Giuseppe Sinopoli – conductor and composer

Maestro died while conducting Verdi’s Aida

Giuseppe Sinopoli conducted some of the world's 
most prestigious philharmonic orchestras

Musician Giuseppe Sinopoli, who became known for his intense and sometimes controversial interpretations of opera, was born on this day in 1946 in Venice. 

Sinopoli specialised in late 19th century and early 20th century music, especially works by the Italian composers of the period and the music of the German composer, Richard Strauss.

He was principal conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra in London between 1984 and 1994, succeeding Riccardo Muti, and he made many recordings while he was with them, including complete operas by Mahler and music by Elgar. 

His own most famous composition is his opera Lou Salomë, which was based on the life and intellectual circle of the Russian-born psychoanalyst and author Lou Andreas-Salomë, who was known for her relationships with figures such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Rainer Maria Rilke, which was staged for the first time in Munich in 1981, with the American soprano Karan Armstrong singing the title role.

Sinopoli began to be interested in music from the age of 12 and studied music at the Venice Conservatory under the Italian composer Ernesto Rubin de Cervin Albrizzi. From there he went to Darmstadt in Germany, where he was mentored in composition by the controversial German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, among others.  

While still studying music in his own time, Sinopoli enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Padua. He obtained a doctorate in medicine, with an emphasis on psychiatry, before completing a dissertation on criminal anthropology.

After making a name for himself as a composer, Sinopoli became professor of contemporary and electronic music at the Venice Conservatory, where he became a major proponent of the new movement in Venice for contemporary music. 

He studied orchestral conducting at the Vienna Academy of Music and in 1992 he became principal conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Saxon State Orchestra. He also joined the roster of conductors for the Bayreuth Festival, staged annually at the town of the same name in northern Bavaria.

Sinopoli was only 54 when he died
following a heart attack

He went on to conduct many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, including the Orchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Wiener Philharmoniker, and the orchestras at Covent Garden Opera House, the New York Metropolitan, the New York Philharmonic and the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Tragically, Sinopoli died at the age of just 54 following a heart attack, which he suffered while conducting Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, in 2001. Following his collapse during the third act, he was taken from the opera house to the German Heart Centre in Berlin, but was pronounced dead the following day. 

By a sad coincidence, it was the same opera that he had conducted when he made his debut at the rostrum in Venice in 1978.

Two nights later, the Swiss conductor Marcello Viotti stepped in to conduct Aida and he dedicated his performance to Sinopoli’s memory.

The funeral of Sinopoli took place in Rome on April 23 and was attended  by the Italian President, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and the Prime Minister, Giuliano Amato, as well as a large contingent of musicians and staff from La Scala opera house in Milan.

Sinopoli had previously been studying for a degree in archaeology and he had been due to make the defence of his thesis on the day that his funeral took place. His degree was subsequently awarded to him posthumously by the University of Padua.

An annual arts festival in Taormina in Sicily is now dedicated to the conductor and composer because Sinopoli had been the director of the music section of the Taormina festival  between 1989 and 1997.

Every October, since 2005, the Sinopoli Chamber Orchestra has performed works by Sinopoli at the festival, which is now named after him.

In all, the conductor composed more than 20 pieces of music, making a name for himself by producing what are known as serial works, using pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres and other musical elements in a series.

His conducting sometimes caused controversy, especially in the symphonic genre, with some critics highlighting the ‘eccentricity’ of his interpretations, while others praised his ‘intellectual approach’ to works of music.

Giuseppe Sinopoli also had an extensive collection of Greek antiquities and one of the books he wrote was Masterpieces of Greek Ceramics from the Sinopoli Collection.

The courtyard of the Palazzo Pisani
has twice featured in James Bond films

Travel tip:

The Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello, commonly known as the Venice Conservatory, is a musical education institution located within the historic Palazzo Pisani in the San Marco district of Venice. Founded privately in 1876 as a music high school and society, it permanently relocated to its current home in 1899, later achieving prestigious state conservatory status in 1940.  Renowned Italian composers who helped shape the institution’s legacy as directors or faculty members include Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, Gian Francesco Malipiero, and the avant-garde pioneer Bruno Maderna. The conservatory preserves invaluable archives, housing rare, historic manuscripts by the great Venetian late Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi. Visitors are welcomed to attend regular public concerts, masterclasses, and recitals in its very grand rooms. There is also a specialised music museum featuring rare instruments, Richard Wagner relics, and an extensive library housing 50,000 documents. The conservatory has acquired fame of a different kind through its appearance in two James Bond movies. In the 1979 film Moonraker, Roger Moore’s Bond arrives by gondola and uses a skeleton key to sneak into the conservatory's 17th century columned courtyard. The courtyard and its adjoining alleyways doubled as the exterior of a high-tech Venetian glass museum owned by the villainous industrialist Hugo Drax.  Some 27 years later, Daniel Craig’s Bond returns to the exact same courtyard in Casino Royale (2006), one of the most tense, emotional sequences of which sees Bond stalk the double agent Vesper Lynd as she passes beneath the stone arches and columns of the courtyard to hand over poker winnings to the villainous Mr. Gettler. 

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Taormina's Ancient Greek Theatre, which dates back
to the third century BC, still stages performances

Travel tip:

Taormina, which commemorates Giuseppe Sinopoli via its annual arts festival, is an historic hilltop resort town on the east coast of Sicily, known for its dramatic cliffside views of the Ionian Sea and of nearby Mount Etna. Celebrated as the ‘Pearl of the Mediterranean’, it was once an unmissable stop of the Grand Tour, the journey of the 19th century European aristocracy, it remains a popular destination for international tourism,  particularly at the luxury end of the market. beauty.  Originally established as the ancient Greek fortress of Tauromenion prior to 735 BC, its crown jewel is the Ancient Greek Theatre - Teatro Antico - a remarkably preserved third century BC amphitheatre carved directly out of the rockface. It still acts as an active, open-air performance venue framed by a backdrop of Mount Etna. In the global tourism space, Taormina sits firmly at the pinnacle of the luxury and cultural market. It initially rose to prominence in the 19th and early 20th centuries as an exclusive winter refuge for European royalty, avant-garde intellectuals, and literary figures such as Truman Capote. By the mid-20th century, it became a playground for the Hollywood elite, famously hosting stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Greta Garbo. The town’s main thoroughfare, Corso Umberto, is lined with designer stores, Michelin-starred restaurants, and five-star hotels. Taormina’s artistic prestige is anchored heavily by the Giuseppe Sinopoli Festival, which has been held annually since 2005. Prestigious international orchestras often feature at the festival, along with the Sinopoli Chamber Orchestra, a talented collective formed in collaboration with the Messina Conservatory that focuses on performing Sinopoli's own avant-garde compositions. 

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More reading:

Carlo Maria Giulini, the boy violinist who became a maestro of the baton

The brilliant Arturo Toscanini, the cellist who became an orchestra leader by chance

The celebrated career of Riccardo Muti

Also on this day:

293: The death of San Giusto of Trieste

1418: The birth of builder and diarist Gaspare Nadi

1475: The death of condottiere Bartolomeo Colleoni

1889: The birth of publishing giant Arnoldo Mondadori

1893: The birth of car designer Battista ‘Pinin’ Farina

1906: The birth of aristocratic film director Luchino Visconti

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Rino Gaetano - singer-songwriter

Famed for raspy voice and lyrics rich in satire and social commentary

Rino Gaetano enjoyed a breakthrough in
1975 with Ma il cielo è sempre più blu 

The singer-songwriter Rino Gaetano, who enjoyed great popularity in the 1970s before his tragic death in a car crash at the age of just 31, was born on this day in 1950 in Crotone, a coastal city in Calabria.

Gaetano’s irreverent style and the sometimes controversially satirical nature of his songs meant his talent was slow to be recognised but his breakthrough single of 1975, Ma il cielo è sempre più blu - But the Sky is Always Bluer - brought him success, selling more than 100,000 copies.

His subsequent albums - Mio fratello è figlio unico (My Brother is an Only Child) and Aida - cemented his reputation as one of finest Italian songwriters of his generation. His simple lyrics set to catchy tunes were a vehicle for piercing social and political commentary, with which many ordinary Italians easily identified.

His performance at the 1978 Sanremo Music Festival caused a sensation both for his attire and for the nature of his song, Gianna. In an era when many artists still sang in formal dress, Gaetano went onstage in red sneakers, a top hat and a tailcoat adorned with medals, while Gianna was the first song in the history of the competition to include the word “sex” in the lyrics.

It finished third, nonetheless, and brought him another hit, although he later said he regretted entering as he considered the song too commercial.

Although born on Calabria’s Ionian Sea coast, Gaetano grew up in Rome from the age of 10 after his parents moved to the capital in search of work.  Settling in the Monte Sacro quarter in the northeast of the city, they became the live-in janitors of an apartment building on Via Nomentana, his father doubling as a hotel handyman while his mother took a day job in a dry cleaner’s. 

Born Salvatore Antonio, Gaetano was known as Salvatorino - ‘little Salvatore’ - within his family. It was his sister, Anna, who shortened it to ‘Rino’, which eventually stuck.

After less than a year in Rome, he was sent away to study at a seminary 80km (48 miles) away in Narni in Umbria, although there was never any intention that he would pursue a religious vocation. His parents had felt, though, that the seminary would give him a good quality of education. Instead, his teachers noted that he seemed more interested in writing poems, composing melodies and performing sketches for the amusement of his classmates than studying theology.

Gaetano performing at the 1978 Sanremo Music
Festival, where his song, Gianna, finished third

When he returned to Monte Sacro in 1967, his father was keen to steer him towards a career in banking, enrolling him at an accountancy college. However, the young Rino had his eyes by now on becoming a performer. He and three friends formed a group, called The Krouks. They mainly played cover versions of songs made famous by other artists, but would occasionally perform one of Gaetano’s own compositions.

His fascination with the Rome music scene drew him to Folkstudio, the club in the Trastevere district where his contemporaries included Antonello Venditti and Francesco De Gregori, two young singers who would both become major stars in Italy.  He and Venditti would sometimes perform together.

Blessed with a talent for acting, too, Gaetano mixed his music with performing on stage in local theatre productions, including a performance of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, in which he played the role of Estragon. 

At the same time, he became fascinated with German kabarett, a version of the entertainment form in which the artists dedicate themselves largely to political and social topics, at which they poke fun using cynicism, sarcasm and irony. This, clearly, was a major influence on his own style.

In 1972, Venditti introduced him to Vincenzo Micocci, the owner of a record label, and the following year recorded his first single, I Love You Marianna. Clearly not confident in its success, he released it under a pseudonym and even asked Micocci if it ought to be sung by someone with a better voice.

Antonello Venditti sometimes played
alongside Gaetano at Rome's Folkstudio

But Micocci had a hunch that Gaetano’s raspy, gravelly delivery might become a distinctive hallmark and insisted he sang. It was successful enough to spawn a first album, Ingresso libero. 

It was the first of six studio albums in as many years, which were accompanied by 10 singles.  All were characterised by sharp social or political commentaries, sometimes including unflattering references to named politicians or prominent figures in the Catholic Church.

Known for his generosity, Gaetano used his first significant earnings to buy his parents an apartment and a car for himself. He made plans to marry his long-time girlfriend, Amelia Conte, whom he had met as a student.

Tragedy struck a month before their scheduled wedding, in the early hours of June 2, 1981, when his car collided with a delivery truck on Via Nomentana, the driver of which believed that Gaetano collapsed at the wheel moments before the impact.

The singer might have survived but among his injuries was a fracture at the base of the skull and other head wounds. The hospital to which he was first taken was not equipped to deal with cranial injuries and four others also turned him down. By the time he was admitted to the Gemelli Hospital at 6am - three hours after the accident - it was too late. In a coma, he died shortly afterwards.

Chillingly, Gaetano’s death echoed lyrics of a song he had written 10 years earlier, without publishing, about the death of a boy hit by a car who was also turned away by several Rome hospitals through lack of beds or treatment facilities. Gaetano had intended the song to highlight the poor state of health provision in the capital. 

His funeral took place in the Church of Santa Maria del Suffragio, in the Ponte rione of central Rome, where he had been due to be married. His body was initially buried in the small cemetery of Mentana, the town outside Rome where he had bought a house with his fiancée, Amelia, but later transferred to Rome’s Verano monumental cemetery.

Crotone is city and resort that enjoys a beautiful
 location on southern Italy's Ionian coastline

Travel tip:

Crotone, where Rino Gaetano was born, is a coastal city in Calabria, facing the Ionian Sea. Founded by Greek colonists in the 8th century BC, it became one of the most powerful cities of Magna Graecia and famously hosted Pythagoras, who established his renowned school of philosophy and mathematics here. It became one of the most flourishing cities of Magna Graecia reaching a population between 50,000 and 80,000 around 500 BC, not dissimilar to that of today. Crotone’s historic centre features a labyrinth of narrow streets, traditional buildings and lively piazzas.  Key attractions include the imposing 16th-century Charles V Castle, built by the Spanish King of Naples, which dominates the old town, and the National Archaeological Museum. Visitors can stroll along the vibrant lungomare promenade or take a short trip to Capo Colonna to see the lone surviving column of the Temple of Hera Lacinia. A gold tiara unearthed at the 2,500-year old temple is on display at the National Archaeological Museum. Farther south is the Capo Rizzuto Marine Protected Area, with seagrass forests, barracudas and starfish.

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Piazza Sempione in Monte Sacro, the leafy residential
quarter where Rino Gaetano lived for most of his life

Travel tip:

Monte Sacro is a residential quarter in northeastern Rome, positioned along the banks of the winding Aniene River.  The area takes its name from the sacred hill, Mons Sacer, where in 494BC Rome's plebeians staged a famous secession against patrician rule to secure their civil rights. Centuries later, in 1805, the South American liberator Simón Bolívar stood on this very same hill and swore his historic oath to free his homeland from Spanish rule.  The gateway to the neighborhood is the Ponte Nomentano, a magnificent Roman-era bridge. Originally constructed with a grand travertine arch, it was fortified in the Middle Ages with defensive castle-like towers.  Modern Monte Sacro took shape in the 1920s when architect Gustavo Giovannoni designed it as a Città Giardino - Garden City. With the Piazza Sempione and the striking Church of the Holy Guardian Angels at its heart, the district features curving, tree-lined streets and elegant Art Nouveau villas. Today, Monte Sacro maintains an intimate, village-like character, where craft beer bars, neighbourhood trattorias, and peaceful green spaces such as the Aniene Valley Nature Reserve thrive far away from the typical tourist crowds.

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More reading:

Antonello Venditti - still performing at 77

The singer Bob Dylan called ‘an Italian folk hero’

How Adriano Celentano became an Italian pop music icon

Also on this day:

1922: Mussolini appointed prime minister

1949: The birth of writer Carlo Emanuele Ruspoli

1960: The birth of particle physicist Fabiola Gianotti

2003: The death of tenor Franco Corelli

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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. 

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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. 

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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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Settimia Caccini – singer and songwriter

Esteemed soprano composed beautiful music

Settimia initially performed alongside her sister,
 Francesca (above), who was also a composer

Singer and composer Settimia Caccini, who is believed to have been one of the first women in Italy to have a successful career in music, was born on this day in 1591 in Florence.

Settimia was highly regarded by those who heard her sing because of her beautiful soprano voice and she initially worked with other members of her family singing for the Medici court in Florence. But she became famous as a solo artist in 1608 when she sang the role of Venus in Claudio Monteverdi’s opera Arianna in Mantua. 

Records show that for a time she received high pay from the Gonzaga family, who employed her at their court in Mantua and clearly valued her.

Born into a family of singers and composers, Settimia learnt music from an early age. Her father was Giulio Caccini, who was a key figure in the advance of the Baroque style of music and wrote musical dramas, which would now be recognised as operas. 

Her older sister was Francesca Caccini, who was also a talented singer and was the composer of what is thought to be the oldest surviving opera by a woman composer, La Liberazione di Ruggiero.

Settimia’s mother, Lucia Gagnolanti, was a talented singer, but she died when Settimia was still young. Her older brother, Pompeo Caccini, was also a singer.

Giulio Caccini was employed by the Medici family who ruled Florence at the time. While working for them he was introduced by the Medici to the ‘concerto delle donne’, a group of’ professional female singers who worked for the Este court in Ferrara. It is thought that Giulio may have persuaded these women to train his daughters to sing in the same way.

Due luci ridenti is one of just eight
surviving compositions by Settimia

Instead of singing solos, Settimia and  Francesca, were trained to sing soprano arias together and they were called Il Concerto Caccini. In 1600, they sang together in their father’s opera, Il rapimento di Cefalù, on the occasion of the wedding of Maria de’ Medici and Henry IV of France.

Settimia and Francesca grew up singing and performing together, but by 1608 when Settimia performed in Monteverdi’s opera in Mantua, they had gone their separate ways.

After her success in Mantua, Settimia was offered various offers of employment and marriage proposals, all of which she turned down. The following year, she married the singer and composer Alessandro Ghivizzani, who was from Lucca. After initially working for the Medici court in Florence together, the couple left the city to go to Lucca, which was Ghivizzani’s birthplace, and they then travelled throughout Italy before moving to Mantua to serve at the Gonzaga court. 

It is known that in 1622 Settimia and her husband were in the service of Odoardo Farnese in Parma and that in 1626 she was chosen to sing in two of Monteverdi’s operas. The composer himself is said to have stated that Settimia Caccini sang the arias ‘with superhuman grace and angelic voice.’

After Ghivizzani’s death in 1632, Settimia returned to Florence to work at the Medici court again, where she remained until her death, which is assumed to have been in the 1630s, but the exact date is not certain.

Settimia was mostly known for her beautiful singing but she was also an active composer. None of her work was published while she was alive and most of it is now lost. However, it was documented that in 1611 she had composed the music for a masked carnival in Venice.

Just eight of Settimia Caccini’s compositions have survived, all written for a single singer, so they were perfect for her to sing herself and she many not have expected anyone else to perform them. These include Due luci ridenti, a madrigal. Some are now performed as piano solos and one was published in a 17th century collection of music.

Ponte Vecchio in Florence, which connects the
Palazzo Pitti with the rest of the city

Travel tip:

Musicians working for the Medici family in Florence would have performed for them and their guests at Palazzo Pitti, a palace originally built for the banker Luca Pitti in 1457 in the centre of Florence, in a bid to try to outshine the Medici family. The Medici later bought it from his bankrupt heirs and made it their main residence in 1550. Today visitors can look round the richly decorated rooms and see treasures from the Medici collections. The Ponte Vecchio connects Palazzo Pitti with the rest of the city, which is on the other side of the River Arno. It was built in 1345 and is the oldest bridge remaining in Florence. The medieval workshops used to be inhabited by butchers and blacksmiths, but these were eventually given to goldsmiths and are still inhabited by jewellers today. The private corridor over the shops was designed by the architect, Vasari, to link the Palazzo Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti, via the Uffizi, allowing the Medici to move about between their residences without having to walk through the streets.

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The Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, where Settimia
is likely to have sung for the Gonzaga family

Travel tip:

Mantua, where Settimia Caccini worked for the Gonzaga family, is an atmospheric old city, to the south east of Milan, a highlight of which is the Renaissance Palazzo Ducale, which has a famous room, Camera degli Sposi, decorated with frescoes by Andrea Mantegna. Settimia would probably have sung for the Gonzagas in what is known as the Galleria dei Fiumi, a space in the palace that has the dimensions to accommodate a stage and orchestra and where there is room for a small audience. It is not known for certain, but the premiere of the opera L’Orfeo, by the composer Claudio Monteverdi, may have taken place in the Galleria dei Fiumi. L’Orfeo, which is the earliest opera still being regularly staged, had its first performance in 1607 in Mantua. Settimia Caccini sang the role of Venus in Monteverdi’s opera Arianna in Mantua the following year. 

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More reading:

Giulio Caccini, the 16th century singer who helped create the opera genre

Francesca Caccini, the court musician who composed the oldest surviving opera by a woman

Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, the 400-year-old opera still staged today

Also on this day:

1836: The birth of writer and soldier Giuseppe Cesare Abba

1888: The birth of wartime nurse Saint Maria Bertilla Boscardin

1935: The birth of professional wrestler Bruno Sammartino

1943: The October Martyrs massacre

1943: The birth of football coach Ottavio Bianchi

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Romano Mussolini - jazz musician and painter

Dictator’s son forged successful career in music

At his peak, Romano Mussolini played around the
world alongside some of jazz's greatest icons

Romano Mussolini, the youngest son of Benito Mussolini, who grew up to enjoy success as a jazz musician and a painter, was born on this day in 1927 at the family home in Carpena, a hamlet outside Forlì in the Emilia-Romagna region.

Although he began his career with the anonymity of an assumed name, in time he became a central figure in Italy's post-war contemporary jazz scene under his true identity.

His peak achievement came in 1963, when his band, the Romano Mussolini All Stars, recorded the album Jazz allo Studio 7, winning the prestigious Italian Critics Award, raising his profile enough to play on tour alongside such jazz icons as Chet Baker, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie.

Yet despite his musical fame, Romano considered painting to be his true creative passion and his expressive, figurative style achieved national and international recognition. 

Villa Carpena, the Mussolini family home and today open to the public as a museum, was a beautiful, Liberty-style country house in a pleasant rural setting. Between there and his father’s official residence in Rome, the neoclassical mansion, Villa Torlonia, Romano’s early years were somewhat idyllic. 

He studied music as a child, playing classical pieces on the piano and accompanying his father, who played the violin.  He first encountered jazz listening to records belonging to his older brother, Vittorio.  Largely self-taught as a musician, he began experimenting with playing jazz on the piano in around 1943. He also played accordion and alto saxophone.

Italy’s defeat in World War Two changed everything, of course. Having failed to escape to Switzerland, who rejected an application by his mother, Rachele, for asylum, Romano, his mother and sister, Anna-Maria, hid in a  house near Como, where he learned that his father, who had made a separate escape attempt in the company of his mistress Clara Petacci, had been executed by partisans.

Themselves captured by partisans, they were handed over to the British, who moved them to an internment camp near Terni in Umbria. From there they were transferred to Ischia, the island off the coast near Naples, where they remained in state-imposed exile until the Italian government announced an amnesty in 1947.

Romano Mussolini as a young child, pictured with
his father on a beach holiday at Riccione

Thanks to the family whom he lived with on Ischia, Romano had been able to keep up his piano playing and painting. After the amnesty, he stayed on the island, where he met Ugo Calise, a guitarist and composer, who invited him to play accordion in his group.

In the early 1950s, he returned to the mainland, moving into an apartment on the northern outskirts of Rome. He began to play jazz piano professionally, under the name of Romano Full or Raymond Full.

By 1955, after forming a partnership with a trumpeter, Nunzio Rotondo, he performed for the first time under his real name.

He modelled himself on his idol, the Canadian pianist Oscar Peterson, and his popularity grew, reaching a high point in 1963 when he was becoming a regular at the Santa Tecla club in Milan, which was something of a temple of jazz in the city.

His trio, the Romano Mussolini All Stars, recorded an album, Jazz allo Studio 7 - named after a famous Milan recording studio - that won that year's Italian critics award.  The award opened numerous doors, including regular invitations to tour abroad.

The irony is that, had his father’s regime survived, Romano would have probably had to choose a different career. Jazz, with its roots in black culture, was severely restricted by the Fascist government.  

Romano Mussolini explored various ways to earn extra money to support his music career, some more successful than others. He attempted to launch himself as a film producer but achieved poor results, making more from writing soundtracks for films. One of his more profitable ventures was a chicken and pig farm he acquired in Romagna.

Mussolini (left) pictured on an album sleeve with
singer Lilian Terry and trumpeter Nunzio Rotondo

In 1962, he married Maria Scicolone, the younger sister of actress Sophia Loren. They had two daughters, Alessandra and Elisabetta.  Alessandra went on to lead a small political party on the Italian far-right and was often described as a neofascist. Romano Mussolini composed the party's official anthem.

As he became older, Romano devoted himself more and more to painting. His subjects ranged from landscapes to still life, abstract dreams, beautiful women, clowns, gypsy scenes and the carnivals of Venice. His style has been described as Post-War Italian Figurative Expressionism.

Although there are none on display in the famous galleries, many of his paintings survive in collections around the world, occasionally changing hands at auction.

His musical career continued, including an appearance at the Lake Maggiore Jazz Festival in 2002, although his later years were most notable for writing a book of memoirs under the title, Il Duce, mio padre. 

In the book, Romano condemned his father’s part in the deportation to Nazi death camps of some 7,000 Italian Jews, yet his appraisal of the dictator’s political career was largely sympathetic. 

He died in Rome from heart problems in February, 2006 and was buried in the family crypt in the cemetery of San Cassiano in Predappio, the town south of Forlì where both his parents were born.

The Villa Carpena, where Romano Mussolini
grew up, is now open to the public

Travel tip:

The Villa Carpena museum, located about 10km (6 miles) southeast of  Forlì, is the historic former country residence of Benito Mussolini and his family. Known officially as the Casa dei ricordi di Mussolini (The House of Memories of Mussolini), the estate was the family home from 1924 onwards. His widow, Rachele, lived there long after his death. It eventually became neglected but in 2001 was bought by an Italian businessman  from the Mussolini estate and painstakingly restored, before being opened to the public as the first private museum dedicated to the dictator's personal life. Visitors today can explore the largely unchanged rooms, which are filled with original family belongings, furniture, and private photographs. Key highlights include Mussolini’s study, his uniform, personal letters, and the cradle of his children. The surrounding grounds feature a large garden, a vineyard, and the remains of a defensive bunker built during World War II. 

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The Maronti Beach in Ischia is one of the many
beautiful beaches for which Ischia is noted

Travel tip:

Ischia is a beautiful volcanic island notable for its many beautiful beaches located in the Tyrrhenian Sea at the northern tip of the Gulf of Naples. It has an area of some 47 square  kilometres, rising to a height of 789 m (2,589 ft) at the peak of Monte Epomeo. The vineyards surrounding Monte Epomeo produce excellent wine that is served in the island’s restaurants. The hot mineral springs on the island have been used since Roman times as a cure for ailments and are still recommended for people suffering from rheumatism and arthritis today. An entire circuit of the island’s 34km (21 miles) of coastline on one of the local buses will take about two and a half hours. Ischia is also the name of the island’s main town, the other municipalities being Barano d'Ischia, Casamicciola Terme, Forio, Lacco Ameno and Serrara Fontana. Notable sights include the Aragonese Castle (Castello Aragonese), which was built on a rock near the island in 474 BC, by Hiero I of Syracuse. Nowadays, it is connected to the town of Ischia by a stone causeway.  The island, which has a population of around 62,000, is accessible by hydrofoil and car ferries from Naples and Sorrento. Typical journey times are 50-60 minutes by hydrofoil from either starting point, with the ferry from Naples taking about one hour and a half.

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More reading:

Rachele Mussolini, the dictator’s long-suffering wife

How Mussolini and his mistress were captured and killed

The controversial career of Alessandra Mussolini

Also on this day:

1927: The birth of World Cup-winning football coach Enzo Bearzot

1973: The death of Oscar-winning actress Anna Magnani

1997: Earthquake damages Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi

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Benedetto Marcello – writer and musician

Controversial composer had little time for opera

A 19th century bust of Marcello, 
housed in Palazzo Loredan in Venice

Aristocratic poet and musician Benedetto Marcello, the author of a satirical and witty pamphlet that was reprinted many times and became an important source about the early history of opera, died on this day in 1739 in Brescia, then in the Republic of Venice.

Marcello is mainly remembered for his composition Estro poeticoarmonico, a setting for voices and instruments of the first 50 Psalms in the Bible. An edition with words in English was brought out in 1757, after his death.

In his amusing pamphlet Il teatro alla moda, which was written in 1720, Marcello expressed strong opinions about the state of musical drama at the time.

Born into a noble family in 1686 in Venice, he was intended by his father for the law.  Marcello became a member of the Venetian Council of Forty in 1711 and in 1730 he went to Pola in Istria as Governor, but he managed to combine his work with writing and composing music. 

Eight years later, Marcello retired to Brescia as papal chamberlain. During his life he composed many operas, oratorios, cantatas, concertos and sonatas.

He was also a poet, translated John Dryden’s Timotheus as a text for one of his own cantatas, and wrote a libretto for the 1709 opera, Arata in Sparta, by Guido Ruggeri.

As a young man Marcello was a contemporary of Antonio Vivaldi in Venice and it is thought that his music has a flavour of Vivaldi’s work.

Although Marcello wrote an opera, La fede riconosciuta, which was produced in Vicenza in 1702, he had little sympathy with this form of music, as he showed when writing his pamphlet Il teatro alla moda.

The cover of Marcello's satirical
pamphlet, Il teatro alla moda

In 1728, Marcello married his singing student, Rosanna Scalfi, in a secret ceremony. As a nobleman, his marriage to a commoner was unlawful and after his death it was declared null by the state. Marcello died of tuberculosis while living in Brescia in 1739.  Rosanna was unable to inherit his estate and filed a suit in 1742 against Marcello’s brother Alessandro, asking for financial support.

The library of the Brussels Conservatoire possesses some interesting volumes of chamber cantatas composed by Marcello for his mistress.

The composer Joachim Raff wrote an opera entitled Benedetto Marcello, based loosely on the lives of Marcello and Rosanna Scalfi. 

The Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello di Venezia - also known as the Venice Conservatory - was named after him. The conservatory is housed in Palazzo Pisani a San Stefano, which faces Campo Santo Stefano in the San Marco sestiere.

A street in Rome, Largo Benedetto Marcello, is also named in his memory. 

Marcello's birthplace in Venice, in the Palazzo Marcello on the Grand Canal in the Cannaregio sestiere, is marked with a plaque.

The Palazzo Marcello on the Grand Canal
in Venice, Benedetto's birthplace

Travel tip:

Visitors to Venice who arrive by train at Santa Lucia railway station are greeted by the magnificent sight of the Grand Canal when they come out of the station. They can choose to sail down to Piazza San Marco in style on a vaporetto, or to walk down Lista di Spagna and through fascinating back streets in the direction of the Rialto bridge and Piazza San Marco. Walking through the Santa Croce area in the direction of the Rialto will bring you to the Campo della Pescheria and Venice’s famous fish market, which has been developed into a vibrant area with bars and restaurants where you can eat outside looking out over the Grand Canal. Venice’s most famous opera house is Teatro La Fenice in Campo San Fantin, inaugurated in 1792, but it is predated by the Teatro Goldoni, which originated as Teatro di San Luca, founded in 1622. La Fenice’s heyday was during the 19th century when the premieres of Rossini’s Tancredi and Semiramide and Verdi’s La traviata were held there. During the Austrian occupation of Venice,  the audience threw red, white and green flowers on the stage to represent the Italian flag and shouted ‘Viva Verdi’. They weren’t just praising the composer, Giuseppe Verdi, but using the letters of his last name as code for ‘Vittorio Emanuele Re d’Italia’, expressing support for the first King of Italy.  

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Brescia's 11th century Duomo Vecchio, also known
as La Rotonda because of its cylindrical shape

Travel tip:

Brescia, where Benedetto Marcello was residing when he died,  is a town of great artistic and architectural importance. Although it is the second city in Lombardy after the capoluogo, Milano, and has Roman remains and well-preserved Renaissance buildings, it is not as well-known to tourists as other historic Italian cities. Brescia became a Roman colony before the birth of Christ and remains from the forum, theatre and a temple can still be seen. The town was fought over by different rulers in the Middle Ages, but came under the protection of Venice in the 15th century. There is a distinct Venetian influence in the architecture of the Piazza della Loggia, an elegant square in the centre of the town, which has a clock tower similar to the one in Saint Mark’s square in Venice. Next to the 17th century Duomo is an older cathedral, the unusually shaped Duomo Vecchio, also known as la Rotonda, which is open to the public. The Santa Giulia Museo della Cittá covers more than 3000 years of Brescia’s history, housed within the Benedictine Nunnery of San Salvatore and Santa Giulia in Via Musei. The nunnery was built over a Roman residential quarter, but some of the houses, with their original mosaics and frescoes, have now been excavated and can be seen while you are looking round the museum.

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More reading:

Antonio Vivaldi, the musical priest who died impoverished

Tomaso Albinoni, the Vivaldi contemporary who became a prolific composer

Bartolomeo Cristofori, the 17th century musician credited with inventing the piano

Also on this day:

1759: The birth of Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia

1843: The birth of painter Eugene de Blaas

1921: The birth of tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano

1931: The birth of film director Ermanno Olmi

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Pietro Nardini – violinist

Brilliant musician inspired the young Mozart

Violinist Pietro Nardini was praised for
the beauty and emotion of his playing

Pietro Nardini, who was one of the most celebrated violinists of the 18th century and was also a talented composer of violin music, died on this day in 1793 in Florence.

Nardini’s playing was praised by his contemporaries for its beauty and emotional power and his violin and flute compositions are still valued for their melodious qualities and technical skill.

He was a friend of Johann Georg Leopold Mozart, the father and teacher of the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. When the young composer first visited Italy with his father, he performed alongside Nardini in Tuscany.

Pietro Nardini was born in Livorno in 1722. At the age of 12 he became a pupil of the violinist and composer Giuseppe Tartini. 

By the time he was 14, he was already playing the violin at festivals in Lucca, but he continued working with Tartini until 1740, when he became head instrumentalist in Lucca.

In 1762, Nardini moved to Stuttgart, where he joined the court of Charles Eugene, Duke of Wurtemberg as a violinist. He was later appointed orchestra conductor, succeeding Niccolo Jomelli in the post.

After moving back to Italy to support the ailing Tartini, Nardini was appointed as maestro di cappella in Florence and he remained at the court of Leopold II Grand Duke of Tuscany for the rest of his life, although he also sometimes performed in Pisa, Rome and Naples.

Nardini also had many successful pupils, including Thomas Linley Junior, who was a highly talented violinist and is sometimes referred to as ’the English Mozart.’

The young Mozart performed with Nardini
at the Villa Medicea di Poggio Imperiale

When the teenage Mozart visited Tuscany with his father in 1770, he performed alongside Nardini at the Grand Duke Leopold’s summer palace, the Villa Medicea di Poggio Imperiale.

The Mozart family had first met Nardini in Augsburg in 1763. Pietro Nardini was intrigued to meet the young Mozart again, because his student,  Thomas Linley, was almost exactly the same age. 

The next days the boys met for the first time at the home of the Medici court’s official poetess, who was known as Corilla Olimpica, and was herself a pupil of Nardini on the violin and often held musical evenings.

In 1768, Thomas Linley, at the age of 12, had been sent to Florence to study with Nardini. The Tommasino, as he was known, and the little Mozart, were both talked of in Italy as the most promising musicians of the age. 

That evening in Tuscany, they performed one after another,  constantly embracing each other between pieces of music

The boys spent the next day together as well and the following evening performed together at the home of the court finance minister. The Mozart family party were to leave Tuscany the next day and plans were discussed for a reunion, but sadly, Linley and Mozart were never to see each other again. 

The Mozart family were unable to go back to Florence, and Linley, who also became a promising composer, returned to England. He died eight years later at the age of 22 in a boating accident in Lincolnshire.

Manuscripts of Nardini’s compositions are preserved in many Italian cities and abroad. Much of his work has been recorded in the 20th and 21st centuries and is available on disc. 

Probably the best known among Nardini’s highly regarded compositions are his Sonata in D Major and Concerto in E Minor.

The canal district in the Quartiere Venezia is
one of Livorno's attractions
(Image by danielmanastireanu from Pixabay)

Travel tip:

Livorno, where Pietro Nardini was born, is a lively Tuscan port city dating back to the Renaissance, which features Medici fortresses and canal districts among its attractions. Planned by the Medici as an ideal Renaissance port, its cosmopolitan past as a free port created a tolerant, multicultural atmosphere that remains part of its identity.  The city’s most elegant promenade is the Terrazza Mascagni, a sweeping checkerboard terrace overlooking the Ligurian Sea.  The Livorno Aquarium sits at one end, while historic bathing establishments line the shore.  At the heart of the older part of the town lies Quartiere Venezia, a 17th‑century canal district of bridges, warehouses, and pastel façades. Nearby stands the city’s emblem, the Monumento dei Quattro Mori, a dramatic 1620s sculpture of four chained bronze figures supporting the statue of Grand Duke Ferdinando I.  Livorno has two major fortresses. The Fortezza Vecchia, guarding the Medici port, preserves medieval towers and later Renaissance additions.  Inland, the Fortezza Nuova rises above a green moat and park, offering peaceful walks amid red‑brick ramparts.  For a taste of daily life, the Mercato Centrale is one of Italy’s largest indoor markets, with stalls selling fish, bread and pastries, and many local specialties. 

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The Villa Medicea di Poggio Imperiale, where Mozart
and Nardini performed, now houses a girls' school
(Picture by Sailko via Wikimedia Commons)

Travel tip:

The Villa Medicea di Poggio Imperiale, where Pietro Nardini performed with the young Mozart, is a grand, predominantly neoclassical Medici residence in Arcetri, in the hills just south of Florence.  The villa was originally the Baroncelli family’s country house and passed to the Pandolfini and Salviati families before being seized in 1565 by Cosimo I de’ Medici, who gave it to his daughter Isabella de’ Medici. Isabella transformed it into a refined retreat, hosting an intellectual court and enriching the interiors with art. In 1622, it was bought by Grand Duchess Maria Maddalena of Austria, who commissioned architect Giulio Parigi to double its size, create the monumental façade, and link the villa to Florence via a long, tree‑lined avenue. It was she who gave it the name Poggio Imperiale, reflecting her imperial Habsburg lineage. After further expansions followed under Vittoria Della Rovere, in the 18th century, Grand Duke Leopold II adopted the villa as a principal residence.  The villa’s present neoclassical appearance is largely down to Maria Luisa of Spain, Elisa Baciocchi (Napoleon’s sister), and Ferdinando III, who refined the façade and interiors into the elegant, symmetrical form seen today.  Today the building houses a prestigious girls’ boarding school, but guided tours can be booked.

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More reading:

Giuseppe Tartini, 18th century composer who changed technique of violin playing

Why Italian composer Antonio Salieri was dogged by Mozart murder rumours 

Opera composer Pietro Mascagni, another of Livorno’s famous musical sons

Also on this day: 

1917: The birth of cardinal and composer Domenico Bartolucci

1922: The birth of actor and TV host Raimondo Vianello

1976: The birth of rugby star Andrea Lo Cicero

1983: The birth of Olympic champion archer Marco Galiazzo

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