Naples earthquake of 1626

Devastating tremor and tsunami killed 70,000

A 17th century painting shows the 1631 eruption of
Vesuvius just five years after the 1626 earthquake

The region around Naples, one of the most physically unstable areas of high population in the world with a long history of volcanic activity and earthquakes, suffered one of its more devastating events on this day in 1626.

An earthquake that it has been estimated would register around seven on the modern Richter scale struck the city and the surrounding area.

Its epicentre was about 50km out to sea, beyond the Bay of Naples and the island of Capri to the south, but the shock waves were strong enough to cause the collapse of many buildings in the city and the destruction of more than 30 small towns and villages.

A tsunami followed, in which according to some reports the sea receded by more than three kilometres (two miles) before rushing back with enormous force, towering waves engulfing the coastline.

In total, it is thought that approximately 70,000 people were killed by the quake itself and the tsunami.

Naples at the time was a thriving city, still under Spanish rule.  It had a population of around 300,000, which made it the largest port city in Europe and the second largest of all European cities apart from Paris, which had about half a million inhabitants.

It was enjoying a golden age in expansion, particularly at the more expensive end of the property market, with many luxury estates springing up in the Chiaia district to the north of the city.

Construction of the Royal Palace, the masterpiece of the late Renaissance architect Domenico Fontana, was almost complete.  Overlooking the Bay, the palace would for many years be the main residence of the Bourbon kings.

A typical fumarole at Solfatara in the
Campi Flegrei just outside Naples

However, bordered to the south by Vesuvius and to the north by the steaming, bubbling Campi Flegrei (Phlegraean Fields), the city was under constant threat from seismic activity.  In Naples alone, between 10,000 and 20,000 people were thought to have been killed on July 30, 1626.

Indeed, the 1626 quake came during one of several periods punctuated by deadly events.  There had been three earthquakes in one year in 1622, sparking a wave of activity that was perhaps behind the substantial eruption of Vesuvius that took place in 1631. It was the first of any consequence for four centuries, resulting in the deaths of between 3,000 and 6,000 people.

Another earthquake in 1693 claimed the lives of 90,000 in the wider region.  Earthquakes and eruptions were so frequent in the next century that 110,000 people were killed in one 75-year stretch between 1783 and 1857, equating to 1,500 every year.

There has not been an eruption of Vesuvius since 1944 and the last major earthquake to hit the region was in 1980, when a tremor measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale took place in the province of Avellino, its epicentre 85km east of Naples, with a death toll of 2,914.

Nowadays some three million people live in and around Naples and although the last few decades have been calm, seismologists say there is little reason to be complacent.

The façade of the Royal Palace in the centre of Naples

Travel tip:

Work began on the construction of the Royal Palace in Naples in the early 17th century.  The main part of the building, including the façade that opens on to the Piazza del Plebiscito, was completed by 1620 and additions were made over time, including the connecting Teatro San Carlo, the famous Naples opera house, which was opened in 1737.

Travel tip:

For a less strenuous volcanic experience than climbing Vesuvius, the volcanic crater Solfatara, just outside Pozzuoli, is a worthwhile alternative. Part of the vast Campi Flegrei, a volcanic area with a four-mile diameter, Solfatara is fascinating for its active emissions of volcanic ash that form piles of yellow tuff rocks and for the fumaroles releasing sulphorous steam.

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The birth of Benito Mussolini

Future dictator inspired by his father's politics

Mussolini saw the First World War
as an opportunity for Italy

Benito Mussolini, who would become Italy's notorious Fascist dictator during the 1920s, was born on this day in 1883 in a small town in Emilia-Romagna known then as Dovia di Predappio, about 17km south of the city of Forlì.

His father, Alessandro, worked as a blacksmith while his mother, Rosa was a devout Catholic schoolteacher.  Benito was the eldest of his parents' three children. He would later have a brother, Arnaldo, and a sister, Edvige.

It could be said that Alessandro's political leanings influenced his son from birth.  Benito was named after the Mexican reformist President, Benito Juárez, while his middle names - Andrea and Amilcare - were those of the Italian socialists Andrea Costa and Amilcare Cipriani.

Working in his father's smithy as a boy growing up, Mussolini would listen to Alessandro's admiration for the protagonists of the Italian unification movement, such as the nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini, and the military leader Giuseppe Garibaldi. But he also heard him speak with approval about the socialist thinker Carlo Pisacane and anarchist revolutionaries such as Carlo Cafiero and Mikhail Bakunin.

Alessandro's view would leave a lasting impression and, one way or another, shape the direction his son would eventually follow, although initially Benito saw himself as a traditional socialist.

Sent away to boarding school, Mussolini qualified as a schoolteacher but did not take up the profession, instead moving to Switzerland in order to avoid national service.  It was there that he first became politically active.

Mussolini in familiar pose as the
military dictator

He studied the ideas of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, and the syndicalist Georges Sorel, who advocated the violent overthrow of capitalism and liberal democracy. He also found much that he approved of in the writings of the Marxist Charles Péguy.

Mussolini was twice expelled from Switzerland, once after being arrested in Berne for trying to foment a general strike and violent uprising, the second time for falsifying his papers in order to return.  He did in time manage to secure a legal way back into the country and studied at the University of Lausanne before taking advantage of an amnesty granted to those who had evaded national service and returning to Italy.

A condition of the amnesty was that he joined the army but once his two-year stint was complete in 1906 he became a leading figure in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI).

In the years that followed he would edit the left-wing newspaper Avanti and spend five months in jail following a riot he had helped organise in protest at Italy's invasion of Libya, which he denounced as "imperialist".

However, his position on Italy's involvement in armed conflict changed and he was expelled by the PSI because of his opposition to the party's neutral stance on the First World War.  He saw intervention as an opportunity to further the revolutionary aims of the left, particularly by overthrowing the Habsburg monarchies in Germany and Austria-Hungary.

By then, continuing to be influenced by his father's belief in nationalism and by Nietzsche's views on the merits of elitism, he began to lose faith in orthodox socialism, believing that national identity had become more important than class struggle in forging the kind of society that was central to his vision.

He now envisaged a brand of socialism in which the removal of class divides was still key but which also depended on strong, decisive leadership and which recognised culture, tradition, language and race as elements of a nation's identity that should be protected.  It was the beginnings of what would become known as Fascism.

Travel tip:

Predappio's embarrassment at being turned into a place of pilgrimage for neo-Fascists has been addressed by the town's Mayor, who has finally forged an agreement that the former regional headquarters of Mussolini's party, a dilapidated three-storey building in the centre of the town, is renovated as a musuem, not to pay homage to the former dictator - whose remains are buried in the local cemetery - but as a place of education and reflection.  The museum is due to open in 2019.

The Abbey of San Mercuriale dominates
Piazza Aurelio Saffi in Forlì

Travel tip:

The main square in Forlì, Piazza Aurelio Saffi, is named after the politician Aurelio Saffi, a radical republican who was a fervent supporter of the nationalist revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini, one of the driving forces behind the Risorgimento and the unification of Italy in the 19th century.  There is a statue of Saffi in the square, which is dominated by the 12th-century Abbey of San Mercuriale and its 75-metre bell tower, one of the tallest in Italy.

More reading:

The death of Mussolini at the hands of the partisans

How Mussolini's Fascists came into being

Giuseppe Mazzini - hero of the Risorgimento

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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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Mario Del Monaco – tenor

Singer became famous for his interpretations of Otello

Mario Del Monaco, dressed for his most famous
role as Otello in Verdi's opera of the same name

Opera singer Mario Del Monaco, who was renowned for the amazing power of his voice, was born on this day in 1915 in Florence.

His family were musical and as a child he studied the violin but he developed a passion for singing as well.

He studied at the Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro, where he first met and sang with the soprano Renata Tebaldi, who was to partner him regularly later in his career.

Del Monaco made a big impact with his debut performance as Lieutenant Pinkerton in Puccini’s Madam Butterfly in Milan in 1940.

He became popular with the audience at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in the 1950s, making many appearances in dramatic Verdi roles.

He was one of the four Italian tenors at their peak in the 1950s and 1960s, sharing the limelight with Giuseppe Di Stefano, Carlo Bergonzi and Franco Corelli.

Del Monaco became famous for his interpretation of the title role in Verdi’s Otello, which, it is estimated, he sang hundreds of times.

Listen to the voice of Mario Del Monaco

He started making recordings for HMV in 1948 in Milan and was later partnered by Renata Tebaldi in a series of Verdi and Puccini operas recorded for Decca.

Del Monaco retired from the stage in 1975 and spent his last years living in a villa near Treviso in the Veneto with his wife, Rina, a former singer.

He died in Mestre, near Venice, in 1982 at the age of 67, having been in poor health since sustaining serious injuries in a road accident several years previously.  He was buried in Pesaro, where he grew up.  At his own request, he was laid to rest dressed in his favourite Otello costume.

Giancarlo Del Monaco, one of his two sons, followed him into opera as a director, making his debut in Siracusa in 1964 with a production in which his father starred, and going on to work at some of the world's top opera houses, including La Scala in Milan and the Met.

Travel tip:

Pesaro, where Del Monaco grew up and studied at the Rossini Conservatory, is a beautiful, traditional seaside resort on the Adriatic coast, renowned for its sandy beach. Rossini’s birthplace, at Via Rossini 34, is now a museum dedicated to the composer and there is also a theatre named after him. A Rossini opera festival is held in Pesaro every summer.

The statue of Mario Del Monaco
in Piazza Borsa in Treviso

Travel tip:

Treviso’s municipal theatre in Corso del Popolo was renamed Teatro Comunale Mario Del Monaco after the tenor and operatic costumes he wore are on display there. Close by in Piazza Borsa there is a bronze statue showing him in costume.

More reading:

How Italy mourned the death of Giuseppe Verdi

The genius of Giacomo Puccini

Renata Tebaldi: the voice of an angel



(Photo of Mario Del Monaco as Otello by MDM 1915 CC BY-SA 4.0)

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