Artist Pietro da Cortona was born Pietro Berrettini on this day in 1596 in Cortona in Tuscany.
Widely known by the name of his birthplace, Cortona became the leading Italian Baroque painter of his time and contributed to the emergence of Baroque architecture in Rome.
Having been born into a family of artisans and masons, Cortona went to Florence to train as a painter before moving to Rome, where he was involved in painting frescoes at the Palazzo Mattei by 1622.
His talent was recognised and he was encouraged by prominent people in Rome at the time. He was commissioned to paint a fresco in the church of Santa Bibiana that was being renovated under the direction of Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1624.
Then, in 1633, Pope Urban VIII commissioned Cortona to paint a large fresco on the ceiling of the Grand Salon at Palazzo Barberini, his family’s palace. Cortona’s huge Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power marked a watershed in Baroque painting as he created an illusion of an open, airy architectural framework against which figures were situated, creating spatial extension through the medium of paint.
Cortona's masterpiece: the ceiling
of the Palazzo Barberini
Cortona was commissioned in 1637 by Grand Duke Ferdinand II dè Medici to paint a series of frescoes representing the four ages of man in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. He returned there in 1640 to paint the ceilings of a suite of apartments in the palace that were named after the planets.
Cortona trained a number of artists to disseminate his grand manner style, which had been influenced by his interest in antique sculpture and the work of Raphael.
Towards the end of his life, Cortona spent his time involved in architectural projects, such as the design of the church of Santi Luca e Martina in Rome and the design and decoration of the Villa Pigneto just outside the city.
Cortona died in 1669 at the age of 72 in Rome.
The Via Janelli in Cortona: reputed to be
one of the oldest streets in Italy
Travel tip:
Cortona, the birthplace of Pietro da Cortona, was founded by the Etruscans and is one of the oldest cities in Tuscany. Powerful during the medieval period it was defeated by Naples in 1409 and then sold to Florence. The medieval houses that still stand in Via Janelli are some of the oldest houses still surviving in Italy.
Travel tip
Palazzo Barberini, where Pietro da Cortona painted his masterpiece on the ceiling of the Grand Salon, is just off Piazza Barberini in the centre of Rome. The palace was completed in 1633 for Pope Urban VIII and the design was the work of three great architects, Carlo Maderno, Francesco Borromini and Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The palace now houses part of the collection of Italy’s National Gallery of Ancient Art.
A playwright and dramatist, Eduardo De
Filippo was also an accomplished actor
One of Italy’s greatest dramatists, Eduardo De Filippo, died on this day in 1984 in Rome at the age of 84.
An actor and film director as well as a playwright, De Filippo – often referred to simply as Eduardo – is most remembered as the author of a number of classic dramas set in his native Naples in the 1940s that continue to be performed today.
Arguably the most famous of these was Filomena marturano, upon which was based the hit movie Marriage, Italian Style, which starred Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni under the direction of Vittorio de Sica.
De Filippo’s other memorable works included Napoli Milionaria, Le voci di dentro and Sabato, domenica e lunedi.
All of these plays showcased De Filippo’s ability to capture the essence of life in Naples in his time, particularly in the working class neighbourhoods that he felt were the beating heart of the city.
Rich in Neapolitan dialect, they were often bittersweet comedies of family life. They were social commentaries in which typical themes were the erosion of morals in times of desperation, the struggle of the downtrodden to retain their dignity and the preservation of family values even in the most poverty-stricken households.
Born out of wedlock, the son of a playwright, Eduardo Scarpetta, and the seamstress and costumier Luisa De Filippo, Eduardo was destined for a life in the theatre and appeared in one of his father’s plays at the age of five.
De Filippo often played opposite his sister, Titina
At 32 he formed his own stage company, the ‘Compagnie del Teatro Umoristico i de Filippo’, with his brother Peppino and sister Titina. The trio enjoyed success in films and on the stage in the 1930s but broke up soon after the Second World War.
But it was his plays that were his enduring legacy, for which many critics place him among the greatest of Italian dramatists, in the company of Carlo Goldoni and Luigi Pirandello.
Napoli milionaria (Naples Millionaire), written in 1945 is a realistic drama about a family's involvement in the Italian black market, set against the deprivations of war.He followed this with Questi fantasmi! (Neapoliitan Ghosts), a 1946 comedy in which a husband mistakes his wife's lover for a ghost.
In the same year came Filumena marturano, in which a former prostitute obtains financial stability for her three children by persuading her lover he is the father of one of them, without saying which.
De Filippo continued in 1948 with Le voci di dentro (Inner Voices), in which a man mistakes for reality a dream in which a friend is murdered by neighbours.
De Filippo (right) with the Italian president,
Sandro Pertini. De Filippo was made a life senator
His work became popular outside Italy. In 1972, with his own production company, he took Naples Millionaire to London. The following year, the National Theatre in London produced Saturday, Sunday, Monday, directed by Franco Zeffirelli, with Joan Plowright and Frank Finlay. It won the London drama critics’ award as the best play of the year.
De Filippo, who had begun directing films in 1940, had some success as a director in the 1950s, his films largely light comedies.
In 1979, Laurence Olivier directed Frank Finlay and Joan Plowright in Filumena. Later, Sir Ralph Richardson had the final role of his career, playing Don Alberto, in the National Theatre's 1983 production of Inner Voices.
Filumena remains popular in Russia, where it is not forgotten that, in the 1960s in Moscow, the audience demanded and were granted 24 curtain calls after Eduardo's own company performed the work.
Napoli Milionaria, which opened at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples in March,1945, featuring Eduardo himself, became a film in 1951, with him in the leading role. It was also adapted as an opera with music by the film composer, Nino Rota, and a libretto written by Eduardo himself. It opened in June 1977 at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto.
In 1981, De Filippo was appointed life senator of the Italian Republic. He died three years later.
The sumptuous interior of the Teatro San Carlo
Travel tip:
The Teatro San Carlo, Europe’s oldest theatre and opera house, suffered bomb damage during the war and its rebirth was a testament to the determination of Neapolitans not to allow their city’s heritage to be crushed. After one raid in 1943, the foyer that runs the whole length of the theatre suffered blast damage, many of the boxes were unusable, the dressing rooms were hit, the scenery and paint shop, the costume and wardrobe stores left beyond repair. Yet within a week the theatre was up and running again and staging musical productions. De Filippo’s play. Napoli Milionaria, which premiered there in 1945, was hailed for reflecting the city’s resourcefulness in the most testing of circumstances.
Travel tip:
Although Italian spoken by Neapolitans is often clear and easy to follow if you have some acquaintance with the language, dialect is widely used and many words differ from standard Italian. For a tomato, for example, Neapolitans say pummarola rather than pomodoro; for boy or girl they use the word guaglio/a rather than ragazzo/a; and for this and that (questo e quello) they say chisto and chillo. In O Sole Mio, the famous Neapolitan song, the ‘O’ means ‘the’, as in ‘The sun of mine’ not ‘Oh sun of mine’.
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Arnold Foà - versatile actor still doing stage work in his 90s
Anna Magnani - earthy character actress who won over Rossellini
Poor immigrant from Calabria who transformed his physique
Charles Atlas, born Angelo Siciliano,
pictured in around 1920
The
bodybuilder Charles Atlas was born Angelo Siciliano on this day in 1893 in the
Calabrian town of Acri.
Acri,
set 720m above sea level straddling two
hills in the province of Cosenza, on the edge of what is now the mountainous
Sila National Park, was a poor town and while Angelo was growing up his father,
Santos, began thinking about joining the growing number of southern Italians
who had gone to forge a new life in America.
They made the
move when Angelo was 11. The journey by
sea from Naples took around two weeks. After registering their arrival at Ellis
Island, the immigrant inspection station in New York Bay, the family settled in Brooklyn.
Most accounts of Angelo’s life suggest that his father, a farmer,
returned to Italy within a short time but his mother remained, taking work as a
seamstress and endeavouring to make a better life for her children.
Angelo’s path
to becoming Charles Atlas and enjoying worldwide fame began with a classic
story of bullying. Like many Italian children of his time, having been born in part of the country where living conditions were difficult and good food was in short
supply, he was sickly and scrawny, an easy target to be picked on.
Humiliated at
the beach by being knocked down by a physically stronger youth and having sand
kicked in his face, Angelo was determined to build up his physique so that he
might one day feel that no one could bully him.
He was
inspired by the statues of Hercules, Apollo and Zeus at Brooklyn Museum and
began to train with home-made weights at his local YMCA.
The Dawn of Glory, a statue in Brooklyn
for which Atlas was the model
It was on a
visit to the Prospect Park Zoo that he
hit upon the idea that there might be another way to develop his body without
using weights. It would become the foundation of his life and the business that
would make him a wealthy man.
It came to him as he marvelled at the physical magnificence of lions. While watching a lion
stretch, he realized that the enormous animal was undergoing a natural
workout by "pitting one muscle
against another", harnessing his own strength to make himself stronger
still.
Back at home, Angelo began to devise isometric and isotonic exercises that required no weights,
which had the effect of honing and strengthening his body remarkably quickly.
Friends who
noticed the change nicknamed him Atlas after the figure in Greek mythology who was required to carry the heavens on
his shoulders.
By the age of
19, Angelo was able to make money by selling a device he had made as a chest developer
in front of stores in Manhattan, and performing feats of strength in vaudeville
shows. Then he was introduced to New
York’s community of sculptors who would pay him to be the model for numerous
statues. The 97lb weakling he had dubbed himself when the bullies
were doing their worst now weighed 180lb. He had a 47in chest, 17in biceps and 24in
thighs - but a waist of just 32in.
He won
bodybuilding competitions, changed his name to Charles Atlas and opened a mail
order business, selling his equipment and accompanying lifestyle guidance. It thrived for a while but his business sense was poor. He made poor decisions and spread himself too thin.
The famous ad for Atlas's method,
designed by Charles Roman
It all
changed, though, when he met Charles P Roman, a young advertising executive. They agreed that Angelo would concentrate on projecting his
own body, making public appearances, demonstrating his equipment and performing
stunts, while Charles diverted his focus to the business side of the
partnership.
Charles Atlas
Ltd was incorporated in 1929. Roman coined the name ‘Dynamic Tension’ to
describe the Atlas method and a year later wrote the copy for the
company’s most famous ad, depicting a young man who follows the Atlas method
and is able to avenge his humiliation at the hands of a beach bully who kicks
sand in his face.
The business
grew and prospered Charles Atlas became recognized as one of the world’s
foremost bodybuilding experts. Baseball
legend Joe di Maggio and boxer Rocky Marciano were among sportsmen who endorsed
his products.
He retired in
1970, selling his share of the business to Roman and settling for a quiet life
in Long Island, where he bought a house at Point Lookout, overlooking the
ocean. He ran along the beach each day
and continued to exercise. Married with
two children, he died at the age of 80 after suffering a heart attack.
The single surviving tower of the town's castle sits
atop one of Acri's two hills
Travel tip: Acri is a town of around 21,000 inhabitants situated close to the Sila National Park and the beautiful Lago Cicita in the province of Cosenza. It has suffered a number of earthquakes over the centuries and a lot of its buildings are of relatively recent construction yet many historic buildings survive, including the medieval church of Santa Maria Maggiore, which was rebuilt in the 17th century. On top of one of its two hills is the single remaining tower of a medieval castle. Hotels in Cosenza from Hotels.com Travel tip: Cosenza, a city with an urban area in which more than 250,000 people live, combines a no-nonsense modern city with a small and atmospheric historic town built on a hill. The pedestrianized centre of the new city has sculptures by the likes of Dalí, De Chirico and Pietro Consagra. The old town 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. (Photo of Dawn and Glory statue by Eden, Janine and Jim - CC BY 2.0) (Photo of Acri by Explorer at Italian Wikipedia - CC BY-SA 3.0) Home
Franco Corelli's movie star looks added to
the quality of his voice
The great Italian tenor Franco Corelli died in Milan on this day in 2003 aged 82 after suffering heart problems.
Corelli was renowned for the power and vibrancy of his voice, described by some as generating a 'white heat' on the stage when he performed. In a career spanning more than a quarter of a century he mastered all the major tenor roles and appeared at the greatest opera theatres in the world.
He was a fixture at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where he performed 19 roles over 15 seasons in some 365 appearances. As well as possessing outstanding vocal range, he used his natural assets – he stood 6ft 1ins tall and weighed 200lbs – to develop a charismatic stage presence.
Blessed with movie star looks, he had the appearance of an opera-singing Errol Flynn. He was nicknamed the 'Prince of Tenors'.
Corelli was born in 1921 in Ancona on Italy’s Adriatic coast, in a house just yards from the shore.
His father was a shipbuilder for the Italian navy and as he neared adulthood it seemed that Corelli’s destiny was to pursue the same profession. He obtained a place at Bologna University to study naval engineering.
It was while he was in Bologna that a friend dared him to enter a singing competition. He did not win but the judges were impressed enough with his voice to tell him that with proper training he could have a career as a professional singer if he wanted.
Clearly, he had inherited some of the talent of his grandfather, Augusto, who had been an operatic tenor, and two uncles, who had both been in the chorus of the Teatro delle Muse in Ancona.
Mario del Monaco's style
influenced Corelli
Corelli entered the Conservatory of Pesaro but despite the expert coaching he received felt that the experience made his voice worse rather than better. After finding himself unable to reach notes that were previously within his capabilities, he decided he would be better off developing his own technique and declared voice teachers to be ‘dangerous people.’
Although he took advice from the voice coach of another great tenor, Mario del Monaco, he was essentially self taught, identifying Enrico Caruso, Giacomo Lauri-Volpi and Beniamino Gigli among a small group of singers he chose to study.
He developed a vocal power similar to that enjoyed by Del Monaco and after winning a competition at the Maggio Musicale festival in Florence made his opera debut at Spoleto in 1951 as Don Jose in Carmen.
By 1954 he was performing opposite Maria Callas at Teatro alla Scalain Milan, gaining the respect of the brilliant soprano as a co-star whose acting ability matched hers. His debut at the Met came in 1961 in a production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore.
Not all critics were fans. Like Del Monaco, he was accused of sacrificing finesse for power and found some opera writers expressed their disapproval after his debut at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in 1957, when in Act II of Puccini’sTosca he stretched Cavaradossi’s defiant cry of ‘Vittoria!’ to a full 12 seconds to show how good he was at holding a high note. The audience was in raptures but critics panned him for showing off.
Watch Franco Corelli sing the aria E Lucevan le stelle from Tosca
Later in his career, it surprised no one that he should have behaved in such a way as he developed a reputation as someone who had a sharp sense of his own importance.
Prone to temperamental outbursts, he was said to be incensed, during a Met production of Puccini’s Turandot in Boston, when the Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson held a high ‘C’ for longer than he had. Later in the performance, Ms Nilsson claimed he took the opportunity presented by a scene in which he was required to plant a stage kiss her cheek to bite her on the neck, something Corelli denied but his co-star insisted was true.
Franco Corelli as he appeared in the title
role in Umberto Giordano's Andrea Chénier
On another occasion at Teatro San Carlo in Naples he reacted to being heckled from a third-tier box by leaving the stage, in full costume as Manrico in Il Trovatore, climbing three flights of stairs and breaking down the locked door of the box with his shoulder, then waving his costume sword at the terrified occupant. It took the intervention of two ushers to restrain him.
Ahead of any performance he was nervous and ritualistic, making it a contractual obligation on the part of the theatre to prepare him steak tartare with lemon juice and raw garlic, which he consumed immediately before going on stage with no regard for the sensitivities of his leading lady, whatever her stature. On the other hand, he neither smoked nor drank alcohol at any time.
Away from performing, he had a taste for the high life. He modelled clothes for Town and Country magazine and had a passion for expensive cars and cameras. At one point during his years of fame in America he had a Jaguar, an Alfa Romeo Giulietta, a Lincoln Continental and a Cadillac in his garage and he could pick from any one of 12 cameras when he decided he wanted a day to indulge his interest in photography.
In 1958 he met Loretta di Lelio backstage at the Rome Opera House and they married, at which point the fledgling soprano gave up her career to become his secretary, business manager, agent and translator. A forceful negotiator, she won him many lucrative contracts.
Corelli was at his peak between 1950 and 1970, after which he began to scale back his appearances sharply. He retired in 1976, having decided his vocal powers were beginning to decline and unwilling to expose his ego to the harsh criticisms that he knew would come if he overstayed his welcome.
It was a wise decision, ensuring his place among the greats of opera would be preserved.
An aerial view of the Adriatic port of Ancona
Travel tip:
Ancona is the capital of the Marche region. A port city of more than 100,000 inhabitants, it is known for its beaches, such as the Spiaggia del Passetto, and for the 12th century Cathedral of San Ciriaco, which sits on a hilltop. The Fontana del Calamo, with bronze masks of mythic figures, is a feature in the city centre. On opposite sides of the port are the ancient Arch of Trajan and the 18th century quarantine station, the Lazzaretto.
Travel tip:
The ancient city of Spoleto in Umbria, where Corelli made his stage debut, is famous for its Festival dei Due Mondi (Festival of the Two Worlds), founded in 1958, which is held annually in late June-early July. It has developed into one of Italy’s most important cultural events, with a three-week schedule of music, theatre and dance performances.
