Gino Severini - painter and mosaicist

Tuscan was leading figure in Futurist movement

Gino Severini, typically sporting a monacle, was
an influential figure in 20th century Italian art 

The painter and mosaicist Gino Severini, who was an important figure in the Italian Futurist movement in the early 20th century and is regarded as  one of the most progressive of all 20th century Italian artists, was born on this day in 1883 in the hilltop town of Cortona in Tuscany.

He divided his time largely between Rome and Paris, where he died in 1966. Although he was a signatory - along with Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo and Giacomo Balla - of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Manifesto of Futurist Painters in 1910, his work was not altogether typical of the movement.  

Indeed, ultimately he rejected Futurism, moving on to Cubism, having become friends with Cubist painters Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in Paris, before ultimately turning his interest to Neo-Classicism and the Return to Order movement that followed the First World War. 

He attracted criticism among his peers by his associations with the Fascist-supporting Novecento Italiano movement, whose work became closely linked with state propaganda. Severini was involved with Benito Mussolini's "Third Rome" project, supplying murals and mosaics for Fascist architectural structures inspired by imperial Rome. 

Working in mosaics became an increasing focus for Severini in his later years, particularly after he rediscovered his Catholic faith. His religious mosaics displayed such refined technique he was dubbed the “father of modern mosaics". 

Severini was also the author of many essays and several books on painting, including Du cubism au classicisme (From Cubism to Classicism) in 1921 and The Life of a Painter, a vivid account of his early career. 

Severini's Le Boulevard (1913), his Futurist 
interpretation of Parisian street life

Born into a family of modest means in Cortona, where his father a junior court official and his mother a dressmaker, Severini studied at the Scuola Tecnica in Cortona until the age of 15, at which point his formal education ceased when he and other classmates were caught trying to steal exam papers. They were expelled and probably lucky to escape prison. 

In 1899, his mother took him to Rome, thinking his prospects would be better there. He gained employment as a shipping clerk. He painted in his spare time and, thanks to the patronage of a fellow Cortonese with whom he had become friends, was able to attend art classes at the Rome Fine Arts Institute, studying nudes. He was not a disciplined student, however, and found himself cut adrift when his frustrated patron cancelled his allowance. 

Left to fend for himself when his mother returned to Cortona, Severini was so poor he lived in a room that was essentially a store cupboard in a kitchen in Via Sardegna in Ostiense. In 1900 he met Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla for the first time. Balla took him on as a student, introducing him to the technique of pointillism, a painting method where effects were created by dotting the canvas or other surface with contrasting colours according to the principles of optical science.  The technique would have a major influence on Severini's early work and on Futurist painting in general.

Severini (right) with Luigi Russolo, Carlo Carrà, Filippo
Tommaso Marinetti and Umberto Boccioni in Paris in 1912

He moved to Paris in 1906 with Balla’s encouragement. Declaring the French capital to be his spiritual home, he settled in Montmartre, befriending another Italian, Amedeo Modigliani, and getting to know most of the city’s upcoming artists, including the Cubists Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris and Picasso.

It was through Severini that some of the leading Italian Futurists visited Paris in 1911, absorbing some of Severini’s influence by adopting some of the humanist features of Cubism, namely the human figure in motion, as further means of expressing pictorial dynamism.  

Severini’s own Futurist work had been based on human figures, nightclub dancers or simply people in the street, rather than the cars or machines that had been central to the attempts of many of his fellow Futurist artists to depict speed and dynamism in painting.  In his nightclub scenes, he would evoke the sensations of movement and sound through rhythmic forms and flickering colours. His Dynamic Hieroglyph of the Bal Tabarin (1912) and The Boulevard (1913) were examples of his best work in Paris. 

However, Severini did produce some of the finest Futurist war art, notably his Red Cross Train Passing a Village (1914), Italian Lancers at a Gallop (1915) and Armoured Train (1915). 

His work over the next few years could be categorised as an idiosyncratic form of Cubism with elements of pointillism and Futurism before he began to experiment with a Neoclassical figurative style in portraits such as Maternity (1916). 

Severini's Mosaic of San Marco
in his hometown of Cortona

Severini had married in 1913, his bride Jeanne Paul Fort, the 16-year-old daughter of the French poet Paul Fort. The couple were desperately poor and when Severini succumbed to pleurisy soon after the wedding, they moved to live with his parents, by then living in Montepulciano, where Jeanne became pregnant. They moved back to Paris, where their daughter, Gina, was born. A second child, Tonio, died from pneumonia, which was a factor in reigniting Severini’s Catholicism, which he had earlier renounced.

Only between the wars did Severini begin to find financial stability, realised mainly through his commissions to create frescoes and mosaics. 

He produced mosaics for the Palazzo di Giustizia in Milan (1936), the Palazzo delle Poste in Alessandria (1936) and mosaics and frescoes at the University of Padua (1937).  He worked for the Mussolini regime at the Foro Italico, a multi-venue sports complex, and the Palazzo degli Uffici, the inaugural building of the EUR project. Severini’s association with the Fascists was roundly condemned within the international artistic community, although none of Severini’s work was overtly pro-Fascist. 

After the fall of Mussolini and the end of the Second World War, Severini received lucrative commissions to decorate the offices of the Italian airline companies KLM and Alitalia among other organisations. 

His Cubist-inspired Mosaic of San Marco (1961), which adorns the facade of the Church of San Marco in Cortona, is seen as a signature work. He died in Paris in 1966 at the age of 82 but was buried in Cortona.

Cortona's elevated position gives it commanding
views over the surrounding countryside

Travel tip:

Cortona, founded by the Etruscans, is one of the oldest cities in Tuscany. Its Etruscan Academy Museum displays a vast collection of bronze, ceramic and funerary items reflecting the town’s past. The museum also includes an archaeological park that includes city fortifications and stretches of Roman roads. Outside the museum, the houses in Via Janelli are some of the oldest houses still surviving in Italy. Powerful during the mediaeval period, Cortona was defeated by Naples in 1409 and then sold to Florence.  Characterised by its steep narrow streets, Cortona’s hilltop location - it has an elevation of 600 metres (2,000 ft) - offers sweeping views of the Valdichiana, including Lago Trasimeno, where Hannibal ambushed the Roman army in 217 BC during the Second Punic War.

The Piramide Cestia and Porta San Paolo are
two highlights of the Ostiense neighbourhood

Travel tip:

Severini’s earliest home in Rome was in the Ostiense neighbourhood, which can be found to the south of the Trastevere district. Bordered by the working class areas of Garbatella and Testaccio, Ostiense itself has shed its own down-at-heel reputation to become an increasingly trendy part of the city, populated by young professionals and boasting a thriving nightlife. The home of the majestic Basilica San Paolo Fuori le Mura - the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls - with its gold-plated ceilings, of the Roman  Piramide Cestia and the 3rd century Porta San Paolo, the district was built around the Via Ostiense, the ancient road linking the city with the Roman harbour at Ostia. 

Also on this day:

1763: The birth of musician Domenico Dragonetti

1794: The birth of opera singer Giovanni Battista Rubini

1906: Vesuvius erupts, killing more than 200 people

1973: The birth of footballer Marco Delvecchio

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Vittorio Emanuele II Monument - Rome landmark

 ‘Altar of the Fatherland’ built to honour unified Italy’s first king

The Monument's multi-layered construction in white
marble has earned it the nickname the 'wedding cake'

The foundation stone of Rome’s huge Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II was laid on this day in 1885 in the presence of his son and successor Umberto I and his family.

The monument, which took half a century to fully complete, occupies a site on the northern slope of the Capitoline (Campidoglio) Hill on the south-eastern side of the modern city centre, a few steps from the ruins of the Forum, the heart of ancient Rome.

Built in white Botticino marble, the multi-tiered monument is 135m (443 ft) wide, 130m (427 ft) deep, and 70m (230 ft) high, rising to 81m (266ft) including the two statues of a chariot-mounted winged goddess Victoria on the summit of the two propylaea. 

Its appearance has earned it various nicknames, ranging from the ‘wedding cake’ to the ‘typewriter’, although it is officially known as Vittoriano or Altare della Patria - the Altar of the Fatherland.

The Altare della Patria is actually just one part of the monument, at the front and in the centre, consisting of an inset statue of the goddess Roma and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where two soldiers guard an eternal flame.

Vittorio Emanuele II is commemorated with a
huge bronze statue at the front of the monument

Above it is a large bronze horse-back statue of Vittorio Emanuele II himself on a central plinth in front of the broad upper colonnade.  The statue, 10m (33ft) long and 12m (40ft) high, is said to have been made with 50 tons of bronze obtained by melting down army cannons.

Officially opened in 1911 on the 50th anniversary of the Unification of Italy, the monument has become a national symbol of Italy, representing the values of freedom and unity, which are represented in the two chariots atop the propylaea - on the left is the Quadriga dell'Unità by Carlo Fontana, on the right the Quadriga della Libertà by Paolo Bartolini.

The Vittoriano has an important ceremonial role. On three occasions each year - on Liberation Day (April 25), Republic Day (June 2) and Armed Forces Day (November 4) - the President of the Republic lays a laurel wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to honour those who sacrificed their lives in the service of the country.

It also houses the Museo Centrale del Risorgimento Italiano al Vittoriano, the museum that commemorates the decades-long struggle for Italian unification, known as the Risorgimento.

The idea of building a permanent monument to Vittorio Emanuele II was first mooted soon after his death in 1878, when a Royal Commission set up to have responsibility for the project invited architects to put forward their ideas in a competition.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where the Italian
president lays a laurel wreath on state occasions

The winner was a French designer, Henri-Paul Nénot. However, the idea of entrusting a non-Italian with what would become a symbol of the nation provoked such fierce opposition, not least because Nénot’s entry was one he had previously submitted for a project in Paris, that the contest was declared void and another one staged.

After the Commission could not decide between designs submitted by the Italians Manfredo Manfredi and Giuseppe Sacconi, and the German Bruno Schmitz, a third contest took place, which was won by Sacconi, an architect from Le Marche, whose design envisaged a neoclassical interpretation of the nearby Forum.

Such was the scale of the project, including the vast Piazza Venezia that the monument overlooks, a wide area of mediaeval and Renaissance streets and buildings had to be demolished. A small building to the right of the Vittoriano, at the foot of the stairway leading to the adjoining Basilica di Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, is all that remains.

Building proceeded slowly and was still some way from complete when Sacconi died in 1905. The project was continued by Gaetano Koch, Manfredi and Pio Piacentini and though it was inaugurated during the international exhibition for the 50th anniversary of unification in 1911, it was not considered complete until 24 years later.

During this time, the body of the Italian Unknown Soldier was placed in the crypt under the statue of the goddess Roma. This took place on Armed Forces Day in 1921, when the remains of an unidentified soldier killed in the First World War were interred in a solemn ceremony and the eternal flame was lit.

Finally, in 1935, the monument was declared to be fully completed with the addition of the museum of the Risorgimento, which occupies the space between the propylaea on the upper level. 

The entrance to the Museo del Risorgimento
can be found on Via San Pietro in Carcere

Travel tip:

Open to the public since 1970, the Museo Centrale del Risorgimento Italiano - the National Museum of the Risorgimento - takes visitors on a tour of the Risorgimento in 14 stages, beginning with the Napoleonic period at the end of the 18th century and ending with the First World War, marking major events such as the uprising known as the Five Days of Milan, the two wars of independence and Giuseppe Garibaldi’s Expedition of the Thousand. It celebrates the roles of Garibaldi, the revolutionary philosopher Giuseppe Mazzini, the politician Cavour (Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour) and Vittorio Emanuele II himself. Visitors access the museum via an entrance on Via San Pietro in Carcere, to the rear of the monument.

Rome's ancient Forum, an area of extensive ruins,
is one of the city's most popular attractions

Travel tip:

Rome's historic Forum, the ruins of which can be found immediately behind the Vittoriano, was at the heart both of the ancient city of Rome and the Roman Empire itself, the nucleus of political affairs and commercial business, a place where elections took place and great speeches were made.  The site fell into disrepair with the fall of the empire and over time buildings were dismantled for the stone and marble, with much debris left behind.  Eventually it was abandoned and became overgrown and was used mainly for grazing cattle.  Attempts at uncovering and restoring buildings began in the early 19th century and the process of excavating areas long buried continues today.  The impressive and extensive ruins are now one of Rome's major tourist attractions.  The site opens at 8.30am and closes one hour before sunset and visitors should allow at least two hours to explore.

Also on this day:

1837: The birth of ‘La Castiglione’ - mistress of Napoleon III

1921: The birth of actor and director Nino Manfredi

1986: The death of fraudster Michele Sindona

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Lucio Battisti - singer-songwriter

Musician credited with writing ‘the soundtrack of Italian life’

Lucio Battisti, pictured performing at the
 Sanremo Music Festival in 1969

Lucio Battisti, who was one of the most influential figures in Italian pop and rock music in a career spanning four decades, was born on this day in 1943 in Poggio Bustone, a hillside village in the province of Rieti in Lazio, about 100km (62 miles) northeast of Rome.

A songwriter, singer and composer, his work has been described as defining popular music in Italy in the late 1960s and the 1970s in particular, although his popularity continued right up to his death, at the age of just 55, in 1998.

Some music critics and music historians have credited Battisti with writing ‘the soundtrack of our lives’ for several generations of young people, citing songs such as Emozioni (Emotions), Acqua azzurra, acqua chiara (Blue Water, Clear Water), Il mio canto libero (My Free Song) and La canzone del sole (The Song of the Sun) as his most memorable, although there were many more that made their mark.

Of Battisti’s 18 studio albums, 13 reached number one in the Italian charts, while he had at least 10 number one singles, of which his 1971 recording Pensieri e parole (Thoughts and Words) remained in top spot for 14 weeks.

At times during his career, he was spoken of as Italy’s Bob Dylan or Italy’s David Bowie, not for the style of his music as much as the fact that he enjoyed similar status as a cultural icon. Bowie spoke of his admiration for Battisti’s work, as did Bowie’s guitarist, Mick Ronson. The two made a cover version of Il mio canto libero, which Ronson went on to include on his debut solo album, Slaughter on 10th Avenue, under the title Music is Lethal.

Giulio Rapetti, better known as Mogol,
wrote many of Battisti's lyrics

Among other international artists who covered or adapted Battisti’s compositions were the English group Amen Corner, whose 1968 hit (If Paradise Is) Half as Nice was based on Battisti’s Il paradiso della vita.

Much of Battisti’s success stemmed from his partnership with the Italian songwriter Giulio Rapetti, better known by his pen name, Mogol. They worked together for 15 years from the mid ‘60s to the early ‘80s, during which time Mogol’s captivating, emotional lyrics combined with Battisti’s innovative music to take the Italian pop scene by storm.

The son of a customs inspector, Battisti moved with his family to Rome at the age of four, settling in Pigneto, a working class neighbourhood to the southeast of the city centre, just beyond Termini station. Having taught himself the guitar, he began to play with bands in Rome and then Naples as a teenager. 

He enjoyed Naples, where he played with a group called I Mattatori, but did not earn enough to sustain himself and was forced to return to Rome. In the event, this proved fortuitous. Lead guitar with another local band, I Satiri, he found himself playing on the same bill as I Campioni, the support band to the then-famous Italian singer, Tony Dallara, who were in need of a guitarist and offered him the chance to move to Milan and work with them.

Once established in Milan, he was spotted by Christine Leroux, a French-born music producer who worked as a talent scout for the Italian label, Ricordi. It was she that introduced him to Mogol.

Battisti in Milan with his future
wife, Grazia Letizia Veronese

Their output provided hits for major Italian artists such as Mina, Ornella Vanoni and Patty Pravo, before ultimately Battisti’s own, unusually versatile vocals, which displayed at times soft, velvety tones, piercing falsetto moments and the gritty power of rock, became their trademark. Their songs were less dominated by political messages than many popular artists of their era, but young, urban Italians in particular seemed to identify with Mogol’s lyrics as a reflection of their own lives. 

Not long after recording his 1974 album Anima latina (Latin Soul), the collection of songs considered to be Battisti's most complex musical offering, which remained at number one in the Italian charts for 13 weeks, Battisti became something of a recluse, declining to make public appearances or give interviews, declaring his new belief that “an artist should communicate with the public only through his work”.

His partnership with Mogol broke up in 1981, an amicable split stemming from their diversion in styles as Battisti became interested in more experimental, electronic sounds. Nonetheless, his success continued, with three more chart-topping albums, including Don Giovanni (1986), for which the poet Pasquale Panella wrote the lyrics. He also recorded some songs written by his wife, Grazia Letizia Veronese, who he had married in the late 1970s and with whom he had a son, Luca.

When Battisti died on 9 September 1998, aged only 55, the Italian music world was plunged into profound shock. It had become known in late August that he had been hospitalised in Milan, but his family respected his desire for privacy and issued no bulletins on his condition. The cause of his death was never officially confirmed, although it was thought to be the result either of a lymphoma that affected his liver, or a disease of the kidneys.

His passing was marked at a small private funeral in Molteno, the hilltop town in the beautiful Brianza area between Milan and Lake Como where he had lived since the early 1970s. There were just 20 guests, including Mogol, who had for a while occupied a neighbouring villa. 

Pigneto has undergone a revival recently and
now has a thriving cafe culture

Travel tip:

Battisti’s home growing up in Rome, Piazzale Prenestina, is an area dominated by the convergence of multiple rail tracks leading to Roma Termini station and an elevated section of Rome’s orbital motorway, the Grande Raccordo Anulare. It lies at the entrance to Pigneto, an area once largely working class and industrial that has evolved in recent years into a trendy neighbourhood of alternative shops, vintage stores, and diverse bars and restaurants, popular with students. The area was badly bombed during World War II, as a consequence of which it was chosen by the director Roberto Rossellini for location shooting for his neorealist classic, Roma Città Aperta - Rome, Open City. The district was a favourite, too, of another director, Pier Paolo Pasolini. 

A steep staircase leads to Molteno's
Chiesa di San Giorgio

Travel tip:

Battisti’s home in northern Italy - he also kept an apartment in Rome and a villa in Rimini - was in Molteno, a small town about 35km (22 miles) northeast of Milan, about equidistant between the lakes of Como and Lecco in Brianza, an area of natural beauty. The town itself, originally built on the site of a Roman settlement, fans out from Piazza Risorgimento, at the foot of il Ceppo - the summit of the town - from which the parish church of San Giorgio oversees the surrounding area. Battisti’s villa was at Dosso di Coroldo, a hamlet just outside Molteno. Battisti was said to be a frequent diner at Ristorante Riva in Via Roma, where he and Mogol would often meet up with other musicians, many of them famous names in Italy at the time, to enjoy the food and wine and sometimes give impromptu performances.

Also on this day:

1696: The birth of painter and printmaker Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

1827: The death of scientist Alessandro Volta

1834: The birth of soprano Marietta Piccolomini

1922: The birth of film director Pier Paolo Pasolini

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Roberto Bompiani – artist

Prolific painter recreated scenes from ancient Rome

Roberto Bompiani: a self-portrait
painted in about 1896

Artist Roberto Bompiani, who became well known for his paintings depicting Rome in ancient times, was born on this day in 1821 in Rome.

He became a successful landscape and portrait painter and later in his career he also worked as a sculptor.

His portrait of Queen Margherita of Italy, which was painted in 1878, still hangs in the Palazzo Montecitorio in Rome.

From a wealthy family, Bompiani was able to dedicate himself entirely to the study of art and enrolled at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome when he was 15. He was awarded a share of a first prize in design along with a fellow student in 1836, not long after joining the Academy. Within three years he was regularly winning prizes for sculpture and painting.   

As a painter, Bompiani depicted historical, mythological, and religious subjects in an idealised style making his figures physically perfect and giving them noble, spiritual expressions. His paintings of scenes from ancient Rome earned him the nickname of ‘The Italian Bouguereau’, referring to a French painter who made modern interpretations of classical subjects and was working at the same time as Bompiani.

An art historian wrote that despite Bompiani’s conservative approach, he showed himself to be open to new ideas and emancipated himself in his best work almost entirely from what was narrow and conventional in the style that had been imposed upon him by his early training.

Bompiani's Two Pompeian Ladies, an example
of his work depicting scenes from ancient Rome

Bompiani earned the attention of the wealthy Borghese family in Rome and painted two canvases recording the visit of Pope Pius IX to the family’s properties in 1854.

In later years, Bompiani painted landscape watercolours and in the 1870s he also began painting portraits. In addition to his painting of the Queen of Italy, he painted a portrait of his own wife and portraits of various members of the Borghese family.

He also painted frescoes for churches and a cemetery in Rome and paintings for a theatre and a church in Santiago in Chile.

Some of his classical works were on display at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876 and he won an award for his 1872 portrait of his fellow painter Giovanni Battista Canevari, when it was exhibited in Vienna. The painting now hangs in the Academy of San Luca. One of his sculptural works from the 1860s, Sappho, is in the Palazzo Castellani in Rome.

Bompiani served as a professor and ultimately as the president of the Roman Academy of San Luca. He died in Rome in 1908.

One of his sons, Augusto Bompiani, and one of his daughters, Clelia Bompiani, who were both his pupils and both studied at the Academy of San Luca, went on to become professional painters.

The Accademia di San Luca is located
 a few steps from the Trevi Fountain

Travel tip:

The Accademia di San Luca, where Roberto Bompiani and his children studied art, was founded in the 16th century and named after St Luke the Evangelist, the patron saint of painters. It is now located at Piazza Accademia di San Luca close to the Trevi Fountain but was based near the Forum in Rome after it was founded in 1577. The Academy’s original building no longer exists, but the Academy Church of Santi Luca and Martina, which was designed by Pietro da Cortona, still stands overlooking the Forum.

Rome hotels by Booking.com

The Camera dei Deputati has been the permanent
seat of the Chamber of Deputies since 1918

Travel tip:

The Camera dei Deputati - the Chamber of Deputies - one of Italy’s houses of parliament,  meets at Palazzo Montecitorio in Rome. The palace was originally designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and completed by Carlo Fontana in 1697 and stands to the north of the Pantheon. The building was originally intended for the nephew of Pope Gregory XV. It was chosen as the seat of the Chamber of Deputies in 1871 but the building proved inadequate for their needs and extensive renovations were required before it became the chamber's permanent home, in 1918.

More reading

Gian Lorenzo Bernini - Italy's last universal genius

Pius IX - the longest papal reign in history

Giovanni Boldini - painter who captured elegance of Belle Époque

Also on this day:

1482: The death of sculptor Luca della Robbia

1791: The birth of painter Francesco Hayez

1918: The death of Nobel Prize-winning pacifist Ernesto Teodoro Moneta

1944: The birth of author and politician Raffaele Lauro

1953: The founding of Italian energy giant ENI

1966: The birth of footballer Andrea Silenzi

(Picture credits: Bompiani portrait uploaded by Spino; Accademia San Luca by Warburg; Palazzo Montecitorio by Manfred Heyde; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Ennio Porrino - composer

Premature death robbed Italian music of great talent

Ennio Porrino is seen by some as
one of the greats of Italian opera

The composer Ennio Porrino, best known for his symphonic poem, Sardegna, and his opera, I Shardana, was born on this day in 1910 in Cagliari.

Porrino was critically acclaimed, his operas earning comparisons with the great Giacomo Puccini, although to some his reputation has been tarnished by his association with Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime. He was only 49 when he died in Rome.

His 1941 opera, Gli Orazi, has been interpreted as a ‘hymn to fascism’ by some critics, while his piece, The March of the Volunteer, was used by Mussolini’s short-lived Italian Social Republic as its anthem.

Little is known of Porrino’s early years. It is thought that his family moved to Rome when he was a small child and most accounts of his life begin with his studies at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, which he attended from the age of 17 and where he graduated in 1932.

He also studied with the composer Ottorino Respighi, who was keen to see his potential realised.  Respighi would be a significant influence on Porrino’s own work.

Porrino was not slow to make an impact in Roman musical circles. In 1931 he won an opera competition organised by the Giornale d'Italia newspaper. Two years later, his overture for orchestra, Tartarin de Tarascon, won the Accademia di Santa Cecilia’s own competition for the 25th anniversary concerts at the Teatro Augusteo, where it premiered under the baton of Bernardino Molinari. 

Porrino studied under the violinist and
composer Ottorino Respighi (above)

Molinari was the conductor in January of the following year when Porrino’s  symphonic poem Sardegna was performed for the first time. A tribute to a homeland Porrino was yet to understand and appreciate, Sardegna was based largely on the nostalgic tales passed to him by his Sardinian mother. The piece was widely appreciated and performed numerous times in Italy and abroad, as well as being included in the Italian music section of the 1935 Hamburg International Festival. 

Like Respighi, who died in 1936, Porrino championed an Italian national music movement faithful to its classical roots. He openly opposed modernist composers such as Alfredo Casella.

However, some academics argue that there was a dark side to Porrino’s enthusiasm for traditional Italian music, citing an article he wrote for an antisemitic journal, La difesa della razza - The Defence of Race - in 1938.

Under the title, La musica nella tradizione della nostra razza - Music in the tradition of our race - Porrino argued that Italian music was a fundamental component of Italian culture and national pride, but that it had been corrupted by internationalism, which was generally recognised as code for Judaism. 

His opposition to Casella, it has been suggested, might have had as much to do with the latter’s opposition to Mussolini’s despised race laws as his music. Casella also happened to be married to a French woman from a Jewish family.

Porrino was also excited by Mussolini’s dream of restoring Rome to its former grandeur as the heart of his Fascist empire and his promotion of what he saw as the masculine, dynamic values of so-called romanità (Roman-ness).

Gli Orazi told the story of the feud between the
Orazi and Curiazi families in 7th century Rome

In was in this context, perhaps, that Porrino wrote Gli Orazi, which is the story of a conflict between the Roman family of Horatius (Orazio) and that of Curiatius (Curiazio), from Alba Longa, just to the south of Rome, when the two cities are at war during the seventh century.

The one-act opera concludes with a victory for the Orazi in this feud and a celebration of Rome’s defeat of Alba in the war.  Porrino collaborated with the librettist Claudio Guastalla on Gli Orazi, as he had in completing Respighi’s unfinished opera, Lucrezia, after Respighi’s death. Guastalla, though he regarded himself unequivocally as Italian, was the son of Jewish parents and his name ultimately disappeared from the credits.

Nonetheless, Gli Orazi was staged with great success at La Scala in Milan in February 1941.  

After the fall of Mussolini and the defeat of the Fascists, the immediate post-war years saw Porrino devote more time to academic work than to composing. He was appointed professor of composition at the Rome Conservatory, and became a full member of both the Accademia di Santa Cecilia and the Luigi Cherubini Academy in Florence.

In 1946 he was appointed substitute librarian in the Library of the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella in Naples, where he also taught composition.  Later, he became director of the Pierluigi da Palestrina Conservatory of Cagliari, and conducted orchestral and choral performances in Naples and Venice.

Sardinia is dotted with the remains of nuraghe,
conical stone towers as old as the Shardana

He returned to opera composition triumphantly with I Shardana, a 1959 work set among the warrior race that spent much of its time defending Sardinia from foreign invaders during the Bronze Age.

Inspired by what Porrino had learned about his homeland after returning as an adult, the opera is regarded as one of the most important in Italy post 1945 and confirmed Porrino’s reputation, according to some critics, as the greatest Italian musician since Puccini.

It came as a profound shock, then, just a few months after I Shardana’s premiere at Teatro San Carlo in Naples, when it was reported in September 1959 that Porrino had died, following a sudden illness. He had been in Venice only a few days earlier, when his work La bambola malata, described as a pantomime, had been performed at the Venice International Festival of Contemporary Music.  

He left a widow, Malgari, a painter and theatrical designer, and a daughter, Stefania, born in 1957, who became a playwright and stage director in adulthood.

An orchestral performance inside the modern
Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome

Travel tip:

The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, one of the oldest musical institutions in the world, was established in 1565. It was founded in Rome by Pope Sixtus V at the Church of Santa Maria ad Martires, better known as the Pantheon. Over the centuries, many famous composers and musicians have been members, among them opera singers Beniamino Gigli and Cecilia Bartoli. Since 2005 the Academy’s headquarters have been at the Parco della Musica in Rome, which was designed by the architect Renzo Piano, in Viale Pietro de Coubertin in the Flaminio district, close to the location of the 1960 Summer Olympic Games.

A view from the sea similar to that which the
writer D H Lawrence might have experienced

Travel tip:

Cagliari, where Porrino was born, is Sardinia's capital, an industrial centre and one of the largest ports in the Mediterranean. Yet it is also a city of considerable beauty and history, most poetically described by the novelist DH Lawrence when he visited in the 1920s. As he approached from the sea, Lawrence set his eyes on the confusion of domes, palaces and ornamental facades which, he noted, seemed to be piled on top of one another. He compared it to Jerusalem, describing it as 'strange and rather wonderful, not a bit like Italy.’  What he saw was Cagliari’s charming historic centre, known as Castello, inside which the city’s university, cathedral and several museums and palaces - plus many bars and restaurants - are squeezed into a network of narrow alleys.

Also on this day:

1526: The birth of mathematician Rafael Bombelli

1920: The birth of film director Federico Fellini

1950: The birth of magazine editor Franca Sozzani

1987: The birth of motorcycle racer Marco Simoncelli

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The Borghese Coup

Neo-fascist ‘plot’ aborted at last moment

How the story of the attempted coup was broken
in a Rome newspaper three months after the event

Italians might have woken up on this day in 1970 to learn that the nation’s legitimate government had been overthrown in a neo-fascist coup had the plotters behind the insurrection not abandoned their action at the 11th hour.

The night of December 7-8 had been chosen as the date for Golpe Borghese - the Borghese Coup - the proposed coup d’état by Junio Valerio Borghese, a nobleman descended from the House of Borghese, which originated in Siena and went on to wield significant power and influence in Rome in the 17th century. 

Borghese, a former member of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party, had been a naval commander in World War Two who had aligned himself with Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic following the armistice of 1943. He became a prominent neo-fascist in post-war Italy, first as a member of the Italian Social Movement and later setting up his own political party, the Fronte Nazionale (National Front). 

Like many on the far right of Italian politics, Borghese - known as the Black Prince both for his politics and his family history, the Borghese having been part of the so-called Black Nobility - had been alarmed by the rise of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which he felt the political mainstream in Italy was doing too little to counter.  Strikes and protests had become commonplace and the tension between right and left had been exacerbated by the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan in December 1969, when 17 people were killed in a terrorist act blamed on the neo-fascist group Ordine Nuovo. It was the start of the period of unrest that would become known as the Years of Lead.

The neo-fascist politician Junio
Valerio Borghese plotted the coup

The coup Borghese conceived would have installed a coalition of military figures, right-wing politicians and sympathisers in place of the centre-left government led by Christian Democrat Emilio Colombo. The leaders of the PCI were to have been arrested and imprisoned and the party dissolved.

The action had been a year and more in the planning. Borghese had formed an alliance with another neo-fascist group, Avanguardia Nazionale (National Vanguard) led by Stefano Delle Chiaie, and had secretly obtained the promise of support from a force of army dissidents under the control of Lt. Colonel Amos Spiazzi. He had secured financial backing from a number of businessmen and industrialists who shared his misgivings about the rise of the communists and forged links with the secretive masonic lodge Propaganda Due, led by Licio Gelli.  

The Cosa Nostra and ‘Ndrangheta mafia organisations were to play a part also, in return for a scaling back of anti-mafia operations by the state.

Borghese had even gained the tacit approval of the United States for his planned coup, making contact through a number of intermediaries with important figures in the State Department. The Americans, who were still sponsoring NATO’s clandestine, anti-communist post-war activities in Italy under Operation Gladio, apparently indicated they would not oppose the coup provided certain conditions were met, although they reportedly doubted it would succeed.

When the night of the operation arrived, Borghese’s paramilitary force and other supporters were to kidnap the Italian President, Giuseppe Saragat, to murder Angelo Vicari, the head of the police, and to occupy the headquarters of public television broadcaster RAI. The seizure would take place of the presidential residence at the Palazzo Quirinale, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defence.  Groups of paramilitaries were positioned in front of the residences of prominent left-wing politicians.

President Giuseppe Saragat was to
have been kidnapped by the plotters

Operations to take control of government offices in the other major Italian cities were also made ready. Spiazzi planned to occupy the whole town of Sesto San Giovanni, a communist stronghold near Milan.

Yet at about 1.40am on December 8, just as the Golpe Borghese  was in its early stages, with militants already inside the Interior Ministry and beginning to loot weapons from the national armoury, Borghese sent out the order that the operation was to be aborted. 

Ordinary Italians knew nothing of any of this until March 17, 1971, when the left-wing Rome newspaper Paese Sera, who had been fed information by government sources, broke the story of a neo-fascist plot to overthrow the state. The first arrests were made later the same day.

Borghese was not among them. He had already fled to Spain, where he would remain until his death four years later, when he was suddenly taken ill with severe abdominal pains after eating his dinner.  The death certificate recorded the cause of death as an acute haemorrhage of the pancreas, although many suspected he had been poisoned.

His reason for abandoning the coup was never established. His own explanation was that there was never a coup, and that all that was being planned was a large-scale protest against the forthcoming visit to Rome of the communist leader of Yugoslavia, Josep Broz Tito. He had decided to call off the protest because of the unpleasant conditions caused by heavy rain.

However, Lt. Colonel Spiazzi confirmed later that a coup had been about to be carried out, only for it to become known that the Christian Democratic government had been tipped off and were ready to trigger Exigency Operation Triangle, which would deploy thousands of troops and police to suppress the plotters and declare martial law.

Three trials of suspected participants in the coup attempt, along with subsequent appeals, were heard between 1978 and 1986 but ultimately all the defendants were acquitted.  This was despite further evidence emerging from the Maxi Trial of Sicilian mafiosi in the mid-80s, when Tommaso Buscetta and other pentiti confirmed that Borghese had sought their help, and that the Palermo journalist Mauro di Mauro, the victim of an apparent mafia killing three months before the planned coup, had been murdered because he had learned about Borghese’s intentions and planned to splash the story.

The Borghese Coup remains one of Italy’s many unsolved mysteries, dismissed by some as a rather comic attempt by incompetent plotters that was never any real threat to the state, but suspected by others to be another example of sinister figures trying to influence the course of events for their own political ends.

The Quirinale Palace in Rome has been the official 
residence of 30 popes, four kings and 12 presidents

Travel tip:

The Palazzo del Quirinale was built in 1583 by Pope Gregory XIII originally as a summer residence. It subsequently served both as a papal residence and the offices responsible for the civil government of the Papal States until 1870. When, in 1871, Rome became the capital of the new Kingdom of Italy, the palace became the official residence of the kings of Italy, although some monarchs, notably King Victor Emmanuel III (1900–1946), lived in a private residence elsewhere. When the monarchy was abolished in 1946, the Palazzo del Quirinale became the official residence and workplace for the presidents of the Italian Republic. So far, it has housed 30 popes, four kings and 12 presidents.

The main facade of the Palazzo Borghese, the
historical seat of the Borghese family in Rome

Travel tip:

The Palazzo Borghese, which is notable for its unusual trapezoidal layout, having two parallel sides but two that are not parallel, was the main seat of the Borghese family in Rome. Situated in the Campo Marzio district of central Rome, not far from the Ponte Cavour and and about 600m (0.37 miles) on foot from the Spanish Steps, it was built in about 1560-61 by the architect Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola on behalf of Monsignor Tommaso del Giglio and acquired by Cardinal Camillo Borghese in 1604, shortly before he became Pope Paul V.  The first floor of the palace has been the seat of the Embassy of Spain in Italy since 1947. The palace originally housed the Borghese family’s art collection, which contained works by Raphael, Titian and many others, before it was transferred in 1891 to the Galleria Borghese in Villa Borghese.

Also on this day:

1577: The birth of painter Mario Minniti

1685: The birth of perfumier Johann Maria Farina

1881: The birth of architect Marcello Piacentini

1925: The birth of politician Arnaldo Forlani

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception

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Piero Terracina - death camp survivor

Roman lived to be 91 after being freed from Auschwitz

After initial reluctance, Terracini told
his harrowing story many times over

Piero Terracina, the man thought to be the longest survivor among the Jews rounded up for deportation in Rome after Nazi occupation during World War Two, was born on this day in 1928 in the Italian capital.

Terracina was taken to the notorious Auschwitz death camp in Poland, where almost one million Jewish prisoners were killed, but was spared death and eventually liberated in 1945.

After a long and difficult recovery he returned to Rome and lived to be 91.

For the last almost 30 years of his life, so long as his health allowed, he devoted himself to maintaining awareness of the Holocaust in the hope that such horrors would never be repeated.

Terracina enjoyed a relatively uneventful early childhood. Although many of Rome’s Jews still lived in the area of Rione Sant’Angelo to which they had been originally confined by papal decree in the 16th century, the Jewish community in the early part of the 20th century enjoyed the same status as any other Italians in the city.

Piero was the youngest of four children born to Giovanni Terracina and Lidia Ascoli. His father was a fabric merchant.

Things began to change in the autumn of 1938 when Mussolini’s Fascist dictatorship introduced laws to enforce racial discrimination and segregation in Italian society, aimed mainly at the Jewish population of mainland Italy and the native Africans in the Italian colonies.

The entrance to the preserved Auschwitz complex, 
where Terracina accompanied many visitors

Mussolini had originally been comfortable with Jews being part of Italy. Indeed, one of his mistresses - a propaganda advisor to his Fascist party - was from a middle class Jewish family. But his attitude changed as he became more influenced by Nazi ideology in Germany.

Terracina’s family had their assets seized. Piero was expelled from his mainstream Italian school and had to continue his education in a school for Jews only. The family’s circumstances were much reduced, but they were able to live in a restricted way.

However, that all changed in 1943. By then, Mussolini had been overthrown by the Fascist Grand Council, placed under house arrest but then rescued by German paratroops and given a safe haven in northern Italy. Rome and the rest of central and northern Italy was occupied by Nazi troops.

The Germans began to round up Jews as they had in the rest of occupied Europe. When Nazi squads entered the Roman ghetto in October 1943, Terracina and his family managed to escape, avoiding the fate of more than 1,000 of their neighbours.

They went into hiding but in April of the following year their whereabouts were revealed to the Germans by an informer and Piero and his family - his parents, a sister and two brothers, an uncle and his grandfather - were all arrested.

Terracina, already in his 80s, surrounded by
teachers and students on a school visit

Imprisoned initially in Rome, they were moved to a prison camp near Modena but after a few days were crowded into railway wagons and taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex in Poland. Piero was spared the gas chambers only because he was considered strong enough physically to be given labouring jobs; the rest of his family died within hours of their arrival.

Despite his weight dropping to just 38 kilos (just under six stones), Piero survived and escaped in January 1945. With the area under attack from the advancing Russian army, he and his fellow captives were moved from the Auschwitz camp and were being marched towards another location when the approach of a Russian platoon caused their Nazi guards to flee.

In the face of biting cold, Terracina and his comrades returned to the Auschwitz complex, now abandoned, to shelter until they were found by the Russians.  Recovery was long and painful, involving stays in a hospital in Lviv, in the west of Ukraine, and in a sanatorium by the Black Sea. After a year, he returned to Rome.

For the next three and a half decades, Terracina quietly rebuilt his life, completing his education and developing a career in management. He was reluctant to speak about what had happened to him but was eventually persuaded of the importance of telling his story.

Thereafter, he devoted himself to keeping alive the dreadful memory of the hell he and millions of others had endured, speaking to politicians, historians, journalists, members of sports teams and in particular students, whom he often accompanied on trips to Auschwitz. The older he became, the more powerful was his presence on these trips.

Terracina died in Rome in December 2019. His funeral included a procession from the Tempio Maggiore, Rome’s main synagogue, which overlooks the Tiber near the Isola Tiberina, to the Campo Verano memorial cemetery.

The imposing Tempio Maggiore, 
Rome's main synagogue

Travel tip:

Rome’s Jewish quarter is beautiful but, given its close proximity to some of the city’s major tourist attractions, often overlooked by visitors. Situated in the Sant’Angelo Rione, east of Campo de’ Fiori and southwest of Piazza Venezia, the former ghetto occupies an area adjoining the Tiber river, next to the bend where the water flows either side of the Isola Tiberina. The centrepiece is the Tempio Maggiore, completed in 1904 and built in an eclectic style with influences of Assyrian-Babylonian, Egyptian and Greco-Roman architecture. There are Roman ruins including the Portico d'Ottavia and Teatro Marcello. The streets nearby are packed with restaurants, many serving traditional Jewish cuisine.

The Isola Tiberina in Rome is said to be the
smallest inhabited island in the world

Travel Tip

The Isola Tiberina, situated in the bend in the Tiber that wraps around the Trastevere district, to which it is connected by the Ponte Cestio, is said to be the smallest inhabited island in the world. A footbridge, the Ponte Fabrico, allows access from the other bank of the river.  The island was once the location of an ancient temple to Aesculapius, the Greek god of medicine and healing, and in modern times the Fatebenefratelli Hospital, founded in the 16th century. The 10th century Basilica of St. Bartholomew is also located on the island, which is just 270m (890ft) long and 67m (220ft) wide. During the Nazi occupation, Jews hid in the wards of the hospital after the head of the institution deterred SS officers from searching it by putting out the story that he was struggling to contain an outbreak of a deadly and contagious disease.

Also on this day:

1892: The birth of World War One flying ace Giulio Lega

1905: The Giro di Lombardia cycle race is contested for the first time

1920: The Treaty of Rapallo is signed

1948: The death of composer Umberto Giordano

2011: Silvio Berlusconi resigns as prime minister

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