Bruno Tonioli - dance show judge

Dancer and choreographer is star of Strictly Come Dancing

Strictly Come Dancing judge Bruno Tonioli

Dancer, choreographer and television dance show judge Bruno Tonioli was born on this day in 1955 in Ferrara in north-east Italy.

Tonioli is one of the judging panel of Strictly Come Dancing on British TV and on its US equivalent Dancing With the Stars, which requires him to divide his time between London and New York when seasons overlap.

He began his showbusiness career in the 1980s as a member of the Paris-based dance company La Grande Eugène before moving into the music industry as a choreographer.

Among the artists he has worked with are Tina Turner, Sting, Elton John, the Rolling Stones, Freddie Mercury, Sinitta, Boy George, Dead or Alive, and Duran Duran.

Tonioli has also worked on numerous films and television shows including Little Voice, The Gathering Storm, Dancin' thru the Dark and Enigma.

He also has a number of acting credits, including the role of Peppino, manservant to Michael Gambon's Oscar Wilde in the BBC production Oscar.  Tonioli appeared as himself in the movie version of the BBC comedy Absolutely Fabulous.

Renowned for his flamboyantly wild gestures and amusingly extravagant comments, Tonioli has been a member of the Strictly Come Dancing team since the show's launch in 2004 and is now into his 14th series alongside fellow ever-presents Len Goodman and Craig Revel-Horwood.  He was hired to judge on Dancing With the Stars when that show launched in 2005.

Bruno Tonioli is renowned for his wild gestures

The son of a bus driver, Werther Tonioli, and a seamstress mother, Fulvia, Tonioli was 12 before the family could afford their own apartment in Ferrara. Until then they had lived with his father's parents.

He knew from an early age that he was gay, although he said in a newspaper interview in 2005 that the subject of his sexuality was never discussed at home.  He believes his parents, who were strict Catholics, would not have wanted to contemplate the possibility at the time, although not out of shame but for fear of how others might judge him.

He said he was bullied and threatened at school but fought back by growing his hair long, smoking expensive cigarettes, wearing the latest in cool clothes and becoming friends with the best-looking girls among his peer group, after which he became popular and acceptable.

Tonioli's love of the theatre began when he the film version of the musical Cabaret, starring Liza Minnelli, came to Ferrara in 1972.  He saw it eight times and realised he wanted dance to be his career. Others boys of his age wanted to play football but he was much more interested in theatre and the arts.

His parents were keen for him to find a steady job, perhaps in a bank.  Instead, he left for Rome to enrol at ballet school, leaving Italy for Paris at the age of 18.  Both his parents are now dead but he says he was reconciled with them long before they passed away.

From Paris he moved to London, joining another dance company and finding work in television and the West End as a choreographer.  The English capital has been his home almost ever since.

The Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara

Travel tip:

Apart from the impressively well preserved Castello Estense right at the heart of the city, Ferrara - situated midway between Bologna and Venice in Emilia-Romagna - has many notable architectural gems, including many palaces from the 14th and 15th centuries.  Among them is the striking Palazzo dei Diamanti, so-called because the stone blocks of its facade are cut into the shape of diamonds. The palace holds the National Picture Gallery, which houses many works from the  masters of the 16th-century School of Ferrara, including Lorenzo Costa, Dosso Dossi, Girolamo da Carpi and Benvenuto Tisi.

Travel tip:

Rome's prestigious ballet school of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma was established in 1928 and is one of the oldest and most respected vocational schools in Italy. It can be found in Via Ozieri in a charming cottage set in a secluded and quiet street in the San Giovanni neighbourhood to the south-east of the city, near the ruins of the Felice Aqueduct. Director Luchino Visconti in 1951 chose it as the location for shooting some scenes of his film Beautiful, starring the Roman actress Anna Magnani.


Books: Bruno: My Story, by Bruno Tonioli (Headline)

More reading:

Antonio Carluccio - chef and restaurateur who settled in London

How Luca Zingaretti found fame as TV detective Montalbano

Pierina Legnani - Italian dancer who conquered St Petersburg

Also on this day:

1881: The Birth of Angelo Roncalli, the Bergamo farmer's son who became Pope John XXIII

(Picture credits: Bruno Tonioli pictures from YouTube; Palazzo dei Diamante by Sansa55 via Wikimedia Commons)

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Lucky Luciano - Mafia boss

Sicilian who brought order among warring clans

Charles 'Lucky' Luciano, pictured in Italy in 1948, after
he had been deported by the American authorities

Charles 'Lucky' Luciano, the mobster best known for shaping the structure of Italian-dominated organized crime in the United States, was born Salvatore Lucania on this day in 1897 in Lercara Friddi, a town about 70km (44 miles) south-east of the Sicilian capital, Palermo.

Raised in New York's Lower East Side after his family emigrated in 1906, it was Luciano who famously put the New York underworld into the control of the so-called Five Families and also set up The Commission, which served as a governing body for organized crime nationwide.

After he was jailed in 1936 on extortion and prostitution charges, Luciano is said to have struck a deal with the American authorities to use his criminal connections to help the Allies in their invasion of Sicily, a vital first step in driving the German forces and their supporters out of the Italian peninsula.

In return he was given parole and allowed to return to Sicily at the end of the Second World War.

Luciano, whose father, Antonio, had worked in a sulphur mine in Lercara Friddi, began his life in crime as a teenager, when he set up his own gang and became friends with Jewish gang members Meyer Lansky and his associate Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, who would become two of his most important allies.

He grew powerful during the prohibition era of the 1920s, which created opportunities for criminals to make a lot of money. By 1925, he was grossing $12 million dollars a year and had met many of New York's future Mafia leaders, including Vito Genovese and Frank Costello.  He had also begun working for another big hitter, the Lower Manhattan gang boss Joe Masseria.

Vito Genovese, an ally of Luciano

Caught up in the Castellammarese war - so-called because it involved Mafia bosses from the Castellammare del Golfo area of Sicily - he assumed control of one of the Five Families by eliminating both main protagonists, Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano, after both tried to have him killed.

In doing so he took his place alongside such infamous figures as Joseph Bonanno, Joseph Profaci, Tommy Gagliano and Vincent Mangano - but it was Luciano whose 'family', later known as the Genovese family, had the greater reach.

Yet rather than seeking to make himself still more powerful, he was keen that the gangs stopped fighting among themselves and concentrated on maximising profits. To that end, Luciano sought to create a national organized-crime network to settle disputes and establish demarcation lines between the different operations.

He forged links with crime bosses in other cities, including Chicago's Al Capone, in what became known as The Commission.

Luciano's wealth enabled him to live at New York's luxurious Waldorf Towers, part of the Waldorf Astoria hotel, under the name Charles Ross.

But his luck ran out in 1936 when he was convicted on extortion and prostitution charges, sentenced to 30 to 50 years in jail and sent to a correctional facility in New York State which was known as "Siberia" because of its remote location near the Canadian border.

His appeals against conviction were rejected and it seemed he was destined to spend the rest of his life behind bars, but then came the opportunity to use his influence in New York and Sicily to help the Allied war effort in Europe.

He was contacted by the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, who used Meyer Lansky as an intermediary, for help in stopping German and Italian agents entering the United States through the New York waterfront, which the mobs controlled.

Then, as the Allies prepared for the 1943 invasion of Sicily, Luciano is also said to have provided the Americans with Sicilian Mafia contacts.  In return, he was given parole and deported back to Sicily.

Carlo Gambino, the gang boss who delivered
the eulogy at Luciano's funeral in New York

It was not the end of his career in crime.  Although he remained in Sicily in the immediate post-war months, he secretly moved to Havana in Cuba in 1946, meeting up again with Lansky and Siegel in the hope that he could resume control of his operations in New York from a base closer to the United States.

By 1947, however, his presence in Cuba had been discovered by U.S. agents, who alerted the Cuban government, after which he was sent back to Italy.

He was thereafter kept under close surveillance, although still maintaining his criminal activities in New York via his lieutenant, Frank Costello, eventually helping Carlo Gambino, a fellow Sicilian and a longtime friend, to become the most powerful gang boss in New York.

Luciano died in January 1962 at Naples Airport, suffering a heart attack shortly after meeting an American producer to discuss a film about his life.

After a relatively small funeral in Naples, Luciano's body was returned to the United States. After a second funeral, attended by 2,000 mourners, at which Gambino delivered the eulogy, he was buried in the family's vault at St. John's Cemetery in Queens, New York, under his birth name of Salvatore Lucania.

Travel tip:

Lercara Friddi, which features some remains of a Greek colony dating back to the eighth century BC, was once notable for its sulphur mine, the only one in the province of Palermo.  As well as being the home town of Salvatore Lucania, it was the birthplace five years earlier of Saverio Antonio Martino Sinatra, who emigrated to the United States in 1903 and married Natalie Garaventa, from Liguria.  They settled in New Jersey where, in 1915, Natalie gave birth to their only child, Francis Albert Sinatra.

Hotels in Palermo by Hotels.com

The harbour at Castellammare del Golfo

Travel tip:

Castellammare del Golfo is a fishing town and tourist resort in the province of Trapani on the northern coast of Sicily, west of Palermo.  It is also noted for having been the birthplace of many American Mafia figures, including Salvatore Maranzano, Stefano Magaddino, Vito Bonventre, John Tartamella, and Joseph Bonanno.

More reading:

Carlo Gambino, the Sicilian mob boss thought to be the model for 'The Godfather' Vito Corleone in Mario Puzo's novel

Paolo di Lauro - Camorra boss captured in Carabinieri swoop

Joe Petrosino - Calabrian who became crime-fighting New York cop

Also on this day:

1826: Birth of Carlo Collodi, creator of Pinocchio

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Ludovico Einaudi – composer

Musician world famous for his unique blend of sounds

Ludovico Einaudi takes the applause after a
performance at the Palazzo del Quirinale 

Pianist and film music composer Ludovico Maria Enrico Einaudi was born on this day in 1955 in Turin.

Einaudi has composed the music for films such as The Intouchables and I’m Still Here and has released many solo albums for piano and orchestra.

His distinctive music, which mixes classical with contemporary rhythms of rock and electronic, is now played all over the world and has been used as background music and in television commercials.

Einaudi’s mother, Renata Aldrovandi, played the piano to him as a child and her father, Waldo Aldrovandi, was a pianist, opera conductor and composer, who went to live in Australia after the Second World War.

Einaudi's grandfather, Luigi Einaudi, was
President of Italy from 1948 to 1955

His father, Giulio Einaudi, was a publisher, who worked with authors Italo Calvino and Primo Levi, and his grandfather, Luigi Einaudi, was President of Italy between 1948 and 1955.

Einaudi started composing his own music and playing it on a folk guitar when he was a teenager.

He began his musical training at the Conservatorio Verdi in Milan, obtaining a diploma in composition in 1982. He took an orchestration class with the composer Luciano Berio, in which, according to Einaudi himself, he learnt to have a very open way of thinking about music.

He started by composing in traditional forms and some of his music was performed at Teatro alla Scala and the Arena in Verona.

Listen to Einaudi's beautiful Due Tramonti from his album Eden Roc

By the mid 1980s, Einaudi had begun to express himself more personally in the music he created for theatre, video, dance and film. 

He composed the music for Acquario in 1996, for which he won the Grolla D’Oro, an Italian film award, for the best sound track.

In 2000 his sound track for the film Fuori del mondo was nominated for an Oscar and he won the Echo Klassic award for it in Germany in 2002. Einaudi also won the award for best soundtrack at the 2002 Italian Music Awards for the film Luce dei miei occhi.

In 2004, his soundtrack for Sotto falso nome won a prize at the Avignon Film Festival. Einaudi has written the scores for, or had his music included, in many other films.

Le Onde, Ludovico Einaudi's first solo piano album

His first solo piano album, Le Onde was released in 1996 and has been followed by a string of successes. Divenire, in 2007, considered the most musically ambitious, has been his greatest commercial success to date. The latest, Elements, featuring piano, electronic and orchestral music was released in 2015.

Einaudi has travelled all over the world performing his own music. His concerts in Birmingham last night and in Glasgow tonight, the evening of his birthday, have both sold out in advance of the performance and his concerts in Milan from December 8 to13 are already sell-outs.

In 2005, Einaudi was awarded the Ordine al Merito della Repubblic Italiana (OMRI), a senior order bestowed by the Italian Republic, which is the equivalent of a Knighthood.

Turin's Piazza Castello

Travel tip:

Turin, where Einaudi was born, is the capital city of the region of Piedmont in the north of Italy. It is an important business centre, particularly for the car industry, and has a rich history linked with the Savoy Kings of Italy. Piazza Castello, with the royal palace, royal library and Palazzo Madama, which used to house the Italian senate, is at the heart of royal Turin.



Travel tip:

Einaudi followed in the footsteps of many famous Italian composers by receiving a musical education at Milan’s Conservatory of Music (Conservatorio di Musica ‘Giuseppe Verdi’), which is in Via Conservatorio, just off Via Pietro Mascagni, behind the Duomo. It is just a short walk from there to Teatro alla Scala in Piazza della Scala, with its fascinating museum focusing on the history of opera. 

More reading:

Ennio Morricone - the maestro of the film soundtrack

How The Godfather turned Nino Rota into a household name

Eros Ramazotti - bestselling singer-songwriter

Also on this day:

1553: Born: Prospero Alpini - the botanist who told Europe about coffee 

(Picture credits: pictures of Ludovico Einaudi and Luigi Einaudi courtesy of Presidenza della Repubblica; Piazza Castello by cheniyuan; all via Wikimedia Commons)

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Nevio Scala - footballer and coach

Led Parma to success in golden era of 1990s

Nevio Scala led Parma to unprecedented
success after taking charge in 1989

Nevio Scala, a European Cup winner with AC Milan as a player and the most successful coach of Parma's golden era in the 1990s, was born on this day in 1947 in Lozzo Atestino, a small town in the Euganean Hills, just south of Padua.

A midfielder who also played for Roma, Vicenza and Internazionale at the top level of Italian football, Scala was never picked for his country but won a Serie A title and a European Cup-Winners' Cup in addition to the European Cup with AC Milan.

But his achievements with Parma as coach arguably exceeded even that, given that they were a small provincial club that had never played in Serie A when Scala was appointed.

He had given notice of his ability by almost taking the tiny Calabrian club Reggina to Serie A in 1989 only a year after winning promotion from Serie C, and needed only one season to take Parma to the top flight for the first time.

With the massive financial backing of Calisto Tanzi, the founder and chairman of the local dairy giants Parmalat, Scala then led Parma into a period of sustained success no one could have predicted.

With a galaxy of top international players at his disposal, including Tomas Brolin, Antonio Benarrivo, Gianfranco Zola and Faustino Asprilla, Scala coached his side to play a swashbuckling brand of football that took the established big hitters by surprise.

Gianfranco Zola, one of the stars of the
Parma team of the 1990s

Between 1991 and 1995, Parma won the Coppa Italia, the European Cup-Winners' Cup, the European Super Cup and the UEFA Cup and the team Scala handed over when he was replaced by Carlo Ancelotti in 1996 went on to finish runners-up in Serie A in 1997.

He went on to enjoy more success as a coach, but outside Italy, winning trophies in Germany with Borussia Dortmund, in the Ukraine with Shakhtar Donetsk and in Russia with Spartak Moscow.

Scala returned to live in his home town of Lozzo Atestino, where he served on the local council and ran unsuccessfully as mayor in 2007.

He moved into football punditry on radio and TV with state broadcaster Rai, making regular appearances on the Sunday evening TV review of the Serie A programme, Domenica Sportiva. 

He was linked with a return to coaching, first at the Scottish club Motherwell and later with AS. Roma.  When he did return to football in 2015 it was as president of Parma, although a very different Parma from the one he coached.

Since he left the Stadio Ennio Tardini, Parma has twice been made bankrupt, first in 2004 in the wake of the catastrophic collapse of Calisto Tanzi's Parmalat empire, which saw the business tycoon jailed for fraud and criminal association, and again in 2015, when the relaunched club folded with debts of €218 million.

In July 2015, with the support of pasta makers Barilla, the club made another fresh start as SSD Parma Calcio 1913, taking its name from the year of foundation of the original club and was granted entry to Serie D.

Scala was appointed president and former player Luigi Apolloni as head coach.  The new club sold more than 9,000 season tickets, more than doubling the Serie D record and won promotion at the first attempt into professional football league Lega Pro.

The 13th century Valbona Castle at Lozzo Atestino

Travel tip:

The Colli Euganei, to give the Euganean Hills their Italian name, was the first regional park to be established in the Veneto when it was mapped out in 1989, enclosing 15 towns, including Lozzo Atestino, and the 81 hills - rising to between 300 and 600m - that make up the area, a volcanic outcrop in an otherwise flat terrain. Lozzo Atestino is situated at the foot of Monte Lozzo.  Of particular interest to visitors is the 13th century Valbona Castle, an imposing fort that now houses a restaurant.


Travel tip:

Despite the damage done to its economy by the Parmalat collapse, one of the biggest financial scandals in Italian history, Parma remains an elegant city with the air of prosperity common to much of Emilia-Romagna, famous for Prosciutto di Parma and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, and boasting some outstanding architecture, including the 11th century Romanesque cathedral and the octagonal 12th century baptistery that adjoins it.

More reading:

Antonio Conte - former Juventus coach now in charge at Chelsea

The birth of Italy's first football club

The story of Italy's World Cup winning coach Marcello Lippi

Also on this day:

1710: The death of composer Bernardo Pasquini


(Picture of Nevio Scala by Anastasiya Fedorenko; Gianfranco Zola by Hilton1949; Valbona Castle by Milazzi; all via Wikimedia Commons)

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