Silvio Berlusconi resigns as PM

Financial crisis brings down 'untouchable' premier 

A large crowd assembled outside the Palazzo Quirinale
to celebrate Berlusconi's resignation in 2011

Silvio Berlusconi resigned as prime minister of Italy on this day in 2011. A controversial, polarising figure, he had dominated Italian politics for 17 years.

With Italy in the grip of the economic crisis that had brought severe consequences to other parts of the Euro zone, Berlusconi lost his parliamentary majority a few days earlier and promised to resign when austerity measures demanded by Brussels were passed by both houses of the Italian parliament.

The Senate had approved the measures the day before. When the lower house voted 380-26 in favour, Berlusconi was true to his word, meeting president Giorgio Napoletano within two hours to tender his resignation.

His last journey from the Palazzo Chigi to the Palazzo Quirinale, the respective official residences of the prime minister and the president, was not a dignified one.

When he arrived at the Quirinale, he was booed by a large and somewhat hostile crowd that had gathered, entering the building to shouts of 'buffoon' and 'mafioso'.  A gathering of musicians and singers serenaded him with a version of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah.  After the meeting concluded, he left by a side entrance to avoid further barracking.

Berlusconi had until that moment held a reputation as a consummate survivor, becoming Italy's longest-serving post-war prime minister despite a litany of scandals.

Berlusconi is one of the richest men in Italy

One of Italy's richest men, he built a fortune estimated at $9billion (€9bn) from a business empire that comprised three television channels, a major publishing house, a national newspaper, the AC Milan football club and countless smaller companies.

He entered politics in In 1993, founding his own political party, Forza Italia - literally, Italy Power - named after an Italian football chant, and was prime minister within a year.

As the head of a decidedly right-wing coalition with the post-Fascist Alleanza Nationale (National Alliance) and the separatist Lega Nord (Northern League), he made many Italians uncomfortable about the direction in which the country was moving.

Yet many hoped his business prowess could help revitalize Italy's economy and saw him as a refreshing change from a political establishment associated with instability and corruption.

The coalition was always an uneasy one, however, and the hopes of his supporters began to erode when Berlusconi was indicted for tax fraud.  He lost to the left-wing Romani Prodi in the election of 1996.

Berlusconi's capacity for bouncing back, though, was remarkable.  By 2001 he was back in power, having rallied his former allies to defeat Prodi and held together the longest-serving Italian government since the Second World War.

Defeated by Prodi again in 2006, he was re-elected in 2008 at the helm of a revamped party, renamed the People of Freedom. 

Romano Prodi

But Italy's economic crisis proved too much for him in the end. In the week of his resignation, the interest rate on Italy's enormous public debts - estimated at around $2.6 trillion - touched 7%, the rate at which Greece, Ireland and Portugal were forced to seek bailouts from the EU.

Berlusconi was never far removed from scandal during his political career but his ability to brush off allegations of corruption or sexual indiscretion made him seem untouchable.

Less than a year after his resignation, however, he was given a four-year sentence for tax fraud and barred from public office, a verdict upheld in Italy's supreme court a year later.

Because he was over 75, he could not be jailed under Italian law and instead served four hours a week of community service, working with elderly dementia patients at a Catholic care home near Milan.

A seven-year sentence imposed in 2013 on charges of having sex with an underage girl was overturned in 2015 and Berlusconi says he will make a political comeback. But his reformed Forza Italia party has so far attracted only minimal support

The Palazzo Chigi in Rome, the official residence of
the Italian prime minister

Travel tip:

The 16th-century Palazzo Chigi, which overlooks the Piazza Colonna and the Via del Corso in Rome, was in the ownership of the Chigi family, part of Roman nobility, from 1659 until the 19th century. It became the residence of the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador to Italy in 1878 before being bought by the Italian state in 1916, when it became the home of the Minister for Colonial Affairs. Later it was the official residence of the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and in 1961 became the official meeting place of Council of Ministers, whose President is the head of the Italian government and can now use the palace as his official residence.

Waterways are another key feature of Milano Due

Travel tip:

Berlusconi's business roots are in the groundbreaking 1970s new town of Milano Due, which was built by Berlusconi's company Edilnord as a residential centre close to the Segrate area of suburban Milan.  Although property there is nowadays marketed with a well-heeled clientele in mind, Berlusconi conceived it as something different, providing homes for families in a safe environment, an inter-connecting system of walkways ensuring that its residents could reach any part of the community without encountering any vehicular traffic.  Every house or apartment was connected to a cable television system run by another Berlusconi company,  TeleMilano, Italy's first private television channel, was the project from which the tycoon would eventually grow his national TV company, Mediaset.

Also on this day:

1948: Death of composer Umberto Giordano

More reading:

Silvio Berlusconi: how he built his power

Gianni Rivera - AC Milan legend who clashed with Berlusconi

Enzo Biagi - veteran journalist 'silenced' by Berlusconi

Beppe Grillo, the comedian turned activist behind the Cinque Stelle - Five Star - movement

Books

My Way: Berlusconi in His Own Words, by Alan Friedman

Silvio Berlusconi: Television, Power and Patrimony, by Paul Ginsborg

The Italians, by John Hooper

(Picture credits: Crowd scene by Lalupa; Berlusconi by European People's Party; Palazzo Chigi by Geobia; Romano Prodi by Presidenza della Repubblica; all via Wikimedia Commons)

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Luca Zingaretti - actor

Found fame as TV detective Inspector Montalbano

Luca Zingaretti: famous for his portrayal
of the Sicily detective Inspector Montalbano

The actor Luca Zingaretti, best known for his portrayal of Inspector Montalbano in the TV series based on Andrea Camilleri's crime novels, was born on this day in 1961 in Rome.

The Montalbano mysteries, now into a 10th series, began broadcasting on Italy's RAI network in 1999 and has become a hit in several countries outside Italy, including France, Spain, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Zingaretti has played the famously maverick Sicilian detective in all 28 feature-length episodes to date, each one based on a novel or short story collection by the Sicilian-born author Camilleri, now in his 92nd year but still writing.

Although he had established himself as a stage actor and had appeared in a number of films, it was the part of Montalbano that established Zingaretti's fame.

Yet he had hoped to become a star on another kind of stage as a professional footballer.  Growing up in the Magliana neighbourhood in the south-west of Rome, he spent as much time as he could out in the streets kicking a ball and played for a number of junior teams.

Zingarette in a scene from Inspector Montalbano

He was good enough, at 17, to earn a semi-professional contract with Rimini, then in Serie B, but a scholarship to the Silvio d'Amico Academy of Dramatic Arts persuaded him to return to Rome, abandoning his football career.

Before training to be an actor, Zingaretti had played
football at a semi-professional level in Rimini

On graduating, he began to work in the theatre, appearing in Chekhov's Three Sisters, Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan.  He did his first film work in 1987 and attracted critical acclaim for the first time in the director Marco Risi's movie The Wolfpack in 1994.

His profile was raised a little more when he played a Mafia boss in the popular TV series La Piovra in 1997 and it was soon afterwards that he learned of the plan to adapt Camilleri's Montalbano books for the small screen.

Zingaretti was intrigued because Camilleri had been one of his tutors at the Academy and he was familiar with the novels and their main character.  He auditioned and landed the part.

The exposure sent Zingaretti's career to another level, making him the most famous face on Italian TV and Italy's best paid actor.  Although he considers himself Roman in character, he immersed himself in the Montalbano role and earned Camilleri's respect for his authentic portrayal of a Sicilian, while the tough but caring detective, always rooting for the disadvantaged and exploited, won him a place in the affections of millions of viewers.

The city of Ragusa in southern Sicily, where much of the
location filming of Inspector Montalbano took place

In Zingaretti's opinion, the show, which is filmed on location in Sicily, is popular because Camilleri captures the lost charm of the island he knew as a child and because he created in Montalbano an old-fashioned character, dealing with the worst the crime world can throw at him, rejecting corruption and retaining a strict moral code.

Zingaretti's film career has continued in tandem, bringing him recognition among his peers.  He won two awards for Best Actor - a David di Donatello from the Academy of Italian Cinema and a Karlovy Vary Award from the film festival of the same name - for Alla luce del sole, a real-life drama directed by Roberto Faenza in which Zingaretti played Pino Puglisi, a Roman Catholic priest killed by the Mafia.

Married to the Naples-born actress Luisa Ranieri, whom he met on the set of the TV series Cefalonia, he became a father for the second time in 2015.  Their wedding took place in Sicily at the Castello di Donnafugata, near Ragusa.

His brother, Nicola, is a politician, a former MEP and a member of the Democratic Party of Italy.  He is currently president of the region of Lazio.

A beautiful, atmospheric picture that captures
 the dome of the Duomo di San Giorgio.

Travel tip:

Most of the Commissario Montalbano series is shot on location, mainly around the picturesque city of Ragusa, the historic centre of which perches on top of a hill called Monte Iblei. Rebuilt in Baroque style after the earthquake of 1693, it has charming narrow streets, pretty squares and some elegant buildings, including the 18th century Duomo di San Giorgio.

Travel tip:

The fictional town of Vigàta, where Montalbano is based in the Camilleri novels, is modelled on Porto Empedocle, a industrial port near Agrigento on the south coast of Sicily and Camilleri's home town.  Because of the association, the town changed its name to Porto Empedocle Vigàta, hoping to attract more visitors, although much of the exterior filming of buildings portrayed as being in Vigàta actually took place in Ragusa.  The police station where Montalbano works is the town hall in Scicli, another inland town a few kilometres south of Ragusa.

Also on this day: 

1869: Birth of Victor Emmanuel III, Italy's king through two World Wars

More reading:

Andrea Camilleri, nonagenarian creator of Inspector Montalbano

Umberto Eco - academic novelist hailed for The Name of the Rose

Franco Lucentini - one half of a crime-writing duo

Buy Andrea Camilleri novels from Amazon

(Photo of Duomo di San Giorgio by Gdiquattro via Wikimedia Commons)

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Ennio Morricone - film music maestro

Composer who scored some of cinema's greatest soundtracks

Ennio Morricone, pictured in 2012

Ennio Morricone, who composed some of the most memorable soundtracks in the history of the cinema, was born on this day in 1928 in Rome.

Still working even as he enters his 89th year, Morricone has written more than 500 film and television scores, winning countless awards.

Best known for his associations with the Italian directors Sergio Leone, Giuseppe Tornatore and Giuliano Montaldo, he has also worked among others with Pier Paolo Pasolini, Brian de Palma, Roland Joffé, Franco Zeffirelli and Quentin Tarantino, whose 2015 Western The Hateful Eight finally won Morricone an Oscar that many considered long overdue.

Among his finest soundtracks are those he wrote for Leone's 'Dollars' trilogy in the 1960s, for the Leone gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America two decades later, for Joffé's The Mission and De Palma's The Untouchables.

He composed the score for Tornatore's hauntingly poignant Cinema Paradiso and for Maddalena, a somewhat obscure 1971 film by the Polish director Jerzy Kawalerowicz that included the acclaimed Come Maddalena and Chi Mai, which later reached number two in the British singles chart after being used for the 1981 TV series The Life and Times of David Lloyd George.

Much of Morricone's film music, as well as his more than 100 classical compositions and numerous jazz and pop songs from the 1960s and 70s, has been recorded and his commercial sales have topped 70 million records worldwide.

Listen to Morricone's beautiful Gabriel's Oboe from The Mission

Morricone, whose parents moved to Rome from Arpino, an ancient hill town near Frosinone in southern Lazio, was brought up in the Trastevere district of the capital, one of five children raised by his father, Mario, a professional musician who played the trumpet, and mother Libera, who ran a small textile business.

He learned the fundamentals of music from his father before entering the National Academy of St Cecilia, where he first met Sergio Leone.

Sergio Leone, the director  behind
 the 'Dollars' trilogy

On graduating, he had some success writing for the theatre as well as for radio. After marrying his girlfriend of six years, Maria Travia, in 1956, and becoming a father a year later, he began supporting his family by playing in a jazz band and arranging pop songs for the Italian public broadcaster, RAI.

Over the next few years he composed pop songs for Rita Pavone, Mario Lanza, Paul Anka and Francoise Hardy among many others.

He branched into film music for the first time in the early 1960s, taking the commission that was to change his life when Leone, his friend from St Cecilia's, asked him to write the score for his groundbreaking Western, A Fistful of Dollars.

Starring the 34-year-old American actor, Clint Eastwood, in his first major role, A Fistful of Dollars was a huge success, spawning two more in the genre that became known as 'Spaghetti Westerns'.  For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly each grossed more than $20 million.

A Fistful of Dollars made $14.5 million, which was incredible given that Leone made it on a budget of less than $250,000.  With only limited access to a full orchestra, Morricone had to improvise, incorporating gunshots, cracking whips, a whistle, a jew's harp, trumpets, and a Fender electric guitar into his score, as well as using human, mainly female voices as musical instruments. The result was a highly distinctive score that it became a classic in the history of cinema music, as instantly recognizable today as it was then, and several of Morricone's innovative measures became part of his repertoire.

Listen to Morricone's music for the opening scene of The Hateful Eight

The trilogy began a relationship with Sergio Leone that would last 20 years and opened many doors for Morricone, whose career prospered from then on.

His first nomination for Best Original Score at the Academy Awards came in 1979 for Days of Heaven, directed by the American Terence Malick.  There were two nominations in the 1980s, for Joffé's The Mission in 1986 and De Palma's The Untouchables in 1987, and probably would have been a third had the American distributors of Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984) submitted the paperwork on time.

Morricone was particularly disappointed not to win with The Mission, which features the wonderful melody Gabriel's Oboe as its main theme, complaining that jazz musician Herbie Hancock's score for Bertrand Tavernier's Round Midnight, while beautifully done, used existing music.

The Hateful Eight: Morricone's score for
Quentin Tarantino's film won an Oscar

Further nominations came for Barry Levison's Bugsy (1991) and Tornatore's Malena (2000), and by the second decade of the new millennium Morricone's 50-year movie career had brought him 44 major awards.

It appeared, though, that the award he craved above all would elude him, and an honorary Oscar in 2007 for his overall contribution to film music seemed a slightly hollow consolation prize.

But then, late in 2014, just past his 86th birthday, he was approached by Quentin Tarantino, with whom he had collaborated previously but had had a difficult relationship. Morricone had not scored a complete Western for 35 years and had not worked on a high-profile Hollywood production since 2000 but The Hateful Eight, set just after the American Civil War, appealed to him.

He produced a score that was magnificent, one that would sit comfortably alongside anything he had done previously, from the sweeping L'Ultima Diligenza per Red Rock that accompanies the chillingly atmospheric opening scenes, to Regan's Theme, a melody of gathering pace with echoes of what he did for Leone half a century previously.

It earned Morricone his third Golden Globe, to go with The Mission and the ragtime-jazz score he wrote for Tornatore's Legend of 1900 and then, at the 87th Academy Awards night of February 22, 2016, the one he thought would never come and which made him, at 87 years, the oldest winner of a competitive Oscar.

Morricone, who has never left Italy despite being offered a villa in Hollywood by one of the studios he worked with, remains an active composer.  He and Maria had four children - Marco, Alessandra, Andrea, who himself became a film music composer, and Giovanni, who is a film director and producer in New York.

UPDATE: Morricone died in July 2020, aged 91, as a result of injuries sustained in a fall. Following a private funeral, he was entombed in Cimitero Laurentino in Rome.

The unspoilt hill town of Arpino

Travel tip:

Arpino, home of Morricone's parents, is a hill town situated about 120km south-east of Rome, 46km north-west of Frosinone in Lazio. Clinging to a ridge on top of a hill, it is relatively accessible from a nearby station on one of the Rome-Naples railway lines, yet attracts few tourists and therefore has the unspoilt feel of a traditional southern Italian community.

Travel tip:

The Trastevere district of Rome, which sits alongside the River Tiber, is regarded as one of the city's most charming neighbourhoods, full of winding, cobbled streets and well preserved medieval houses.  Increasingly fashionable with Rome's young professional class as a place to live, it has an abundance of restaurants and bars and a lively student music scene.

More reading:

How Shakespeare adaptations made Franco Zeffirelli a household name

Sergio Leone - distinctive style of 'Spaghetti Western' creator

How Nino Rota found fame for The Godfather theme

Also on this day: 

1816: Lord Byron, the English poet and aristocrat, sets foot in Venice for the first time.

(Picture credit: First photo of Morricone by Georges Biard via Wikimedia Commons)
(Videos from YouTube)

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Niccolò III d’Este – Marquis of Ferrara

Soldier who built up the importance of Ferrara

Niccolò III d'Este, Marquis of Ferrara

The military leader - condottiero in Italian - Niccolò III d’Este was born on this day in 1383 in Ferrara.

He was the son of Alberto d’Este, Marquis of Ferrara, and became ruler of the city when he was just ten years old on the death of his father, under the protection of Venice, Florence and Bologna.

A relative, Azzo d’Este, who was working for Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan, tried to attack Ferrara, but Venice, Florence and Bologna helped Niccolò see off the challenge to his rule.

In 1403 Niccolò joined the league formed against the Duke of Milan and was appointed Captain General of the Papal Army by Pope Boniface IX.

At the age of 13, Niccolò was married for the first time, to Gigliola da Carrara, the daughter of Francesco II da Carrara, Lord of Padua.

Although his first marriage was childless, he fathered an illegitimate son, Ugo, in 1405.  After the death of his wife, he was married for a second time to Parisina Malatesta, the daughter of Andrea Malatesta, and they had three children.

In 1425, Niccolò had Parisina and Ugo executed on charges of adultery, accusing them of having an affair.  At the same time he issued a decree that all women within his domains found to be guilty of adultery were to be put to death, although he had to rescind this order once it was determined that this action would depopulate Ferrara.

Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan

He married his third wife, Ricciarda of Saluzzo in 1429. She bore him two children. In total he had five legitimate children and at least 11 illegitimate children.

Niccolò steadily established his reputation as an able military leader with a number of successful campaigns but it was Ferrara's role in brokering a peace between Milan and Venice in 1432 that particularly boosted the city's prestige.

As a result, Ferrara was chosen to be the seat of a council in 1438.

Niccolò died in Milan on Boxing Day in 1441 after the Christmas feast and it was widely suspected he had been poisoned. He had been invited to Milan apparently in friendship by Filippo Maria Visconti, the Duke of Milan, whose father, Gian Galeazzo, Niccolò had previously been in league against.

He was succeeded as Marquis of Ferrara by his illegitimate son, Leonello d’Este, who concentrated on sponsoring the arts and literature to the benefit of the city.

The entrance to Via Garibaldi from Piazza Municipio

Travel tip:

The d’Este family ruled the city of Ferrara in Emilia-Romagna between 1240 and 1598. You can still see the narrow, medieval streets to the west and south of the city centre, between the main thoroughfares of Via Ripa Grande and Via Garibaldi, which were the original core of the city in the middle ages.

Hotels in Ferrara by Hotels.com

Travel tip:

Building work on the magnificent, moated Este Castle (Castello Estense) began two years after Niccolò’s birth and it was added to and improved by successive rulers of Ferrara until the end of the Este line. The castle was purchased for 70,000 lire by the province of Ferrara in 1874 to be used as the headquarters of the Prefecture.

(Photo of Via Garibaldi by Geobia via Wikimedia Commons)

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