Giovanni Minzoni - priest

Devout Catholic murdered for opposing Fascists

Giovanni Minzoni objected to the
Fascist youth movement in his town

Don Giovanni Minzoni, a Catholic priest whose name is commemorated in many street names around Italy, was murdered by Fascist thugs in the small town of Argenta in Emilia-Romagna on this day in 1923.

A parish priest in the town, midway between the cities of  Ferrara and Ravenna, Don Minzoni was attacked at around 10.30pm as he returned to his rectory in the company of Enrico Bondanelli, a parishioner, when he was set upon by two men who were attached to a Fascist militia in Casumaro, almost 50km (31 miles) from Argenta on the other side of Ferrara.

He was pelted with stones and, when the blows made him fall to the ground, was beaten. What proved to be the fatal blow was struck with a heavy walking stick. He had a fractured skull and, despite being helped home by Bondanelli and neighbours, died a couple of hours later. His attackers were later named as Giorgio Molinari and Vittore Casoni, who were allegedly acting on the orders of Italo Balbo, a Blackshirt Commander who would later be seen as an heir to dictator Benito Mussolini.

Don Minzoni, a former military chaplain, had made no secret of his opposition to the Fascist regime. Shortly before he was attacked, he had set up a Catholic Scout group in Argenta in response to the introduction in the town of the Opera Nazionale Balilla, the Fascist youth movement.

He had been involved in a stand-off with the local militia when he invited Father Emilio Faggioli, a leading figure in the Catholic Scout organisation in Emilia-Romagna, to give a talk about the virtues of Catholicism and the scouts in the parish hall on Piazza d’Argenta, the town’s main square.

Blackshirt Italo Balbo (second right)
was suspected of ordering the murder

The Fascists said local youths would be forbidden to attend but more than 70 defied them and gathered in the square.

A militia chief attempted to bring Don Minzoni over to his side by offering to make him the chaplain of their group.  Not surprisingly, the priest refused. He did not expect his decision to be well received and an entry in his diary chillingly anticipated his fate:

“With an open heart, with a prayer for my persecutors that will never disappear from my lips, I await the tempest, the persecution, maybe even death, for the cause of Christ to triumph.”

Born into a middle class family in Ravenna, Minzoni chose at an early age to dedicate his life to Christianity and was ordained a priest at the age of 24. He was made deputy pastor in Argenta, a position he held for three years before leaving to study in Bergamo, in Piedmont, where he graduate in 1914.

He was to have returned to Argenta in 1916 to become parish priest of San Nicoló, following the death of the incumbent, but instead was called by the army of the Kingdom of Italy, who asked him to serve as a military chaplain on the Italian north-eastern front. He was awarded the Silver Medal of Military Valour after showing great courage in the field during the Battle of the Piave River.

Don Minzoni is commemorated in the names of
streets and squares in many Italian towns and cities

On his return to Argenta at the end of the war, he became politically active, joining Partito Popolare Italiano, a forerunner of the Christian Democrats. His shock at the murder of a socialist union leader with whom he had become friends hardened his dislike of Fascism. He also favoured co-operation between political groups to tackle social problems, which put him at odds with the Fascists. 

His murder was covered extensively by two still relatively free newspapers, Il Popolo and La Voce Repubblicana, who named the perpetrators. When they came to trial, however, Molinari and Casoni along with Balbo were acquitted, the process effectively collapsing because intimidation of journalists and witnesses made a fair hearing impossible.

A re-trial did take place at the end of World War Two, in which Molinari and Casoni were found guilty of second degree murder. Balbo, who had been killed when the plane in which he was a passenger was shot down over Libya in 1940, was absolved of blame.

After the war, Don Minzoni became a symbol of the Italian Catholic Resistance, and many books were written about him. Pope John Paul II recalled his courage in a letter to the Bishop of Ravenna in 1983, on the 60th anniversary of his death, when his remains were moved from the monumental cemetery of Ravenna to the Cathedral of San Nicolò in Argenta.

The Cathedral of San Nicolò di Argenta, with
the monument to Don Manzoni in the foreground

Travel tip:

Argenta, which is situated about 30 kilometres (19 miles) southeast of Ferrara and a little over 40km (25 miles) northwest of Ravenna, is a town of Roman origin in a flat agricultural region near the Valli di Comacchio lagoon wetlands, much of which is designated as a wildlife sanctuary with many facilities for ornithology.  Situated close to the German Gothic Line, it suffered damage in World War Two. In 1973, a monument to Don Giovanni Minzoni, sculpted in bronze by Angelo Biancini, was placed in front of the Cathedral of San Nicolò di Argenta, when celebrations of his life in the town were inaugurated by the President of the Republic, Giovanni Leone.

The Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna is famous
for its beautiful Byzantine mosaics

Travel tip:

Ravenna, where Giovanni Minzoni was born, became the capital city of the western Roman empire in the fifth century. It is known for its well preserved late Roman and Byzantine architecture and has eight UNESCO world heritage sites. The Basilica of San Vitale is one of the most important examples of early Christian Byzantine art and architecture in Europe, famous for its superb Byzantine mosaics.  The poet Dante died while living in exile in Ravenna in about 1321. He was buried at the Church of San Pier Maggiore in Ravenna and a tomb was erected there for him in 1483.  Another tomb was built for Dante in the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence but despite repeated requests for the return of Dante’s remains to the city of his birth, Ravenna has always refused.

Also on this day:

1945: The birth of teenage pop star Rita Pavone

1943: The birth of guitarist and composer Pino Presti

1974: The death of eminent psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli

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Caesar crosses the Rubicon

Act of defiance that started a civil war and coined a phrase

Caesar's ambitious designs on power were behind his
programme of conquests in Europe

The Roman general Julius Caesar led his army across the Rubicon river in northern Italy in an act of military defiance that would plunge the Roman Republic into civil war on this day in 49BC.

The course of the Rubicon, which can still be found on maps of Italy today, entering the Adriatic between Ravenna and Rimini in northeast Italy, represented the border between the Roman province of Cisalpine Gaul, over which Caesar had command, and what was by then known as Italia, the area of the peninsula south of the Alps directly governed by Rome.

One of the most powerful politicians in the Roman Republic after forming an alliance with Pompey and Crassus known as the First Triumvirate, Caesar had spent much of the previous decade expanding his territory through the Gallic Wars, taking control of much of modern-day France and northern Italy and extending the borders of the Republic as far as the Rhine.  He was the first Roman general to invade Britain.

The troops under his command - the 13th Legion - numbered more than 20,000 men who had seen Caesar’s military skills develop and were fiercely loyal.

Caesar had an army of  soldiers who were
fiercely loyal to him

Caesar was hugely ambitious and made sure news of his exploits was regularly conveyed to Rome, where he had growing support.  None of the wars he waged to conquer the Gauls had been sanctioned or even authorised by the Senate, but such was the delicate balance of power in the Republic that he had been allowed to continue.

Matters came to a head, however, in 50BC when Caesar’s former ally Pompey, who had allied himself with Rome following the death of Crassus and the break-up of the Triumvirate, decided that the threat to his own power posed by Caesar had become too much.  As the most powerful figure in the Senate, he ordered Caesar to stand his army down and return to Rome to answer charges of waging illegal wars.

Unwilling to risk being found guilty of treason, Caesar had no intention of returning to Rome under such conditions. He also knew he could not lose face in front of his loyal troops or his supporters in Rome.

He drew up a plan of campaign and on January 9, 49BC, while Caesar was in Ravenna to examine plans for a gladiator school, his army was assembling at the border with Italy, on the banks of the Rubicon river.

According to the Roman historian Suetonius, Caesar arranged for a chariot to collect him after he had taken dinner in Ravenna and took him to join up with his troops by the Rubicon, knowing that to cross it would be in violation of Republican law, which forbade any general in the provinces to lead an army into the territory of Italia, and would inevitably provoke a civil war.

Caesar won power after a war
spanning four years

Suetonius claimed Caesar hesitated, in two minds about whether he should set off a chain of events from which there would be no turning back, but was persuaded by an apparition sent by the gods.  The following day, he led his army across the river and the march on Rome began.

The conflict that followed took four years to reach a conclusion and involved battles in the Balkans, Greece, Egypt, Africa and Spain but the fall one by one of Pompey and his allies.  Pompey himself fled to Egypt, where he was assassinated.  Caesar became the dictator of Rome in 45BC, presiding over changes that would lead to the collapse of the Roman Republic and the establishment of the Roman Empire.

The phrase ‘crossing the Rubicon’ has since entered the English language as an idiom used to describe taking irrevocable action or taking a decision to precipitate a situation that cannot be reversed.

The Fiume Rubicone is little more than a stream in places
on its 80km journey from the mountains to the Adriatic

Travel tip:

When the main E55 highway between the cities of Cesena and Rimini in Emilia-Romagna reaches Savignano, it crosses a narrow stretch of water that has since been accepted as the Rubicon, the dividing line between Cisalpine Gaul and what was then considered Italy, which Julius Caesar crossed with his army to take over the Roman state. The modern-day Fiume Rubicone flows for around 80km (50 miles) from the Apennine Mountains to the Adriatic Sea through the southern part of the Emilia-Romagna region, entering the sea at San Mauro Mare. The river's name is thought to derive from the Latin word rubeus, meaning "red" - the colour the water frequently assumes due to mud deposits.

The Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna contains some of
the finest examples of Byzantine art in Europe

Travel tip:

Ravenna, about 40km (25 miles) north of the Rubicon, became the capital city of the western Roman empire in the fifth century. It is known for its well preserved late Roman and Byzantine architecture and has eight UNESCO world heritage sites. The Basilica of San Vitale is one of the most important examples of early Christian Byzantine art and architecture in Europe, famous for its superb Byzantine mosaics.  The poet Dante died while living in exile in Ravenna in about 1321. He was buried at the Church of San Pier Maggiore in Ravenna and a tomb was erected there for him in 1483.


Also on this day:

987: The death of former Doge of Venice San Pietro Orseolo

1890: The birth of silent movie star Pina Menichelli

1903: The birth of car designer Flaminio Bertoni

1959: The birth of football coach Maurizio Sarri


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The 410 Sack of Rome

Invasion that signalled terminal decline of Western Roman Empire

Alaric and the Visigoths entering Rome, as depicted by the
19th century German artist Wilhelm Lindenschmit the Younger

The ancient city of Rome was left in a state of shock and devastation after three days of looting and pillaging by Visigoths under the command of King Alaric came to an end on this day in 410.

An unknown number of citizens had been killed and scores of others had fled into the countryside. Countless women had been raped. Many buildings were damaged and set on fire and Alaric and his hordes made off with vast amounts of Roman treasure.

It was the first time in 800 years that an invading army had successfully breached the walls of the Eternal City and many historians regard the event as the beginning of the end for the Western Roman Empire.

It could have been more devastating still had Alaric, a Christian, been a more cruel leader.  Although he struggled to control his men - historians believe they were an ill-disciplined rabble rather than an organised fighting force - he stopped short of ordering large-scale slaughter of the Roman population, while silver and gold objects they were told had belonged to St Peter were left behind.

A book illustration showing Alaric in Athens
after conquering the city in 395

It was brought to a swift conclusion because Alaric had other targets he wished to attack in the far south of Italy and in northern Africa. In the event, he died not long afterwards of a fever, somewhere near what is now the city of Cosenza in Calabria.

Alaric had risen to become King of the Visigoths in 395, the same year that saw the death of the Emperor Theodosius I, who had signed a peace treaty with the Goths in 382. Leadership of the Eastern and Western Empires was inherited by Theodosius’s two sons, Arcadius in the east and 10-year-old Honorius in the west. The western capital was moved from Rome to Ravenna, which was more easily defended.

Wanting to create a new settlement for his tribes, Alaric staged regular attacks in northern Italy in the early part of the fifth century but these were always repelled by Honorius’s regent, the brilliant military strategist and general Flavius Stilicho.

Stilicho, who was half-German, had many soldiers of German origin under his command and wanted to enlist the help of the Visigoths to fight against the Eastern Empire. Alaric himself had even served in battle under the command of Stilicho, whom he greatly admired and even considered a friend.

But his position changed when Honorius dismissed his demand to be given land and political power and he set his sights on Rome, which was still the symbolic heart of the Empire, even if the seat of government was now in Ravenna.

Alaric is buried in the bed of a river near where he died, along
with personal treasures, as imagined by Heinrich Leutemann

He was unconcerned about Honorius but knew he faced a formidable adversary in Stilicho and it was out of fear and respect for Stilicho that he stopped short of invading Rome after advancing to its gates in 408.

But after Stilicho, suspected of planning an insurrection, was executed on the orders of Honorius later the same year, the obstacle he presented was removed.

As a consequence, after long months laying siege to the city, during which time Roman citizens became hungrier and more desperate, Alaric first set a series of demands in front of Honorius, promising to call off the siege if they were met.  When they were refused, he ordered his tribes to enter the city on August 24, 410.  They did so without much of a fight, ushered in either by corrupt officials or rebellious slaves who opened the Salarian Gate.

The collapse of the Western Roman Empire did not happen as a direct result of Alaric’s invasion. In fact a more severe sacking of the city was still to come, carried out by the Vandals in 455, but the 410 invasion was a symbolic moment in an end game that was to reach its conclusion in 476, when another Germanic leader, Flavius Odoacer, removed the Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, and declared himself King of Italy, which is the moment at which many historians consider the Western Empire to have been no more.

The facade of the cathedral in Cosenza

Travel tip:

Cosenza, a city with an urban area in which more than 260,000 people live, combines a no-nonsense modern city with a small and atmospheric old city, a medieval town with a network of steep, narrow streets, at the heart of which is a cathedral originally built in the 11th century.  The old town also boasts the 13th century Castello Svevo, built on the site of a Saracen fortification, which hosted the wedding of Louis III of Naples and Margaret of Savoy but which the Bourbons used as a prison.  The pedestrianized centre of the new city has sculptures by the likes of Dalí, De Chirico and Pietro Consagra.

Dante's tomb in Ravenna

Travel tip:

As well as being the former capital of the Western Roman Empire, Ravenna was also the city where the 13th century poet Dante Alighieri lived in exile until his death in 1321. Dante's tomb is in the church of San Pier Maggiore. The city is renowned for its wealth of well-preserved late Roman and Byzantine architecture and eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites. One of the most important examples of early Christian Byzantine art and architecture is the Basilica of San Vitale, which is famous for its fine Byzantine mosaics.

More reading:

How Rome was sacked by the Ostrogoths in 546

Mutinous troops sack Rome in 1527

The death of Dante Alighieri

Also on this day

1576: The death of the great Renaissance artist Titian

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

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Battle of Ravenna

Thousands die in pointless conflict of the Italian Wars

The chaos of the Battle of Ravenna depicted in a
15th century woodcut

French forces inflicted appalling casualties upon a largely Spanish Holy League army on this day in 1512 at Molinaccio just outside Ravenna.

The French, under the command of their brilliant 21-year-old leader Gaston de Foix, had taken Brescia in Lombardy by storm in February and then marched on Ravenna intending to provoke the papal Holy League army into battle. They also had an Italian contingent of soldiers with them under the command of Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara.

Ramon de Cardona, Spanish viceroy of Naples and commander of the Holy League forces, led an army through the papal states of the Romagna to relieve Ravenna, passing Forlì and advancing north along the Ronco River.

Both sides had learned the new rules of warfare in the gunpowder age and were reluctant to assault well defended earthworks with cavalry or infantry.

They indulged in an artillery duel and had to manoeuvre unwieldy cannons to find effective lines of fire.

But after two hours they changed tactics and both cavalry and infantry threw themselves forward in assaults. The casualties were heavy as horsemen clashed in swirling melees and infantry swarmed over ramparts and ditches.

Alfonso I d'Este, who led a contingent of
Italian soldiers in the battle

The issue was decided when the French cavalry, having driven the opposing horsemen from the field, returned to attack the Spanish infantry.

While many of his soldiers were slaughtered, Cardona was taken prisoner.

Then, when the battle was effectively over, the French commander De Foix was killed during a pointless skirmish with the retreating Spanish infantry.

It was estimated that the French lost 4,500 men and the Holy League 9,000 in this battle, part of the War of the League of Cambrai, which took place during the long period of the Italian Wars.

The victory failed to help the French secure northern Italy and they were forced to withdraw from the region entirely by August of the same year.

Travel tip:

The Romagna, controlled by the Pope in the 16th century, was a region of Italy that approximately corresponds to the south eastern part of the present day region of Emilia-Romagna. It included the cities of Cesena, Faenza, Forlì, Imola, Ravenna and Rimini, where the Romagnola dialect is still spoken today.

The Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna

Travel tip:

Ravenna, in Emilia-Romagna, was the capital city of the western Roman empire in the fifth century. It is known for its well preserved late Roman and Byzantine architecture and has eight UNESCO world heritage sites. The Basilica of San Vitale is one of the most important examples of early Christian Byzantine art and architecture in Europe.

More reading:

How the Treaty of Lodi brought peace to northern Italy

Ravenna, the Ostrogoths and the Sack of Rome

The murder of papal military leader Girolamo Riario

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Rome falls to the Ostrogoths

Sacking of city in 546 left city a shadow of its former self

Francesco Salviati's portrait of the Ostrogoth
king Totila, painted in about 1549

The Ostrogoths, the Germanic tribe that took over large parts of the Italian peninsula with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, achieved a symbolic victory on this day in 546 when an army under the leadership of King Totila captured and sacked Rome following a year-long siege of the Eternal City.

The event was part of the Gothic War between the Ostrogoths, who had originated on the Black Sea in the area now known as Crimea, and the Byzantine (Eastern) Empire, between 535 and 554.

Totila led a fightback by the Ostrogoths after the fall of the Gothic capital at Ravenna in 540 signalled the apparent reconquest of Italy by the Byzantines.

He had swept south with his forces and was based at Tivoli, east of Rome, as he plotted how he would recapture the region of Latium. In 545, he laid siege to the city.

Bessas, the commander of the imperial garrison charged with protecting the city, was stubborn but cruel to the Roman citizens.  Although he had a stock of grain, he would not let it be used to feed the population unless they paid for it, while at the same time refusing requests from citizens to leave the city.  He set grain prices impossibly high and many Romans starved.

Pope Vigilius, who had taken refuge in Syracuse in Sicily, sent a flotilla of grain ships in a bid to relieve the crisis but these were intercepted by Totila’s navy at the mouth of the Tiber and never reached the city.

A historical illustration said to show the
army of Totila entering Rome

When Bessas relented and allowed citizens to leave, many were so weak with hunger they died en route to safety, either picked off by Ostrogoth soldiers or collapsing from malnutrition.

An attempt by an imperial army led by renowned general Belisarius only narrowly failed to defeat the Ostrogoth forces, its efforts hampered when Belisarius was taken ill and handed command to less-able subordinates.

Totila entered Rome on December 17, 546 after his men scaled the walls at night and opened the Asinarian Gate - the Porta Asinaria - supposedly with the help of treacherous Isaurian troops from the imperial garrison who had arranged a secret pact with the Goths.

As the Goths were advancing, not knowing what resistance they would encounter, many of Bessas’s supposed defenders of the city were making their escape through another gate, leaving only about 500 soldiers still inside the walls.

In the event, resistance was minimal, with reportedly only 26 soldiers and 60 civilians killed. Rome was plundered, but Totila, having vowed the reduce the once-great city to a sheep pasture, relented and contented himself with tearing down part of the defensive walls, before moving on in pursuit of Byzantine forces in Apulia.

Yet even with most it buildings still standing, Rome was left a barren ruin. Where it boasted more than a million inhabitants during the glory days of the Empire, its population had dwindled to only a few hundred.

The Porta Asinaria was a small entrance through which
farmers could enter Rome with their livestock

Travel tip:

The Porta Asinaria (Asinarian Gate) can be found about 1.6km (1 mile) southeast of the Colosseum along the route of the Via Appia Nuova, next to the Porta San Giovanni. When Emperor Aurelian built the walls that surround Rome, there was only a posterula - a small opening for the farmers who lived outside the walls – at this location, which explains its name Asinaria (of the donkeys). It was only after the nearby Lateran Palace became the official residence of the popes that a proper gate was built, by Emperor Honorius.

The Fountain of Neptune at the Villa d'Este

Travel tip:

Tivoli, situated in the Monti Tiburtini hills about 30km (19 miles) east of Rome. Its fresher climate made it an attractive area for moneyed Romans. Nowadays it is famous for the breathtaking gardens of the Villa d’Este, complete with its 51 fountains, designed to entertain guests of Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este, who had the villa built in the 16^th century.  Tivoli’s other major attraction is the enormous Villa Adriana (Hadrian’s Villa), which is not so much a villa as a small town, incorporating an array of temples, lakes, fountains, baths and other buildings so extensive that visitors need a whole day to explore.

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Dante Alighieri – poet

Famous son of Florence remains in exile

Sandro Botticelli's portrait of Dante,
painted in 1495

Dante Alighieri, an important poet during the late Middle Ages, died on this day in 1321 in Ravenna in Emilia-Romagna.

Dante’s Divine Comedy is considered to be the greatest literary work written in Italian and has been acclaimed all over the world.

In the 13th century most poetry was written in Latin, but Dante wrote in the Tuscan dialect, which made his work more accessible to ordinary people.

Writers who came later, such as Petrarch and Boccaccio, followed this trend.

Therefore Dante can be said to have played an instrumental role in establishing the national language of Italy.

His depictions of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven in the Divine Comedy later influenced the works of John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer and Lord Alfred Tennyson, among many others.

Dante was also the first poet to use the interlocking three-line rhyme scheme, terza rima.

Dante was born around 1265 in Florence into a family loyal to the Guelphs. By the time he was 12 he had been promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, the daughter of a member of a powerful, local family.

He had already fallen in love with Beatrice Portinari, whom he first met when he was only nine.

A beautiful depiction of Dante and Beatrice in Florence, by
the English artist Henry Holliday in 1883

Years after his marriage to Gemma, Dante claimed to have met Beatrice again and wrote several sonnets to her, without ever getting to know her properly, an example of courtly love.

After defeating the Ghibellines, the Guelphs divided into two factions, the White Guelphs and the Black Guelphs and when the Black Guelphs took power, Dante, a White Guelph was condemned to exile and ordered to pay a fine.

Dante, who was in Rome at the time, did not pay the fine and was condemned to perpetual exile. If he had returned to Florence he could have been burned at the stake.

By 1315 Florence had been forced to grant an amnesty to those in exile in exchange for public penance and the payment of a heavy fine, but Dante refused, preferring to remain in exile.

He accepted an invitation from Prince Guido Novello da Polenta to go to Ravenna in 1318. He finished Paradiso and died there, possibly of malaria, at about the age of 56.

The tomb of Dante Alighieri at the Church
of San Pier Maggiore in Ravenna

Dante was buried at the Church of San Pier Maggiore and a tomb was erected for him there in 1483.

Florence made repeated requests for the return of Dante’s remains but Ravenna has always refused. A tomb was built for him in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence but it has remained empty.

Travel tip:

Ravenna, where Dante lived in exile until his death in 1321, has a wealth of well-preserved late Roman and Byzantine architecture and eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites. One of the most important examples of early Christian Byzantine art and architecture is the Basilica of San Vitale, which is famous for its fine Byzantine mosaics. The city of Ravenna is mentioned by Dante in Canto V of his Inferno.

Dante's house in Via Santa Margherita in
Florence, which is now a museum

Travel tip:

Dante’s house in Via Santa Margherita in Florence is now a museum, il Museo Casa di Dante, open daily to the public from 10 am till six pm in summer and from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am till five pm between October and March. The museum is spread over three floors with exhibits illustrating the life and works of the great poet.


(Photo of Dante's tomb by Pivari CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Photo of Dante's house by Sailko CC BY-SA 3.0)

More reading:

Petrarch - the writer whose work inspired the the modern Italian language

Ludovico Ariosto - the father of humanism

Books:

The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso

Dante: The Story of His Life, by Marco Santagata


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Riccardo Muti - conductor

Celebrated maestro shows no sign of slowing down

Riccardo Muti

The brilliant conductor and musical director Riccardo Muti celebrates his 75th birthday today.

Since 2010, Muti has been conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra while retaining his directorship of the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra, a training ensemble for talent from Italian and other European music schools, based in Ravenna and Piacenza, which he founded in 2005.

Previously, Muti held posts at the Maggio Musicale in Florence, the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan and the Salzburg Whitsun Festival.

He was named principal conductor and music director for the Maggio Musicale when he was only 28 and stayed there 12 years.  He was at La Scala for 19 years from 1986 to 2005, his tenure ending amid rancour following a conflict with the theatre's general manager, Carlo Fontana.

Muti was born on this day in 1941 in Naples, although his childhood years were spent largely in the Puglian port city of Molfetta, near Bari. He entered the world in Naples, he says, at the insistence of his mother, Gilda, herself a Neapolitan, who travelled across the peninsula by train in the later stages of each of her five pregnancies in order that her children would also grow up as Neapolitans.  In his case, the trials of the journey had the extra dimension of it being wartime.

His father, Domenico, was considered the musical member of the family, possessed of a beautiful tenor voice but a doctor by profession.  He insisted his children - all boys - had a musical education and Riccardo, despite looking on enviously at his friends playing outside while he practised the violin, revealed his talent as early as seven years old.

Muti studied piano at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella in Naples, where he also studied philosophy.  He learned the art of conducting at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan.  His influences included the Italian composer Nino Rota, who would become most famous for his movie scores, the conductor Antonino Votto, who was principal assistant to Arturo Toscanini at La Scala, and the Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter.

The young Muti at the Guido Cantelli competition in
Milan in 1967, which he won

His career took off after he had won the Guido Cantelli Conducting Competition in Milan in 1967. Two years later, as well as accepting the role of musical director at Maggio Musicale, Muti married Cristina Mazzavillani, a young soprano he met at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory.

The couple exchanged vows at a tiny church in Ravenna, Mazzavillani's home town in Emilia-Romagna, with Rota and Richter among the witnesses.  Some 47 years on, they still regard Ravenna as their main home.  They have three children, sons Domenico and Francesco and a daughter, Chiara, a former model and actress who has also directed in the theatre.  Cristina is artistic director at the annual Ravenna Festival.

A prolific recording artist who has worked with most of the world's leading orchestras and many of the most famous opera singers, Muti is particularly associated with the music of Giuseppe Verdi.

It was during a performance, celebrating the 150th anniversary of Italian unification, of Verdi's Nabucco at Rome's Teatro dell'Opera in 2011, that Muti showed his political colours, interrupting proceedings to launch into a passionate speech denouncing severe cuts to arts funding announced by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was in the audience.

Muti had timed his outburst to follow the rousing chorus of Hebrew slaves 'Va, pensiero'. He resumed by inviting the audience to participate in an encore of 'Va, pensiero', which was delivered with such feeling that some of those onstage were moved to tears.  A week later, Berlusconi reversed the cuts.

Among many honours awarded to Muti is the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, which equates to a British knighthood.

Muti shows no sign of slowing down.  He planned to spend his birthday working with young musicians and conductors from his Opera Academy at the Teatro Alighieri in Ravenna, where they are performing Verdi's La Traviata. while his diary of engagements is full for many months ahead.  Next January, for example, he is scheduled to return to Teatro alla Scala for the first time since his controversial resignation, as leader of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

The pretty harbour at Molfetta, on the Adriatic Coast in
Puglia, where Muti grew up

Travel tip:

Molfetta is a port town situated around 35km north of Bari on the Adriatic coast. It has a pretty harbour and a well restored historic quarter full of narrow alleyways. The old cathedral - the Duomo di San Corrado - which overlooks the harbour is notable for two 20-metre towers, one of which served as a watchtower during the years in which Molfetta was an embarcation point for pilgrims heading for the Holy Land.

Travel tip:

Once the capital of the Western Roman Empire, Ravenna is notable for many elegant squares and a wealth of lavish Byzantine mosaics that can be found decorating many of the city's churches, including masterpieces studded with gold, emerald and sapphire renowned for their exquisite beauty. Look out in particular for the Galla Placidia Mausoleum, the Arian Baptistery and the Church of San Vitale.

More reading:

La Traviata - the world's favourite opera

How Italy mourned the death of Giuseppe Verdi

Toscanini's talent impressed even Verdi himself


(Photo of Riccardo Muti by Andreas Praefcke CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Photo of the young Muti by Gbonaju CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Photo of Molfetta Harbour by Michele Zaccaria CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Laura Pausini - singer-songwriter

Grammy Award-winner has sold more than 70 million records

Laura Pausini

One of Italy's best-selling recording artists of all time, pop singer-songwriter Laura Pausini celebrates her 42nd birthday today. The first Italian female performer to win a Grammy Award, she was born on this day in 1974 in Solarolo, in the province of Ravenna.

Pausini's records have sold more than 70 million copies worldwide, more than both Zucchero and Eros Ramazzotti, two giants of Italian popular music.  The figure is all the more remarkable for the fact that Pausini has only scratched the surface of the English-language market, which is by far the most lucrative.

She records mainly in Italian but has also enjoyed considerable success with recordings in Spanish and, more recently, in Catalan. She is the first non-Spanish artist to sell more than a million copies of a single album in Spain.

Pausini's background and upbringing always made it likely she would pursue a career in the music industry.

Her father, Fabrizio, is a pianist who played as a session musician for Abba's Anni-Frid Lyngstad and with a group from which was formed the best-selling Italian band Pooh. Later in his career, after he had established himself as a piano bar artist, he encouraged Laura to sing.  Her first live performance, in front of an audience, came when she sang with her father in a restaurant in Bologna.

More performances followed and after she had taken part in a number of singing competitions her talent came to the attention of an Italian producer, Angelo Valsiglio, who asked her to sing a song that would in time become a Pausini classic.

That song, La Solitudine, was released as a single in February 1993. With it, Pausini won the 43rd Sanremo Music Festival and reached number one in the Italian singles chart.  It also reached top spot in Belgium and charted at number two in the Netherlands.

La Solitudine featured on her debut album, Laura Pausini, released later in 1993.  She has since record 11 more studio albums, the latest of which, Simile, was released in 2015, plus a number of compilations, live recordings and collaborations with other artists. Her last five studio albums have reached number one in the Italian album charts.

Pausini has also had five number one singles in Italy, including Limpido, in 2013, on which she collaborated with the Australian superstar, Kylie Minogue.

Laura Pausini during her 2010 world tour to
promote her album Inedito

A singer with a powerful mezzo-soprano voice, Laura Pausini has been likened by music critics to Celine Dion, Barbra Streisand and Mariah Carey.  Part of her popularity is down to the lyrics of her songs, which have often expressed sentiments with which fans have been able to identify.

The winner of one regular Grammy Award and three Latin Grammy Awards among numerous honours, Pausini was made a Commander Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2006.

She has a three-year-old daughter, Paola, with her partner, the guitarist, composer and music producer, Paolo Carta.

Travel tip:

Solarolo, in Emilia-Romagna, a little under 40 kilometres from Ravenna and about halfway between Bologna and Rimini, is an elegant town of some 4,500 inhabitants, notable for being on the front line of battles between German troops and the British 8th Army towards the end of the Second World War, due to its strategic location close to the River Senio.  Its main sights include the Santuario della Madonna della Salute.

Tagliatelle alla Bolognese

Travel tip:

Bologna, where Pausini made her performing debut, appropriately in a restaurant, is known as the gastronomic capital of Italy, the city that invented tortellini and mortadella and gave the world the meat sauce (ragù) known as bolognese, which is authentically served with tagliatelle rather than spaghetti.

(Photos of Laura Pausini by LivePict.com and Valentini17 CC BY-SA 3.0)

(Tagliatelle photo by D Sharon Pruitt CC BY-SA 2.0)

More reading:

Patty Pravo - singer's career spanned 50 years

Ligabue - record-breaking rock star

Little Tony - 60s pop star inspired by Little Richard

Also on this day:

1915: The birth of film director Mario Monicelli

1945: The birth of businessman and former Inter chairman Massimo Moratti


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Sara Errani -- tennis champion

Five-times Grand Slam doubles winner reached No 5 in singles

Sara Errani is arguably Italy's most
successful tennis player

Tennis star Sara Errani, who was born in Bologna on this day in 1987, celebrates her 29th birthday as arguably the most successful Italian tennis player of all time.

She and partner Roberta Vinci's career record of five Grand Slam doubles titles is unparalleled.  No other Italian combination has won more than one Grand Slam title and no Italian singles player has won more than two.

Nicola Pietrangeli, who was ranked the No 3 men's singles player at his peak, won the French Open championship in 1959 and 1960 and was runner-up in Paris on two other occasions, as well as winning the men's doubles at the French in 1959, with fellow Italian Orlando Sirola.

But Errani and Vinci have won on all surfaces, achieving a career Grand Slam in 2014 when they triumphed in the women's doubles at Wimbledon, having already won the French and US titles in 2012 and the Australian in both 2013 and 2014.  They are only the fifth pairing in tennis history to complete a career Grand Slam.

Errani also achieved a world ranking of No 5 in singles in 2013, having been runner-up to Maria Sharapova in the 2012 French Open as well as winning five WTA singles titles in the space of 12 months.

Among Italian women players, only Francesca Schiavone has achieved a higher singles ranking, reaching No 4 after winning the 2010 French Open.

Errani and Vinci, who also won five WTA doubles titles, have since ended their partnership, Errani deciding to focus on singles, having dropped out of the top 10 in 2014.  In February this year she won her ninth career singles title, defeating the Czech player Barbora Strycova 6-0, 6-2 in the final of the Dubai Championships.

Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci won five Grand Slam titles

As a young girl, Errani showed talent in several sports, including swimming, football and athletics. But after she was picked to represent Italy in a tennis tournament in France at the age of just 12, her parents, fruit and vegetable trader Giorgio and pharmacist Fulvia, found the money to send her to the renowned Nick Bolletieri Academy in Florida.

She was the youngest ever to stay at the facility without her parents and, unable to speak any English, admitted she was so lonely she cried every day.  Yet, knowing the sacrifice her family had made, she stayed for 10 months.

On returning to Italy, she showed the benefit of Bolletieri's tuition and was Italy's No 1 at 18 years and under before she turned 16. Yet her talent was undervalued at home and it was only after moving to Spain that she was given the support necessary to fulfil her potential.

She won her first WTA tournament in Palermo in July 2008, picking up a second two weeks later in Slovenia, after which she pointedly dedicated her success to "all the Italians who never believed in me as a tennis player and said I would never go anywhere."

Though born in Bologna, Errani grew up in Massa Lombarda, in the province of Ravenna, where she still lives.

Travel tip:

Bologna has a reputation as the gastronomic capital of Italy, the city that invented tortellini and mortadella and gave the world the meat sauce (ragù) known as bolognese, which is authentically served with tagliatelle rather than spaghetti.  The best shops to buy fresh food in Bologna can be found in the Quadrilatero, an area adjoining Piazza Maggiore, bordered to the north by Via Francesco Rizzoli, to the south by Via Luigi Carlo Farini and to the east by Via Castiglione. It has a market that has occupied the same location since Medieval times.

Bologna hotels from Expedia.co.uk

The interior of the Basilica di San
Vitale is notable for beautiful mosaics

Travel tip:

No visit to Ravenna would be complete without taking in the stunning art of the octagonal Basilica di San Vitale, which dates back to the sixth century and contains some of the finest examples of Byzantine mosaics in the world, particularly those decorating the ceilings of the choir and apse. There are more mosaics in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, across the courtyard from the Basilica.

More reading:

How Roberta Vinci reached a US Open singles final

Francesca Schiavone - the first Italian woman to win a Grand Slam tournament

The rise to number one of Camila Giorgi

Also on this day:

1675: The birth of painter Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini

1945: Brazilian troops liberate town of Fornovo di Taro


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Arrigo Sacchi -- football coach

AC Milan manager's tactics revolutionised football in Italy

Arrigo Sacchi, former coach of AC Milan who
led Italy to 1994 World Cup final

Arrigo Sacchi, the football coach who led AC Milan to back-to-back European Cups and steered Italy to a World Cup final, was born on this day 70 years ago in Fusignano, a small town not far from Ravenna in Emilia-Romagna.

Unusually among top coaches, Sacchi never played football as a professional.  Aware of his limited ability, he quickly decided he would concentrate instead on becoming a manager, taking charge of a local amateur team, Baracca Lugo, when he was just 26.

Literally, he worked his way up from the bottom, making a living as a shoe salesman while training his players in his spare time.

Yet step by step he ascended to the very top of the game, landing jobs on the coaching staffs at Cesena, Rimini and Fiorentina before Parma, then in the third tier of the Italian football pyramid, made him head coach in 1985.

He won promotion to Serie B in his first season and finished only three points short of promotion to Serie A in his second year, when Parma also pulled off one of the biggest upsets of the season, knocking AC Milan out of the Coppa Italia, which is Italy's equivalent of England's FA Cup.

Silvio Berlusconi, the media mogul and former Prime Minister who still owns AC Milan, was so impressed he invited Sacchi to become Milan's manager from the start of the 1987-88 season.

Despite much scepticism in Italy's football press, many of whom believed that a man who had never played above amateur level could not possibly coach a team of Milan's standing, the appointment was a massive success. The rossoneri were Serie A champions for the first time in nine years in Sacchi's first season, after which they won the European Cup in 1989 and 1990.

In four years at San Siro he won eight trophies, a record worthy of enormous respect in any circumstances.  What was even more impressive was that he achieved this success while breaking the mould as far as Italian football was concerned.

More reading:

How fate was unkind to record Milan signing Gianluigi Lentini

Italy's heartbreak at Italia '90

The game in Italy had become ultra defensive, teams opting for stifling tactics designed solely to avoid defeat.  Yet Sacchi, inspired as a young man by the great attacking teams of Honved and Real Madrid in the club competitions and by the football played by Brazil and The Netherlands at international level, wanted Milan to be more like them.

He trained his players to be adept in every position, so that forwards could defend and defenders could attack, and introduced a high-tempo, pressing style.  He turned Milan into one of the most exciting teams to watch, built around the brilliance of three Dutch players, Frank Rijkaard, Marco van Basten and Ruud Gullit.  

In the first of the two European Cup triumphs, Milan beat Real Madrid 6-1 on aggregate in the semi-finals, which was seen as a symbolic moment in their development, before trouncing Steaua Bucharest 4-0 in the final, with Gullit and Van Basten scoring two goals each.

Roberto Baggio bows his head after his miss in the
penalty shoot-out handed the 1994 World Cup to Brazil

The former shoe salesman was hailed as a genius and a football revolutionary. After Sacchi left Milan to become the new national coach, his succes- sor Fabio Capello won four league titles and another European Cup by continuing to play in the same attacking fashion and other coaches followed suit.  Even today, Sacchi's pressing game has high-profile disciples, among them Rafa Benitez, the former Liverpool, Chelsea and Real Madrid manager now with Newcastle United, and Jurgen Klopp, who won the German Bundesliga title with Borussia Dortmund and is now at Liverpool.

Sacchi might also have won the World Cup had Roberto Baggio, exhausted and stricken with a hamstring injury, not missed the crucial kick in the penalty shoot-out that settled the 1994 final against Brazil in the United States.  As it was, Sacchi had demonstrated his adaptability, tweaking his tactics to give full rein to Baggio's creative talents and inspiring from his team a performance that almost mended the heartbreak of 1990.

Throughout all this, Sacchi almost revelled in his lack of a playing pedigree, particularly in his early days at Milan when journalists openly questioned his credentials, once flooring an inquisitor with the famous reply: "I didn't realise that to become a jockey you first had to have been a horse."

The sixth century Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna
(Photo: Sailko CC BY-SA 3.0)

Travel tip:

Much of Fusignano's history was destroyed during World War Two, when it found itself on the front line in a major battle between allied forces and the retreating Germans. Nearby Ravenna, however, has many attractions, including the magnificent sixth century Basilica of San Vitale, the tomb of the poet Dante Alighieri in the Basilica of San Francesco, and the pretty Piazza del Popolo.

Travel tip:

On a visit to Milan, football fans can learn more about Arrigo Sacchi's success and that of all the teams in the club's 117-year history by looking round the Mondo Milan Museum, which has a large collection of historic memorabilia as well as many interactive features.  It can be found within the Casa Milan, the club's new city headquarters - not to be confused with its stadium - in the Portello district of Milan.  Casa Milan is generally open from 10am to 7pm.  For more information, visit www.casamilan.acmilan.com/en

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