovanni Cena, another writer, but began an affair with Poletti, which lasted around a year but ended when Aleramo tried to convince Poletti that she could love both her and Cena at the same time, which Poletti found difficult to accept.

The following year, Poletti married Santi Muratori, the director of the Biblioteca Classense in Ravenna, although they rarely spent a night under the same roof. In any event, she soon met Eleonora Duse, regarded as one of Italy’s finest actresses, who was suffering a personal crisis and had announced her retirement from acting.

Eleonora Duse, the actress, with whom
Poletti had a stormy relationship

Poletti proposed to write plays for Duse that would inspire her to act again and revive her career. The two began a passionate romantic relationship. They took a house in Arcetri, near Florence, and later moved to Venice, where they became part of an avant-garde literary circle frequented by the likes of Max Reinhardt and Gabriele D'Annunzio.

However, the two began to have frequent rows, each displaying a volatile temperament and their relationship ended in acrimony and legal action as Duse demanded that Poletti hand over the manuscripts of the plays on which they had collaborated.

Poletti devoted the next few years to writing before entering another relationship - one that would prove more lasting - with Countess Eugenia Rasponi, a noblewoman from Ravenna almost 12 years her senior and an ardent fellow feminist.

She moved in with the Countess at the Palazzo Rasponi Murat, a 15th century palace that is one of the oldest in Ravenna. They hosted a Consiglio Nazionale delle Donne Italiane congress at the palace in 1921, after which they decided to move to Rome.

They invited philosophers and writers to their home on Via Giovanni Battista Morgagni but after organising a seminar for Jiddu Krishnamurti, an Indian philosopher who had spoken out against Fascism, they found themselves constantly under the scrutiny of authorities. Their home was raided frequently. 

Nonetheless, it was an enduring relationship, lasting 40 years and ending only with the death of Rasponi in 1958.  Poletti herself died in Sanremo, the Ligurian coastal resort, in 1971 at the age of 86.

The tomb of the poet
Dante, in Ravenna

Travel tip:

As well as being the former capital of the Western Roman Empire, Ravenna was also the city where the 13th century poet Dante Alighieri lived in exile until his death in 1321. Dante's tomb is next to the Basilica of San Francesco, not far from where Poletti grew up. The city is renowned for its wealth of well-preserved late Roman and Byzantine architecture and eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites. One of the most important examples of early Christian Byzantine art and architecture is the Basilica of San Vitale, which is famous for its fine Byzantine mosaics.

Arcetri is situated in tree-clad hills to the
south of the centre of Florence

Travel tip:

Arcetri, located in the hills south of the centre of Florence beyond the Arno river, is famous as the place in which the astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei was kept under house arrest by the Roman Inquisition after refusing to accept that the earth was flat, a view that was considered heresy. The town is the home of the Arcetri Observatory. The 16th century writer Francesco Guicciardini, who compiled what is regarded as the first history of Italy, is said to have lived in a house in arcetri called Villa Ravà.

Also on this day:

410: Rome sacked by the Visigoths

1545: The birth of military leader Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma

1576: The death of the painter, Titian

1707: The birth of comic actress Zanetta Farussi, mother of Casanova

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Grazia Deledda - Nobel Prize winner

First Italian woman to be honoured

Grazia Deledda was the first Italian
woman to win a Nobel Prize

The novelist Grazia Deledda, who was the first of only two Italian women to be made a Nobel laureate when she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926, was born on this day in 1871 in the city of Nuoro in Sardinia.

A prolific writer from the age of 13, she published around 50 novels or story collections over the course of her career, most of them drawing on her own experience of life in the rugged Sardinian countryside.

The Nobel prize was awarded "for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general."

Deledda’s success came at the 11th time of asking, having been first nominated in 1913. The successful nomination came from Henrik Schuck, a literature historian at the Swedish Academy.

Born into a middle-class family - her father, Giovanni, was in her own words a “well-to-do landowner” - Deledda drew inspiration for her characters from the stream of friends and business acquaintances her father insisted must stay at their home whenever they were in Nuoro.

The cover of an early edition of Elias
Portolú, Deledda's first big success

She was not allowed to attend school beyond the age of 11 apart from private tuition in Italian, which was not at the time the first language of many Sardinians, who tended to converse in their own dialect, sardo logudorese. Beyond that, she continued her education by reading as much quality literature as she could get hold of.

Her parents did not encourage her writing but she persevered and, on the advice of her English teacher, submitted a story to a magazine when she was 13 and was delighted when they decided to publish it.

Even at that early stage in her career, her stories tended to be starkly realistic in their reflection of the hard life many Sardinians endured at the time and she often used the sometimes brutally challenging landscape of the island as a metaphor for the difficulties in her characters’ lives.

Yet she would more often blame societal factors and flawed morals for the difficult circumstances in which her characters found themselves, which reflected her own optimistic view of human nature.

However, she was chastised by her father for the way her stories questioned the patriarchal structure of Sardinian society and they were not received well generally in Nuoro, where some people expressed their displeasure by burning copies of the magazine that published her work.

There is a commemorative bust of
Grazia Deledda on Pincio hill in Rome

Deledda completed her first novel, Fior di Sardegna (Flower of Sardinia) in 1892, when she was not quite 21. She sent to a publisher in Rome, who accepted. Again it was shunned in Nuoro, but it was successful enough elsewhere for her to set about writing more and she submitted at least one every year, sometimes using a pseudonym.

In 1900, she visited Cagliari, the Sardinian capital on a rare holiday. She had never been far from Nuoro before but it proved a momentous occasion. She met Palmiro Madesani, a civil servant who would become her husband.  After they were married, they moved to Rome, where Deledda would live for the remainder of her life.

It was there that she tasted her first real success with Elias Portolú (1903), a novel that was published in Italian first but which was translated into French and subsequently all the major European languages, bringing her international recognition for the first time.

The period between 1903 and 1920 was her most productive phase for her, in which she wrote some of her best work. Her 1904 novel Cenere (Ashes) was turned into a film starring the celebrated actress Eleonora Duse.

Deledda preferred a quiet life with her family to any
celebrity despite the attention the prize brought her

Life in Sardinia continued to be her favourite theme. Nostalgie (Nostalgia, 1905), I giuochi della vita (The Gambles of Life, 1905), L’ombra del passato (Shadow of the Past, 1907) and L’edera (The Ivy, 1908) brought her more success.

This brought her a comfortable living and she was happy in Rome, even if she preferred a quiet life at home to celebrity. If she was bitter at the way her family had reacted to her writing, she did not let it stand in the way of her humanity and she supported her brothers, Andrea and Santus, after her father died.

Deledda died in Rome in 1936 at the age of just 64, having suffered with breast cancer. Her last years were painful but she never lost her optimistic view of life, which she believed was beautiful and serene and gave her the strength to overcome physical and spiritual hardships. Her later works reflected her strong religious faith.

Italy's only other female Nobel Prize-winner is Rita Levi-Montalcini, who won the 1986 Nobel Prize for Medicine.

The house in Nuoro where the novelist
was born is now a museum

Travel tip:

Deledda's birthplace and childhood home in Nuoro has been preserved as a museum in her honour. Called the Museo Deleddiano, it consists of 10 rooms where the stages of the writer's life are reconstructed.  The building is located in Santu Pedru, one of the city's oldest quarters. The house was sold in 1913 but remains mostly unaltered. It was acquired by the Municipality of Nuoro in 1968 and, thanks to the generosity of the Madesani-Deledda family,  a large number of manuscripts, photographs, documents and personal belongings of the novelist are on display.  The museum, in Via Grazia Deledda, is open from 10am to 1pm and from 3pm to 7pm (8pm in summer), every day except Mondays.

Nuoro is situated in a ruggedly mountainous area

Travel tip:

Nuoro, situated on the slopes of the Monte Ortobene in central eastern Sardinia, has grown to be the sixth largest city in Sardinia with a population of more than 36,000.  The birthplace of several renowned artists, including the poet Sebastiano Satta, the novelist Salvatore Satta - a cousin - the architect and car designer Flavio Manzoni and the award-winning sculptor Francesco Ciusa, it is considered an important cultural centre.  It is also home of one of reputedly the world’s rarest pasta - su filindeu, which in the Sardinian language means "the threads of God" - which is made exclusively by the women of a single family to a recipe passed down through generations.

More reading:

Giosuè Carducci - the first Italian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature

How Nobel Prize-winner Dario Fo put the spotlight on corruption

The groundbreaking talent of actress Eleonora Duse

Also on this day:

1966: The birth of rapper Jovanotti

1979: The death on Capri of actress and singer Gracie Fields 


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Alberto Franchetti - opera composer

Caruso sang his arias on first commercial record in 1902

Alberto Franchetti enjoyed his peak years in terms
of popular success around the turn of the century

The opera composer Alberto Franchetti, some of whose works were performed by the great tenor Enrico Caruso for his first commercial recording, was born on this day in 1860 in Turin.

Caruso had been taken with Franchetti’s opera, Germania, when he sang the male lead role in the opera’s premiere at Teatro alla Scala in Milan in March 1902.

A month later, Caruso famously made his first recording on a phonograph in a Milan hotel room and chose a number of arias from Germania and critics noted that he sang the aria Ah vieni qui… No, non chiuder gli occhi with a particular sweetness of voice.

A friend and rival of Giacomo Puccini, Franchetti had a style said to have been influenced by the German composers Wagner and Meyerbeer. He was sometimes described as the "Meyerbeer of modern Italy."

Despite the exposure the success of Germania and the association with Caruso brought him, Franchetti’s operas slipped quite quickly into obscurity.

Blame for that can be levelled at least in part at the Fascist Racial Laws of 1938, which made life and work very difficult for Italy's Jewish population.

Franchetti (left), pictured with his friends and fellow
composers Pietro Mascagni and Giacomo Puccini

Franchetti's works were banned from performance during Fascist rule. His fellow composer Pietro Mascagni made a personal plea for tolerance on his behalf directly to Benito Mussolini, but it fell on deaf ears.

Franchetti was the son of Baron Raimondo Franchetti, a Jewish nobleman. He studied in Venice, then at the Munich Conservatory under Josef Rheinberger, and finally in Dresden under Felix Draeseke.

His first major success occurred in 1888 with his opera Asrael, followed in 1892 by Cristoforo Colombo, which many consider to be Franchetti's best work. It did not, however, match the popularity of Germania, the libretto for which was written by Luigi Illica, which went on to be performed worldwide.

Illica is said to have offered his libretto of Tosca to Franchetti. It is not clear why it was taken up instead by Puccini. Some opera historians believe Franchetti was working on the opera but that Puccini asked the publishing house Ricordi to let him have it and that Franchetti was persuaded that the violence in the story made it unsuitable for an opera.

Another version - thought to have the Franchetti family’s seal of authenticity - is that Franchetti waived his rights to the opera because he felt that Puccini would make a better job of it.

Franchetti’s family home in Florence was the substantial Villa Franchetti, in Via Dante Da Castiglione, a short distance from the Giardino di Boboli (Boboli Gardens), where he would host lavish banquets for his friends from the artistic world. Puccini, Mascagni and the actress Eleonora Duse were regular guests.

During his life, substantial changes were made to the property, with the addition of an annex that served as a concert and dance hall, as well as stables in the grounds.  He decorated and furnished the house with the advice of his brother, Giorgio, a wealthy art collector who at the time owned the Ca d’Oro, the sumptuous palace on the Grand Canal in Venice.

Franchetti, who was director of the Florence College of Music from 1926 to 1928, died in Viareggio in 1942 at the age of 81. His music has been revived recently with new recordings of Cristoforo Colombo and Germania by the Berlin Opera.

He was married twice and had five children, one of whom, his son Arnold Franchetti, was a member of the Italian Resistance in the Second World War before emigrating to the United States and becoming a composer as well as a professor at the University of Hartford, Connecticut.

The Villa Franchetti-Nardi as it looks today

Travel tip:

After Franchetti’s death, the Villa Franchetti had a chequered history. It was seized by the Germans, who established it as a command post, during the Second World War, by which time the family’s financial fortunes had suffered badly. After the war it was rented for a few years before being largely abandoned in 1960 and falling into a state of disrepair.  The villa, which has had the status of "Historical Residence of Italy" since 1991, was rescued from its near-dereliction by its current owner Gustavo Nardi. Now known as the Villa Franchetti-Nardi, it opened its doors as a hotel in 2009.

The beautiful facade of the Ca d'Oro on Venice's Grand Canal

Travel tip:

The Palazzo Santa Sofia, one of the older palace on the Grand Canal in Venice, is known as Ca' d'Oro - golden house - due to the gilt and polychrome external decorations which once adorned its walls. Built between 1428 and 1430 for the Contarini family, since 1927 it has been used as a museum, the Galleria Giorgio Franchetti, named after Alberto’s brother, who acquired the palace in 1894 and personally oversaw its extensive restoration, including the reconstruction of the Gothic stairway in the inner courtyard that had been controversially removed by a previous owner. In 1916, Franchetti bequeathed the Ca' d'Oro to the Italian State.

More reading:

Enrico Caruso - 'the greatest tenor of all time'

How one great opera made Pietro Mascagni immortal

The brilliant talent of Eleonora Duse

Also on this day:

1587: The birth of singer and composer Francesca Caccini

1916: The birth of actor Rossano Brazzi

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Eleonora Duse – actress

Performer 'became' the person she played with her whole being

Eleonora Duse began acting at the age of four.

Regarded as one of the greatest acting talents of all times, Eleonora Duse was born on this day in 1858 in Vigevano in Lombardy.

Often simply known as Duse, she was admired for her total assumption of the roles she played. In 1947, the film, Eleonora Duse, was made about her life.

She began acting at the age of four, joining her father and grandfather in the profession. She worked in a troupe with her family, travelling from city to city. Duse became famous for creating Italian versions of roles made famous by the actor Sarah Bernhadt.

Duse toured South America, Russia and the US, beginning the tours as an unknown actor, but leaving in her wake a general recognition of her genius.

She had an affair with the Italian poet, Arrigo Boito, who was the librettist for the composer, Giuseppe Verdi. They carried out their relationship in a clandestine manner, but the letters they exchanged have survived and they remained on good terms until Boito’s death in 1918.

Duse had a romantic relationship with the
writer and poet Gabriele D'Annunzio

In 1895 Duse met the writer Gabriele D’Annunzio and they became involved romantically as well as professionally.

D’Annunzio wrote four plays for her but when he gave the lead in La Città Morta to Sarah Bernhardt instead of her, Duse ended her relationship with him.

Duse had a relationship with the dancer, Isadora Duncan and spent several weeks with her at Viareggio in Tuscany, shortly after Duncan’s two children drowned in a tragic accident.

Her biographer, Frances Winwar, recalled that Duse wore little make-up but made herself up "morally." She meant that she used her body to express her grief and joy.

Duse, who had a history of ill health, died of pneumonia at the age of 65 in the US while on a tour. Her body was returned to Italy and she was buried in Asolo in the Veneto at the cemetery of St Anna.

The beautiful Piazza Ducale in Vigevano

Travel tip:

Vigevano, where Duse was born, is a town in the province of Pavia in Lombardy. It is well-known for the beautiful Piazza Ducale in the centre of town. The piazza was completed in 1493 and was planned to form the forecourt to the castle built for Ludovico Sforza, who was Duke of Milan between 1452 and 1508.

Porticoes line the Via Browning in Asolo

Travel tip:

Asolo, where Duse was buried, is a town in the Veneto region, known as ‘the pearl of the province of Treviso’. It is famous for being the home of the English poet, Robert Browning. Duse lived there for part of her life and is now buried in the hillside cemetery of St Anna.

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Gabriele D’Annunzio – writer and patriot

Military hero influenced Mussolini with his distinctive style

Gabriele D'Annunzio: writer and military
hero, pictured in the 1930s

Poet, playwright and political leader Gabriele D’Annunzio was born on this day in 1863 in Pescara in Abruzzo.

He is considered to be the leading writer in Italy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well as being a military hero and a political activist. Some of his ideas and actions were believed to have influenced Italian Fascism and the style of the dictator, Benito Mussolini.

D’Annunzio was the son of a wealthy landowner and went to university in Rome. His first poetry was published when he was just 16 and the novels that made him famous came out when he was in his twenties.

At the age of 30 he began a long liaison with the actress Eleonora Duse and started writing plays for her. But his writing failed to pay for his extravagant lifestyle and he had to flee to France in 1910 because of his debts.

After Italy entered the First World War, D’Annunzio returned and plunged into the fighting, losing an eye during combat while serving with the air force. He became famous for his bold, individual actions, such as his daring flight over Vienna to drop thousands of propaganda leaflets and his surprise attack on the Austrian fleet with power boats when they were moored at Buccari Bay in what is now Croatia.

Eleonora Duse, the actress with
whom D'Annunzio had a long affair

In 1919, with about 300 supporters, he occupied the port of Fiume, now Rijeka, whose population was mostly Italian. D’Annunzio believed it belonged to Italy but the Italian Government and the Allies were proposing to incorporate it into the new state of Yugoslavia.

He ruled Fiume as a dictator until December 1920. Some of his slogans and the tactics he used while he was leader there were later copied by Mussolini.

After Italian forces made him abdicate he retired to his home at Gardone Riviera to write .In 1922 he was pushed out of a window by an unknown assailant but, although badly injured, he survived the fall.

He was given the hereditary title of Principe di Montenevoso by King Victor Emmanuel III in 1924.

Next to his house he built a stadium, Il Vittoriale degli Italiani, to display his torpedo boat and the aircraft in which he flew over Vienna. A mausoleum was built there after his death in 1938 to contain his remains.

The amphitheatre at Il Vittoriale degli Italiani, the stadium
D'Annunzio built next to his home overlooking Lake Garda

Travel tip:

Il Vittoriale degli italiani, The Shrine of Italian Victories, is an estate in the hillside above the town of Gardone Riviera, overlooking Lake Garda in the province of Brescia. D’Annunzio began planning the estate in 1921 with architect Giancarlo Maroni. Jutting out of the hillside is the cruiser, Puglia, its bow pointing symbolically in the direction of the Adriatic, as though ready to conquer the Dalmatian shores. Now a national monument, the estate houses a military museum and library and is a popular tourist destination.

Gabriele D'Annunzio's former house in Pescara is now a
museum dedicated to the writer's life

Travel tip:

The birthplace of Gabriele D’Annunzio in Corso Manthonè in Pescara is now the Museo Casa Natale Gabriele D’Annunzio. The house at number 116, where he spent his childhood, displays furniture, documents and photographs illustrating the writer’s life. It is open to visitors every morning from 9 am to 1.30 pm. For more information, click here.

Pescara hotels by Booking.com

More reading:

The founding of Mussolini's Fascist Party

The abdication of Victor Emmanuel III

Why Eleonora Duse is seen as one of Italy's greatest acting talents

Also on this day:

1501: The birth of doctor and botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli

1921: The birth of Fiat patriarch Gianni Agnelli


(Picture credits: Amphitheatre by BlueSky2012; museum by RaBoe001; via Wikimedia Commons)

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