Giorgia - singer-songwriter

Sanremo victory first of multiple successes

Giorgia has become one of Italy's
most popular performers

The popular singer-songwriter Giorgia Todrani, who performs simply as ‘Giorgia’, was born on this day in 1971 in the Monteverde Vecchio neighbourhood of Rome.

Giorgia, whose vocal ability has seen her compared to the American superstar singer Whitney Houston, rocketed to fame after winning the prestigious Sanremo Music Festival in 1995, less than a year into her recording career.

She has since sold more than 25 million records worldwide. Of her 12 studio albums, five have reached No 1 in the Italian charts, as did a greatest hits compilation released in 2002.  Giorgia has also topped the Italian singles chart on five occasions.

Her 1995 Sanremo winner, Come saprei - How would I know? - which she co-wrote with three others, including the best-selling Italian male star, Eros Ramazzotti, was the first entry to win both the main competition and the critics’ award at the annual festival.

Thirty years later, in 2025, she was strongly tipped to win Sanremo again with La cura per me - The cure for me - from her No 1 album G. Ultimately, the song finished sixth, a result that sparked boos from the audience at the Teatro Ariston, the theatre in the Ligurian resort that has been home to the competition since 1977.

Giorgia was born into a musical household in that her father, Giulio Todrani, was half of the singing duo Juli & Julie, which enjoyed some success in the 1970s and ‘80s. Giulio is said to have chosen the name, Giorgia, for his daughter after a favourite Ray Charles song, Georgia on My Mind. 

After the Juli & Julie duo - in which he partnered with the female singer Angela Bini - went their separate ways in 1989, Giulio formed a soul and rhythm-and-blues group under the name Gli Io Vorrei La Pelle Nera. Giorgia is said to have performed on stage with the group.

Giorgia had some formal singing lessons from the lyric tenor, Luigi Rumbo, who was a member of the Sistine Chapel choir, but it was at Roman jazz clubs such as the Alexanderplatz in Prati, Big Mama in Trastevere and La Palma in Pigneto that she honed her vocal style.

Since winning Sanremo in 1995, Giorgia's
record sales have topped 25 million

The Sanremo Music Festival would play a significant part in her professional breakthrough in the early 1990s.

In 1993, she entered and won Sanremo Giovani, a section of the competition for young artists, with a song called Nasceremo, the prize for which included entry for the Newcomers section in 1994. The bonus for Giorgia was that the 1993 edition of Sanremo Giovani was the first to be televised.

Although her 1994 song, E poi - And Then - finished only seventh in the Newcomers section, it gained enough attention to become a hit single, reaching number two in the Italian chart, matched by the album from which it came, entitled simply Giorgia, which made No 2 in the album chart, selling 180,000 copies in Italy.

That success sparked an invitation to appear with the opera superstar Luciano Pavarotti on one of his famous Pavarotti & Friends charity concerts in Modena as part of a celebrity line-up that included Sting, Bryan Adams and the rising tenor Andrea Bocelli, who had won the Newcomers section at Sanremo in which she had finished seventh.

Giorgia and Bocelli then appeared together at a Christmas Eve concert at the Vatican in front of Pope Paul II, their performance creating enough interest for them to release a single together, Vivo per lei, in 1995.

Of course, it was winning the main Sanremo contest in 1995 that provoked the biggest surge in Giorgia’s popularity. Her second album, Come Thelma & Louise, which included Come saprei, sold eight million copies worldwide and remains her biggest-selling individual album. No less a star than Elton John described her voice as “one of the most beautiful in the world” and invited her to appear as a guest on his upcoming tour of Italy.

A particularly proud moment for her father, Giulio, came in 2000 when Ray Charles, the iconic American soul singer, invited Giorgia to sing Georgia on My Mind at one of his concerts, having heard the story of how she came to be named.

Over time, through collaborations with artists such as Pino Daniele and Herbie Hancock, Giorgia was able to broaden her repertoire away from the ballads of her early success to more up-tempo and experimental music, allowing her to explore the full range of her vocal skills and bring comparisons with some of the most versatile singers in jazz-pop history.

Away from performing, Giorgia has been in a relationship since 2004 with Emanuel Lo, a dancer and teacher on the TV talent show, Amici di Maria De Filippi. The two met during one of the singer's tours and have a son, Samuel, who was born in 2010. 

A previous relationship ended in tragedy when the singer Alex Baroni, her partner of four years, was killed in a motorcycle accident.

She still lives in the Monteverde district of Rome, not far from where she grew up. 

The Villa Pamphilj, with its surrounding park,
is one of the attractions of the Monteverde district

Travel tip:

Monteverde, the area of Rome where Giorgia was born and still lives, can be found to the southwest of the central part of the city, within the Municipio XII rione. It borders Trastevere to the north and sits across the Tiber from Testaccio. Divided into the older Montevecchio Vecchio, characterised by elegant early‑20th‑century villas, and the mainly post-war Monteverde Nuovo, the area is historically middle‑class and artistic, with a long association with musicians, actors and media professionals. Small theatres and music venues abound. Known as a green area, it is home to the Villa Pamphilj, Rome’s largest landscaped park, popular for jogging, walking and relaxing, as well as the smaller park around Villa Sciarra. To the north, the Gianicolo - Janiculum Hill - offers panoramic city views.  The film director Pier Paolo Pasolini often chose the neighbourhood for location shots. Though quieter than neighbouring Trastevere, its restaurants are popular in the evenings and an increasing number of visitors chose to stay in the area, picking it as a quiet escape from the crowds in central Rome, yet close enough to be a base for exploring.

Monteverde hotels from Hotels.com

The Teatro Ariston in Sanremo, which has been
home to the Sanremo Music Festival since 1977

Travel tip:

The resort of Sanremo in Liguria, which has figured prominently in Giorgia’s career, can be found 146km (91 miles) southwest of Genoa as the Italian Riviera extends towards France. Sanremo enjoyed particular prestige even before the music festival, first staged in 1951, put it on the cultural map. The town expanded rapidly in the mid-18th century, when the phenomenon of tourism began to take hold among the wealthy. Several grand hotels were established and the Emperor Nicholas II of Russia was among the European royals who took holidays there. The Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, who bequeathed money in his will to establish the prizes that take his name, was so taken with the elegance of the town after his holiday visits that he made it his permanent home. Known as the City of Flowers, it is characterised by its Stile Liberty architecture (the Italian variant of Art Nouveau), of which the Casinò di Sanremo in Corso degli Inglesi is a beautiful example.  The Casino, in fact, was home to the music festival until 1977, when its closure for renovations obliged the organisers to find an alternative venue. They chose the Teatro Ariston, the town’s largest theatre in Via Matteotti, which is where it has remained.

Choose Expedia for accommodation in Sanremo

More reading:

How Mina became Italy’s all-time top-selling female music star

Laura Pausini, Sanremo winner and first Italian woman to land Grammy

The history of the Sanremo Music Festival

Also on this day:

1538: The birth of painter Gian Paolo Lomazzo

1575: The birth of Maria de’ Medici

1925: The birth of chocolatier Michele Ferrero

1977: The birth of astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti 

1993: The birth of rugby player Tommaso Allan

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Giovanni Capurro - poet and songwriter

Neapolitan who wrote the words to ‘O sole mio

Giovanni Capurro wrote many songs
but made little money from them

Giovanni Capurro, a poet and songwriter best known for writing the lyric of the classic Neapolitan song ‘O sole mio, was born in Naples on this day in 1859. 

The son of a professor of languages, Capurro was a cultured man who would in time be considered one of the 19th century’s finest Italian poets, yet was never well rewarded for his art. He spent much of his working life as a journalist and died poor.

Capurro grew up in the Montecalvario district of Naples, an area of the city centre that climbs up the hill of San Martino to the west of Via Toledo. Although his first love was writing, and poetry in particular, he was also a talented musician, graduating from the Naples Conservatory after studying the flute. He was also blessed with a good singing voice.

He wrote poetry in both Italian and Neapolitan dialect, both in the form of song lyrics and volumes of poetry. The celebrated actor, Raffaele Viviani, made his first appearance on the stage of an established theatre - the Teatro Perella in Basso Porto - at the age of four, in a sketch written by Capurro entitled Scugnizzo - The Street Urchin.

Capurro published more than 30 lyrics that were put to music, none more famous than ‘O sole mio, which he wrote in 1898, asking Eduardo di Capua, a Neapolitan songwriter and composer, to set it to music. Di Capua, for many credited with writing the melody alone, was later declared only to be the co-composer, after a court in Turin was satisfied that the melody had been an adaptation of one di Capua had bought from another musician, Alfredo Mazzucchi.

The song was presented at the famous Piedigrotta Festival, the music competition in the Chiaia district of Naples that was the launching pad for many famous Neapolitan songs.

The cover of the first edition of the 
sheet music of Capurro's 'O sole mio

It had already been well received when played around Naples yet the judges for the competition decided it was worth only second place behind a song called Napule Bello. However, there was such a public outcry that the decision was reversed.

Capurro’s other songs included Carduccianelle, N'atu munasterio, Napulitanata, Ammore che gira, Totonno 'e Quagliarelle, 'O scugnizzo, 'O guaglione d' 'o speziale, Lily Kangy, Chitarra mia and 'A chiantosa.

Yet he received little money for any of them. He sold the rights to ‘O sole mio, to a publishing house for a one-time fee. 

Had he any notion of how famous it would become - it has featured in the repertoire of such illustrious tenors as Luciano Pavarotti, Enrico Caruso, Andrea Bocelli and Beniamino Gigli - he would surely have negotiated a royalties deal.

As it was, he did not write with the aim of making money, merely to indulge his own fascination with the art. Early in his writing career, his poem Carduccianelle adapted to Neapolitan the evocations of Classical world employed by Nobel Prize-winning poet Giosuè Carducci a few years earlier in his Odi Barbare. Neapolitan readers regarded it more as a curiosity than as a book of true poetry.

Capurri delighted in spending his evenings in salons, where he would sing, play the piano and amuse audiences with his imitations of famous performers, but made his living as a journalist.

Beginning with the socialist periodical La Montagna, he then wrote for the Naples political newspaper Don Marzio, before joining the staff of the daily newspaper, Roma, in 1896, working initially as a reporter before becoming a theatre critic.

Married with three children, Capurro died in Naples in 1920 at the age of 61.

The upper parts of Montecalvario offer some
stunning views over the city of Naples

Travel tip:

The Montecalvario neighbourhood is the area of central Naples that includes the northern part of the Quartieri Spagnoli - the Spanish Quarter - the network of teeming streets that was built in the 16th century to house Spanish soldiers after the armies of Ferdinand II of Aragon had defeated the French to take control of the city. The main part of Montecalvario is to the west of Via Toledo, one of the city’s main shopping thoroughfares, which follows a long, straight course from Piazza Dante, through Piazza Carità before ending at Piazza Trieste e Trento, near Piazza del Plebiscito. The bustling Mercato Pignasecca offers a chance to experience shopping with the locals, while a climb up to Corso Vittorio Emanuele, the street which borders the upper part of the neighbourhood, is worth it to find a vantage point for spectacular views over the city.

The church of Santa Maria di Piedigrotta, which
is the origin of the annual Festa della Madonna

Travel tip:

Piedigrotta is an area that forms part of ​​the Chiaia district of Naples, close to the port at Mergellina. It takes its name from its location at the foot of a tunnel - "ai pedi grotta" - built into the  Posillipo hill in Roman times. It is best known for its annual Festa della Madonna di Piedigrotta, an occasion of fireworks and parades that has been staged every September since the 1800s. For many years, the celebrations included an annual song competition, the Neapolitan Song Festival, which showcased the city’s tradition of street musicians entertaining audiences with folk songs in Neapolitan dialect. It did much to popularise Neapolitan Songs as a genre, challenging the city’s most talented lyricists to excel. The competition launched in 1890 and became enormously successful, but was suspended in the 1960s because of repeated public order incidents as crowds got out of control. There have been a number of attempts in recent years to revive the contest but it has yet to be reinstated as an annual event.

Also on this day:

Catania celebrates the Feast of Saint Agatha

1578: The death of painter Giovanni Battista Moroni

1887: Verdi’s Otello premieres in Milan

1932: The birth of football coach Cesare Maldini

1960: Movie La dolce vita shown in public for first time

1964: The birth of footballer and coach Carolina Morace

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Carlo Bergonzi – operatic tenor

Singer whose style was called the epitome of Italian vocal art

Carlo Bergonzi made his professional opera debut in
the role of Figaro in Rossini's The Barber of Seville

Carlo Bergonzi, one of the great Italian opera singers of the 20th century, died on this day in 2014 in Milan.

He specialised in singing roles from the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, helping to revive some of the composer’s lesser-known works.

Between the 1950s and 1980s he sang more than 300 times with the Metropolitan Opera of New York and the New York Times, in its obituary, described his voice as ‘an instrument of velvety beauty and nearly unrivalled subtlety’.

Bergonzi was born in Polesine Parmense near Parma in Emilia-Romagna in 1924. He claimed to have seen his first opera, Verdi’s Il Trovatore, at the age of six.

He sang in his local church and soon began to appear in children’s roles in operas in Busseto, a town near where he lived.

Bergonzi spent two years in a prisoner
of war camp during World War II 

He left school at the age of 11 and started to work in the same cheese factory as his father in Parma.  At the age of 16 he began vocal studies as a baritone at the Arrigo Boito Conservatory in Parma.

During World War II, Bergonzi became involved in anti-Fascist activities and was sent to a German prisoner of war camp. After two years he was freed by the Russians and walked 106km (66 miles) to reach an American camp.

On the way he drank unboiled water and contracted typhoid fever. He later recovered, but when he returned to the Arrigo Boito Conservatory after the war he weighed just over 36kg (80lb).

Bergonzi made his professional debut as a baritone in 1948 singing the role of Figaro in Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. Other baritone parts followed but Bergonzi soon realised the tenor repertoire was more suited to his voice. After retraining he made his debut as a tenor in the title role of Andrea Chénier at the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari in 1951.

The same year he sang at the Coliseum in Rome in a 50th anniversary concert commemorating Verdi’s death. The Italian radio network RAI engaged Bergonzi for a series of broadcasts of the lesser-known Verdi operas.

Carlo Bergonzi and Maria Callas (left) performed
together at the Metropolitan Opera

These included I due Foscari, Giovanna d’Arco and Simon Boccanegra.

He made his La Scala debut in 1953 creating the title role in Jacopo Napoli’s opera Mas’Aniello. His London debut came in 1953 and his American debut followed in 1955 in Chicago.

After he appeared at the Metropolitan Opera for the first time the following year he received a glowing review from the New York Times.

He continued to sing at the Met for the next 30 years, appearing opposite such famous sopranos as Maria Callas, Victoria de los Angeles and Leontyne Price. He sang in a performance of Verdi’s Requiem at the Met in 1964 in memory of President John F. Kennedy, under the baton of Georg Solti. His last role at the Met was Rodolofo in Verdi’s Luisa Miller in 1988.

Bergonzi’s chief Italian tenor rivals during his career were Franco Corelli and Mario Del Monaco but he outlasted them both, continuing to sing in concerts into the 1990s.

Franco Corelli's was one of Bergonzi's
rivals among Italian operatic tenors

In May 2000 it was announced he was to sing the title role in Verdi’s Otello in a concert in New York. It attracted a great deal of interest and Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti were all in the audience.

Sadly, Bergonzi was unable to finish the performance because his voice had been affected by the air conditioning in his dressing room and a substitute tenor had to sing in his place.

After retiring, Bergonzi mentored many famous tenors and the soprano, Frances Ginsberg, was also one of his pupils.

Bergonzi died 12 days after his 90th birthday in Milan, leaving a widow and two sons. He was laid to rest in the Vidalenzo Cemetery, not far from Polisene Parmense.

He left a legacy of beautiful recordings of individual arias and complete operas, including works by Verdi, Giacomo Puccini, Pietro Mascagni and Ruggero Leoncavallo.

The church of the Beata Vergine di Loreto

Travel tip:

The village of Polisene Parmense, where Bergonzi was born, is about 40km (25 miles) northwest of Parma and around 20km (12 miles) south of Cremona. In January 2016 it merged with Zibello to form the new municipality of Polesine Zibello.  The village contains two buildings of interest - the church of the Beata Vergine di Loreto, also known as Madonnina del Po, which was built between 1846 and 1920 to preserve an effigy fresco of Our Lady of Loreto that had been discovered in an ancient shrine, and the nearby Antica Corte Pallavicina, a fortress that dates back to the 13th century.

The entrance to Bergonzi's restaurant in Busseto, I due Foscari

Travel tip:

Busseto, where Bergonzi sang as a child, is a town in the province of Parma, about 40km (25 miles) from the city of Parma. Verdi was born in the nearby village of Le Roncole but moved to Busseto in 1824. Bergonzi owned a house there and after his retirement also opened a restaurant and hotel there, I due Foscari, named after the Verdi opera about court intrigue in Venice. At the time of his death, I due Foscari was still being run by his son, Marco.

More reading:

How Italy mourned the loss of Giuseppe Verdi

Why Franco Corelli was called 'the prince of tenors'

Pietro Mascagni - a reputation built on one brilliant opera

Also on this day:

1467: The Battle of Molinella sees artillery used for the first time in warfare

1654: The birth of baroque musician Agostino Steffani

1883: The birth of Alfredo Casella, the musician who revived interest in Vivaldi

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Magda Olivero - soprano

Singer who performed into her 80s and lived to 104

Magda Olivero made her debut in an opera
broadcast for radio in 1932

The opera singer Magda Olivero, who became known as the last verismo soprano, died on this day in 2014. She was almost halfway through her 105th year, having been born in 1910.

Olivero became associated with the works among others of Francesco Cilea, Pietro Mascagni, Umberto Giordano and Franco Alfano, all of whom she actually worked with in person, her longevity providing a 21st century link with the world of 19th century Italian opera. She missed the chance to know and work with Giacomo Puccini only narrowly, the composer passing away at the age of 66 when Olivero was 14.

Born in Saluzzo in Piedmont, Olivero made her operatic debut eight years after Puccini’s death in a radio production in Turin in 1932. She gave her last stage performance 49 years later in 1981, although even that was not the end of her career. Her last recording of her signature role - Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur - did not come until 1994, when she was still able to control her pitch and tone at the age of 83.

Born as Maria Maddalena Olivero to a well-to-do family who gave her a good education, she built on her radio debut - singing Nino Cattozzo's oratorio, I misteri dolorosi - to establish a successful career, performing alongside pre-War stars such as Ebe Stignani, Beniamino Gigli and Francesco Merli.

Olivero with Mario del Monaco appearing in
Giordano's Fedora in Naples in 1965

In addition to Adriana, her most famous roles included Minnie in Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West, Mascagni's Iris, Riccardo Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini, and Giordano's Fedora. She sang Jules Massenet's Manon at Verona with Giuseppe di Stefano as Des Grieux, and Margherita in Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele to the Faust of Ferruccio Tagliavini.

The conductor Tullio Serafin helped her with her technique, although he was less helpful, she later claimed, after she refused his amorous advances. She said that her relationship with the tenor, Tito Schipa, also became strained after he became similarly enamoured with her.

In fact, in 1940 she decided to retire from the stage at the age of only 30 after she married Aldo Busch, an industrialist, hoping they would raise a large family. One of her last performances was of Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur in Ravenna and it was Cilea, almost a decade later, who would persuade her to make a comeback, telling her that she was the only singer who could do justice to the character.  She performed the role again in Brescia in 1951, shortly before the composer died.

That work was to become her calling card, and she sang it many times, as well as featuring often in leading roles in Puccini’s La Bohème, Madame Butterfly and Manon Lescaut, and in Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata.

Magda Olivero at the age of 95 in 2005

She made her London debut at the Stoll Theatre, in 1952 and in 1963 she substituted for Renata Tebaldi at the Edinburgh Festival in Adriana Lecouvreur, its first performance in Britain for 60 years.

Her first appearance in the United States came in Dallas in 1967, followed by Kansas and San Francisco. By now her fame as an interpreter of the verismo genre, in which the characters are ordinary people and the singers are adept at bringing dramatic expression to the roles, was established and her New York debut as Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera in 1975 was a much-hyped sensation, even though by then she was 65.

According to the New York Times report, when she made her first entrance, the audience began screaming and cheering, forcing the conductor Jan Behr to stop the music; arias were interrupted by bursts of spontaneous applause and at the end she was given a 20-minute ovation, one of the longest in the theatre's history. She reprised her Tosca for the Met in 1979, opposite Luciano Pavarotti. 

For all her success, though, she never really escaped the shadow of Maria Callas or Renata Tebaldi, who were always seen as more marketable and therefore enjoyed more recording contracts than Olivero, whose only complete opera recordings are Turandot and Fedora (1969), in which she was partnered by Mario del Monaco and Tito Gobbi.

After her second retirement, she settled in Milan, telling visitors to her home that the secret of her long life was yoga and a vegetarian diet. She lived for 31 years following the death of her husband in 1983, her wish for a family having never come to pass.

The early 15th century Cathedral of the Assumption in
Piazza Risorgimento in Saluzzo

Travel tip:

Saluzzo, where Olivero was born, is a hill town about 33km (20 miles) north of Cuneo and 61km (38 miles) south of Turin, in Piedmont. Most of its 15th century old town is intact, with numerous cobbled streets, steep staircases, churches and elegant palaces to explore. In the Piazza Risorgimento is Cathedral of the Assumption, built between 1491 and 1511 in the Lombard-Gothic style. Another attraction is the Castiglia, a castle built at the summit of the town in the 13th century by the Marquis Tommaso I and renovated in 1492 by Ludovico II of Saluzzo, at the time when the town was a powerful city-state.

The Teatro degli Arcimboldi, which was built in a
converted Pirelli tyre factory in Milan

Travel tip:

Milan’s best-known theatre is the opera house and ballet theatre Teatro alla Scala, inaugurated in 1778, but it is not the only theatre. Other respected venues are Teatro Sala Fontana, set within the beautiful cloisters of the church of Santa Maria alla Fontana in the northern part of the city, the Teatro Manzoni in Via Alessandro Manzoni, not far from Porta Nuova, and the ultra-modern Teatro degli Arcimboldi, which was built in 2001 in anticipation of the closure and renovation of La Scala opera house, in a converted Pirelli tyre factory about 7km (4.5 miles) from the city centre, in an area known as Bicocca.

More reading:

The beautiful work of Francesco Cilea

Giacomo Puccini - the musical genius who took the baton from Verdi

Pietro Mascagni and a career built on one great opera

Also on this day:

1474: The birth of poet Ludovico Ariosto

1504: The unveiling of Michelangelo's David in Florence


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Giuseppe Di Stefano – tenor

Singer from Sicily who made sweet music with Callas

Giuseppe Di Stefano was one of
Italy's greatest tenors

The opera singer Giuseppe Di Stefano, whose beautiful voice led people to refer to him as ‘the true successor to Beniamino Gigli’, was born on this day in 1921 in Motta Sant’Anastasia, a town near Catania in Sicily.

Di Stefano also became known for his many performances and recordings with the soprano, Maria Callas, with whom he had a brief romance.

The only son of a carabinieri officer, who later became a cobbler, and his dressmaker wife, Di Stefano was educated at a Jesuit seminary and for a short while contemplated becoming a priest.

But after serving in the Italian army he took singing lessons from the Swiss tenor, Hugues Cuenod. Di Stefano made his operatic debut in Reggio Emilia in 1946 when he was in his mid-20s, singing the role of Des Grieux in Massenet’s Manon. The following year he made his debut at La Scala in Milan in the same role.

Di Stefano made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1948 as the Duke of Mantua in Verdi’s Rigoletto. After his performance in Manon a month later, a journalist wrote in Musical America that Di Stefano had ‘the rich velvety sound we have seldom heard since the days of Gigli.’

Maria Callas and Giuseppe Di Stefano on stage in Tokyo,
at around the time they had a brief affair

He made his Royal Opera House debut in 1961 as Cavaradossi in Tosca.

He was admired for his excellent diction, passionate delivery and the sweetness of his soft singing.

In his Metropolitan Opera radio broadcast of Faust he attacked the high C forte and then softened the sound to a pianissimo. Sir Rudolf Bing, the Met's general manager wrote in his memoirs: ‘I shall never as long as I live forget the beauty of that sound.’

Di Stefano was chosen by EMI to record all the popular Italian operas with Maria Callas. Their 1953 studio recording of Tosca is considered one of the greatest performances in the history of the gramophone.

The two also performed well together on stage from 1951 onwards. He sang with Callas in the famous Visconti production of La Traviata in 1955 at La Scala and the last time they sang together in an opera was in Un ballo in maschera at La Scala in 1957.

In 1973 Di Stefano accompanied Callas on her final recital tour. Critics said they were both losing their voices but they were enthusiastically received everywhere. It was during this tour that the two had a brief romance.

Di Stefano also made recordings with a wealth of other opera stars.

Di Stefano's albums sold millions of copies

His final operatic role was as the aged emperor in Turandot in July 1992.

In 2004 Di Stefano suffered a brutal beating by unknown assailants near his home in Diani Beach in Kenya after he was ambushed in his car with his wife, Monika Curth.

The singer was still unconscious a week after the attack and had several operations.

He was flown to Milan and admitted to the San Raffaele clinic where he slipped into a coma.

Eventually he came out of his coma but his health never fully improved and he died at his home in Santa Maria Hoè, between Bergamo and Como, in 2008 at the age of 86.

Luciano Pavarotti said he modelled himself on Di Stefano, who was his idol. He said Di Stefano had ‘the most incredible, open voice you could hear.’ Di Stefano is also said to be the tenor who most inspired José Carreras.

Travel tip:

Motta Sant'Anastasia, with a snow-covered Mount
Etna in the background

Motta Sant’Anastasia, where Di Stefano was born, is a municipality nine kilometres (5.5 miles) west of Catania, built on a rocky outcrop not far from Mount Etna. It was inhabited by Greeks in the fifth century BC. Roman coins and a Roman mosaic have also been discovered there. The Tower of Motta was built in the 11th century as a defensive structure to protect the area from Saracen invasions.

Travel tip:

Di Stefano performed regularly on the stage of Teatro alla Scala in Milan from 1949 onwards. The theatre was officially inaugurated in 1778 after being built on the site of the former Church of Santa Maria alla Scala to the design of Giuseppe Piermarini. It is across the road from the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, an elegant arcade lined with shops, cafes and restaurants which links Piazza alla Scala with Piazza del Duomo, Milan’s cathedral square. La Scala’s museum displays costumes and memorabilia from the history of opera. The entrance is in Largo Ghiringhelli, just off Piazza alla Scala and it is open every day except Bank Holidays.

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Albano Carrisi - singer

Performer best known as Al Bano has sold 165 million records

Al Bano Carrisi

The singer Albano Carrisi, better known as Al Bano, was born on this day in 1943 in Cellino San Marco, a town in Puglia about 30km (19 miles) from Lecce.

He enjoyed considerable success as a solo artist in the late 1960s but became more famous still in Italy and across mainland Europe for his collaboration with the American singer Romina Power – daughter of the actor Tyrone Power.

They met during the shooting of a film - one of several, mainly romantic comedies and a vehicle for his songs, in which he starred during the 1970s.

They not only formed a professional partnership but were married for almost 30 years.  They twice performed as Italy’s entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, finishing seventh on both occasions, and appeared several times at Italy’s prestigious Sanremo Music Festival, winning the top prize in 1984.

They divorced in 1999 but re-united on a professional basis in 2013 and when they performed at the Arena di Verona in 2015 before a sell-out crowd of 11,000 the show was broadcast by the Italian TV network Rai and shown in seven other countries, with a combined audience estimated at 51 million.

Carrisi’s total record sales as Al Bano are said to be in the region of 165 million, mainly in Italy, Austria, France, Spain, Romania and Germany.

Albano Carrisi with Romina Power in a publicity
picture for the 1976 Eurovision Song Contest

When he was born during the Second World War, his mother, Iolanda Ottino, named him Albano because at the time his father Carmelo Carrisi was fighting in Albania for the Royal Italian Army.

The name established a link with the country that remained with him. In 2016 he was awarded Albanian citizenship.

He made his debut as a singer in 1966 and won the Disco per l'Estate, an Italian song contest, with Pensando a te in 1968. More hits followed. His song, Nel sole, sold more than a million copies.

His musical collaboration with Romina Power began soon afterwards and would last for almost 30 years. They took part in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1976 in The Hague with the song We'll Live It All Again (Noi lo rivivremo di nuovo), which finished seventh behind winners The Brotherhood of Man, from the UK.

They returned in 1985 in Gothenburg with Magic Oh Magic, which also finished seventh. The contest was won by the Norwegian duo Bobbysocks.

They entered Sanremo five times and won first prize in 1984 with Ci sarà.

Albano Carrisi in one of his films, Nel sole

Following their breakthrough hit Sharazan in 1981, which reached number two in the Italian charts, they had two number ones with Felicità (1982) and Ci sarà.  Their commercial success continued well into the 1990s, with many records selling in Spain, Germany and Austria.

Al Bano returned to his solo career in 1996 and to Eurovision in 2000, providing backing vocals for the Swiss entry (performed in Italian) La vita cos'è? by Jane Bogaert. After starring with his daughter Romina Carrisi in the 2005 edition of the Italian reality show L'isola dei Famosi – an equivalent of I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here and Celebrity Survivor – he entered Sanremo in his own right in 2007, finishing second will Nel perdono.

Although he has made his name in the pop world, Carrisi’s tenor voice is of such quality that he is comfortable singing opera, which was his passion growing up.  He released an album of operatic arias in 1997 and once performed alongside Placido Domingo and José Carreras as a stand-in for Luciano Pavarotti.

Carrisi pictured in 2014

Even at the age of 74, Carrisi still tours and remains is a familiar face on Italian television. He had heart surgery in December 2016 and was admitted to hospital in March this year following a scare but returned to work after a brief rest, insisting he did not want to disappoint his fans.

He and Romina Power had four children although they suffered personal tragedy when Yelena Maria, the oldest of their three daughters, disappeared at the age of 23 in New Orleans in January 1994 while backpacking. Carrisi never established what happened despite employing several investigators and in 2013 after almost 20 years requested that she be declared as presumed dead.

After his divorce, he had two more children with his girlfriend, Loredana Lecciso, a former showgirl almost 30 years his junior.

He still lives in Cellino San Marco.

Travel tip:

Cellino San Marco is a town of just under 7,000 people a little more than 20km (12 miles) south of Brindisi and about 14km (9 miles) inland from the coast. It was the site of a so-called ‘oven grave’ – a mass burial place with an entrance resembling that of a stone oven thought to date back to the Bronze Age. Its main attraction today is the nearby Carrisiland aquatic theme park.

Travel tip:

The port of Brindisi has been an important city in Italy since ancient Greek times, mainly because of its natural harbour and its strategic position on the heel of Italy.  The Romans connected it to Rome via the Appian Way (Via Appia) and it remains a busy port to this day, the main point of departure for trade with Greece and the Middle East.  Although it has an industrial feel to parts of the city, there is an attractive promenade and some interesting buildings, including an 18^th-century reproduction of the 11^th century cathedral destroyed in an earthquake, two castles and the 16^th century Renaissance style Palazzo Granafei-Nervegna.

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Ottavio Missoni - fashion designer

Former prisoner of war was also an Olympic hurdler

The fashion designer Ottavio Missoni with his wife Rosita on
the lawn of their mansion in Sumirago in 1975

The fashion designer Ottavio Missoni died on this day in 2013 at the age of 92 following an extraordinary life.

He passed away at his home in Sumirago, 55km (34 miles) north-west of Milan, having requested his release from hospital in order to spend his last days with his family.

Missoni was the co-founder of the Italian fashion brand Missoni, which he set up in 1953 with his wife, Rosita. The company became known around the world for its brightly coloured geometric knits and zigzag patterns and were among the pioneers of Italian ready-to-wear clothing lines.

Earlier, he had been an infantryman during the Second World War, fighting at the Battle of El Alamein in 1942. He was captured by the 7^th Armoured Division of the British Army, popularly known as the Desert Rats, and spent the remainder of the war in an English prisoner-of-war camp in Egypt.

After the war, he pursued his passion for competitive athletics, becoming good enough to be selected in the Italian team for the 1948 Olympics in London, where he reached the final of the 400m hurdles event.

Missoni was born in Dubrovnik, on the Dalmatian coast, in 1921. His mother was a countess, his father, Vittorio, a Friulian sea captain who had moved to Dalmatia while it was under Austrian rule. He grew up in Zadar, now part of Croatia but then called Zara and part of Italian territory, before going to college in Trieste and Milan.

The Missoni logo

He had participated in athletics events before the war. A member of the Italian national team at 16, he took part in an international meeting in Milan in 1937 in which he won the 400m in a time of 48.8 second, which remains the fastest for his age in Italian track history. In 1939, over the same distance, he won a gold medal at the International University Games in Vienna.

Sport provided his entry into the fashion business. Back home after the war, Missoni and his fellow athlete Giorgio Oberweger opened a business in Trieste making wool tracksuits, which they called Venjulia suits.

The tracksuits featured zippered legs, which Missoni has been credited with inventing. The Venjulia suits recognised the need of athletes for functional, warm garments enabling freedom of movement. In fact, they were worn by the Italian Olympic team in 1948.

It was while in London that he met 16-year-old Rosita Jelmini, an English student from Golasecca, Italy, who watched him compete.  They married in 1953, and their first son, Vittorio, was born in 1954. Luca (1956) and Angela (1958) followed.

Rosita’s family had a textiles business, making shawls, and together she and Ottavio set up a machine-knitwear workshop in Gallarate, not far from Sumirago and the town in which Rosita grew up. 

Soon they were supplying designs to the Biki boutique in Milan and to La Rinascente, the department store, where the first Missoni-labelled garments, a line of colourful vertically striped shirt-dresses, were displayed in the window in 1958. 

Ottavio Missoni in 2010

They held their first catwalk show in 1966, and the following year, presented a show at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, which landed them in controversy after the show’s lighting had the effect of turning the models’ clothing see-through, a misfortune made worse by the fact that most of the models went without underwear so as not to spoil the line of the clothes they were showing off. The show was likened to a bawdy cabaret and the Missonis were not invited back.

However, the publicity the scandal attracted helped the Missonis. Their next presentation, in Milan, drew much press attention and, as Milan grew as a fashion capital, the Missonis went on to feature in many leading fashion magazines. 

With a new factory in Sumirago, in a beautiful country setting in the shadow of Monte Rosa, they opened their first in-store boutique at Bloomingdale's in New York in 1970. Their first directly-owned boutique in Milan followed in 1976. 

The company enjoyed such heights of prestige that in 1983 they were invited to design the stage costumes for a performance of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, starring Luciano Pavarotti, and in 1990 some of the costumes for the opening ceremony for the football World Cup.

In 1997, Ottavio and Rosita retired, entrusted the future of the business in their children, appointing Vittorio as marketing director and Angela as creative director, with Luca taking a technical role. The company expanded into furniture and car interiors and even set up a chain of boutique hotels.

Sadly, tragedy struck the family shortly before Ottavio died when Vittorio was killed, along with his wife, Maurizia, when a small plane in which they were travelling crashed off the coast of Venezuela.

Travel tip:

As the crow flies, the city of Zadar in Croatia is 206km (128 miles) south-east of Trieste along the Dalmatian coast. At the time of Missoni’s birth it was called Zara, and was on Italian territory as part of the settlement of the Treaty of Rapallo, which rewarded Italy’s participation on the side of the Triple Entente (France, Russia and the United Kingdom) in defeating Germany in the First World War. With considerable Venetian influence, having for many years between the 13^th and 18^th centuries been part of the Republic of Venice, it is a city with a strong Italian flavour, retaining its beauty despite being bombed heavily during the Second World War.

Travel tip:

Sumirago, where Missoni made his home, is 15km (9 miles) south of Varese, a pleasant town a short distance from Lake Maggiore and overlooking its own picturesque lake. Well known as the location of the Sacro Monte di Varese (the Sacred Hill of Varese), which is scaled along a 2.5km path that passes 14 monuments built in the early part of the 17^th century, it is also home of the imposing Palazzo Estense and Villa Recalcati. Varese also has a cathedral, the Basilica di San Vittore, who can be found in an elegant square in the historic centre.

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Lucio Dalla - musician

Cantautore inspired by the great Caruso

Lucio Dalla was inspired by stay in Sorrento

The singer/songwriter Lucio Dalla was born on this day in 1943 in Bologna.

Dalla is most famous for composing the song, Caruso, in 1986 after staying in the suite the great tenor used to occupy overlooking the sea at the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria in Sorrento.

Dalla started playing the clarinet when he was young and joined the Rheno Dixieland Band in Bologna along with the future film director, Pupi Avati.

Avati was later to say that his film Ma quando arrivano le ragazze? was inspired by his friendship with Dalla.

In the 1960s the band won first prize in the traditional jazz band category at a festival in Antibes. After hearing Dalla’s voice, his fellow cantautore - the Italian word for singer/songwriter - Gino Paoli suggested he try for a solo career as a soul singer, but his first single was a failure.

Dalla had a hit with 4 Marzo 1943, originally entitled Gesu Bambino, but the title was changed to the singer’s birth date so as not to cause offence.

In the 1970s Dalla started a collaboration with the Bolognese poet Roberto Roversi, who wrote the lyrics for three of his albums.

Watch Pavarotti and Lucio Dalla on stage at Modena in 1992

When the association ended, Dalla decided to write the lyrics for his songs himself and his subsequent Banana Republic album was a success in 1979.

The song, Caruso, released in 1986, was his most famous composition. It has been covered by many other artists since, including Luciano Pavarotti and Julio Iglesias.

Dalla played various instruments,
including saxaphone, as well as singing

In the book Caruso the Song - Lucio Dalla e Sorrento, Raffaele Lauro, a writer from Sorrento, recalls that Dalla booked the very suite at the Excelsior Vittoria that Caruso had occupied during the final weeks of his life in 1921. While staying there Dalla composed the song, inspired by his love for Sorrento, his respect for the great tenor and his fondness for classic Neapolitan songs. The Fiorentino family, who owned the Excelsior Vittoria, were later to dedicate a suite to Dalla.

The version of Caruso sung by Pavarotti sold more than nine million copies and Dalla was invited to sing Caruso in a duet with Pavarotti in a 'Pavarotti and Friends' concert in Modena in 1992.

Andrea Bocelli included his version of the song on his first international album, Romanza, which sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.

Dalla was made a Commander and subsequently a Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic and was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Bologna.

The singer songwriter died three days before his 69th birthday in 2012, after suffering a heart attack in a hotel in Montreux in Switzerland, where he had been performing the night before.

About 50,000 people attended his funeral in Bologna and his hit song, Caruso, entered the Italian singles chart after his death, peaking at number two for two consecutive weeks.

The single was also certified platinum by the Federation of the Italian Music Industry.

The bronze sculpture on Lucio Dalla near his home in Bologna

Travel tip:

Dalla was awarded an honorary degree by the University in his home town of Bologna, which had been the first in the world when it was established in 1088. The University attracted popes and kings, as well as students of the calibre of Dante, Copernicus and Boccaccio. You can visit the university’s former anatomy theatre in the oldest surviving building, the Archiginnasio, in Piazza Galvani, which is open Monday to Saturday from 9am to 1pm, admission free. A short distance from the Archiginnasio, in Piazza dei Celestini, a bronze sculpture of Dalla sitting on a bench was unveiled in 2016 close to the house where he lived.

Hotels in Bologna from Booking.com

The Excelsior Vittoria is one of  Sorrento's oldest and most
famous hotels and was a favourite of Caruso

Travel tip:

The Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria is a familiar landmark for visitors who approach Sorrento by sea. The three 19th century buildings that comprise the hotel sit high on the cliff above the port of Marina Piccola, where boats arrive from Naples and the islands. The Excelsior Vittoria is probably Sorrento’s most famous hotel and it has now achieved global recognition as part of the Leading Hotels of the World group. From the imposing wrought-iron entrance gates in Piazza Tasso, a long driveway lined with orange trees leads to the entrance and reception area. At the back of the hotel, the terrace has panoramic views over the bay of Naples and of Vesuvius across the water. Tenor Enrico Caruso was famously photographed in front of those views during his final stay in 1921. The Excelsior Vittoria had been opened as a hotel by the Fiorentino family in 1834 and is still, to this day, run by their descendants.

More reading:

How soul singer Zucchero found sweet success

Eros Ramazotti and the key to staying at the top

Raffaele Lauro - politician and Dalla fan

Also on this day:

1678: The birth of Venetian maestro Antonio Vivaldi

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