Gian Maria Volonté – actor

Brilliant talent who played ‘spaghetti western’ parts for fun

Volonté in his role as the police chief in Elio Petri's
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)

Gian Maria Volonté, recognised as one of the finest character actors Italy has produced, was born on this day in 1933 in Milan.

Trained at the Silvio D’Amico National Academy of the Dramatic Arts in Rome, Volonté became famous outside Italy for playing the villain to Clint Eastwood’s hero in two movies in Sergio Leone’s western trilogy that were part of a genre dubbed the ‘spaghetti westerns’.

However, he insisted he accepted the chance to appear in A Fistful of Dollars (1964) – in which he appeared under the pseudonym John Wells - and For a Few Dollars More (1964) simply to earn some money and did not regard the parts of Ramon and El Indio as serious.

In Italy, it was for the much heavier roles given to him by respected directors such as Elio Petri and Francesco Rosi that he won huge critical acclaim.

A person known for a tempestuous private life, he was very strong playing complex and neurotic characters, while his left-wing political leanings attracted him to roles in which he had to portray individuals from real life.

He was a particular favourite of Rosi, the neo-realist director who directed in him in five movies, including the acclaimed The Mattei Affair (1972), in which he played an oil company executive whose death in a plane crash in Sicily aroused suspicion, and Lucky Luciano (1973), in which he portrayed the Sicilian-American Mafia boss controversially released from a 30-year prison sentence in the United States in return for helping the Allies with the 1943 invasion of Sicily.

Volonté played the writer Carlo Levi in Francesco Rosi's
1979 film Christ Stopped at Eboli

Rosi also cast him as the Jewish-Italian anti-Fascist writer Carlo Levi in Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979)

Other famous roles included that of a television journalist in Swiss director Claude Goretta's Death of Mario Ricci (1983), which won him the him the Golden Palm at the Cannes International Film Festival.

Volonte also played the Italian-born anarchist Nicola Sacco in Sacco and Vanzetti, the 1971 film by Giuliano Montaldo, a courageous Sicilian judge in Fascist Italy in Gianni Amelio's 1990 movie Open Doors, which was chosen as European film of the year at Cannes, and played the Christian Democrat leader and former prime minister Aldo Moro, whose kidnapping and murder in 1978 at the hands of Red Brigade terrorists shook Italy, in Giuseppe Ferrara’s Il caso Moro (1986).

His films under Petri’s direction included  We Still Kill the Old Way (1967), which won the Grand Prix du Scenario at the Cannes Film Festival, and  Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970), for which Volonte won one of his three Nastro d'Argento (Silver Ribbon) awards - the most prestigious acting award in Italy, and which won an Oscar for best foreign-language film.

The part of the kidnapped former prime minister Aldo Moro
was played by Volonté in Giuseppe Ferrara's Il caso Moro

Volonté’s politics seemed to be rooted in his upbringing. Although born in Milan, he was brought up in Turin. His father, Mario, was a Fascist militiaman who was arrested for allegedly arranging the murder of some partisans. He died while awaiting trial, leaving his family facing poverty. Volonté hated the Fascists from that point onwards.

He left school at 14 to find work so that he could support his mother.  One of the jobs he took was with a travelling theatre company, initially as a wardrobe assistant and secretary, but eventually developing a desire to act, and being granted parts.

It was the realisation that he had some talent as an actor that persuaded him to move to Rome and enrol at the Silvio D’Amico Academy.  After graduating in 1957, he worked in the theatre and television, appearing in adaptations of Dostoyevski's Idiot, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Vittorio Alfieri's Saul.

He was soon recognised as one of the most promising of the new generation of actors and his movie debut followed in 1960.

Volonté made no apologies for his political leanings.  A member of the Italian Communist Party, he was arrested in 1971 during a demonstration by workers striking for higher wages and better working conditions and helped his friend and fellow Communist Oreste Scalzone to flee the country after he was sentenced to 16 years in jail on charges of terrorism Volonté believed were false.

He stood as a candidate for the Democratic Party of the Left in the 1992 general election.

Married twice, Volonté had a child, Giovanna, with the actress Carla Divina, his partner for 10 years, before spending the last years of his life with another actress, Angelica Ippolito, with whom he lived in Velletri, a town in the Colli Albani (Alban Hills), just south of Rome.

He died in 1994 of a heart attack while filming on location in Greece and was laid to rest at a small cemetery on the Sardinian island, Isola della Maddalena.

The Silvio D'Amico academy, where Volonté trained, is in
Via Vincenzo Bellini in Rome's Municipio II district

Travel tip:

Rome’s National Academy of the Dramatic Arts was founded in 1936 by the writer and critic Silvio D’Amico, whose name was attached to the academy after his death. After occupying a number of premises, the academy settled in a building on Via Vincenzo Bellini in the Municipio II district, just beyond the Borghese Gardens and about 10 minutes’ drive from the centre of the city.

Hotels in Rome from Hotels.com

Velletri's Porta Napoletana formed part of the city walls

Travel tip:

Velletri is traditionally a walled city. Its original walls were demolished by the Romans in 338 BC but rebuilt in the Middle Ages, giving the town the appearance of a huge castle.  The walls had six gates, the best preserved of which is Porta Napoletana, built in 1511 and which is now home to a branch of the Italian Sommelier Association.


More reading:

How neo-realism and documentary style put Francesco Rosi among greats of Italian cinema

Sergio Leone - from 'spaghetti westerns' to gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America

The tragedy of Aldo Moro

Also on this day:

1454: The Treaty of Lodi ends fighting between rival northern states

1948: The birth of veteran pop singer Patty Pravo

(Picture credits: Porta Napoletana by Deblu68 via Wikimedia Commons)

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Federico Caprilli - equestrian pioneer

Study of horses revolutionised jumping techniques

Federico Caprilli in his cavalry uniform

Federico Caprilli, the Italian cavalry officer who revolutionised the way horse riders jump fences, was born on this day in 1868 in Livorno.

One of four children born to Enrico Caprilli and his wife, Elvira, Federico was bent on an army career from an early age. He enrolled as a cadet at military college in Florence at 13 years old, subsequently transferring to Rome and then Modena. He had no riding experience at the start, and when he graduated with the rank of lieutenant, though an excellent gymnast and proficient fencer, his horsemanship was marked as ‘poor’.

Nonetheless, he was assigned to the Royal Piedmont cavalry regiment, where his job, at a time when the introduction of weapons such as the Gatling Gun was negating any battlefield advantage a soldier had from being mounted, was to train horses for new combat roles, such as springing surprise attacks in difficult terrain.

It was there that he observed the way horses jumped obstacles and concluded that conventional beliefs about the way a horse should be ridden over jumps were entirely wrong.

Until Caprilli came along, it was accepted that the rider should use long stirrups and approach a fence leaning back in the saddle, legs stretched almost straight.  A sharp pull on the horse’s head was seen as the way to launch the jump.

This antique hunting scene shows a rider in typical
jumping position, leaning backwards

Antique prints of hunting scenes inevitably show the rider in this position, leaning backwards in the saddle and appearing to jump fences in hope rather than any expectation of making a safe landing.

No one questioned this, even though the riding position was essentially the same as was employed in the middle ages, when heavy suits of armour compelled the rider to sit bolt upright.  The accepted wisdom, too, was that landing on its front legs was bad for the horse, especially carrying the additional weight of a rider, and that it should be encouraged to land on its hind legs, or at least on all four legs.

In fact, horses often injured themselves as a result of this flawed technique, either through catching the obstacle with their trailing hind legs or developing back problems.  What’s more, the jab in the mouth as the rider yanked on the reins often caused them to refuse to jump.

Caprilli, who used the relatively new device of photography to underline his findings, observed that when they jumped freely, with no rider, horses always landed on their front legs and were none the worse for it.

As a result, he devised a technique whereby the rider adopted a forward position, slightly out of the saddle, his upper body in line with the horse’s neck, his centre of gravity directly over the horse’s, and with no pressure applied to the animal’s mouth.  Caprilli also instructed his riders to allow the horse to think for itself about how it approached an obstacle and when it took off.

Caprilli's technique is demonstrated perfectly
by this rider at Badminton in 2008

The results were startling. Horses were suddenly much more willing to jump obstacles and were able to negotiate banks and ditches much more nimbly than before.  In short, they were ready to operate in terrain that would previously have been off limits.

Yet far from being congratulated, Caprilli received a frosty response from his superiors, who did not take kindly to their faith in the old methods being exposed as foolish.  Rumours, which it is suspected were false, began to circulate about his private life, of romantic entanglements with aristocratic wives, and he was posted to the south of Italy, out of harm’s way.

However, he continued to hone his techniques and when word of his excellent results in equestrian competitions reached his old regiment’s headquarters in Pinerolo in Piedmont, he was summoned back.

He was made chief instructor at the Cavalry School of Pinerolo as well as its subsidiary in Tor di Quinto (near Rome). After a year of training, riders who attended the schools were able to negotiate the jumps and obstacles of the training circuit even without reins.

Soon, as the Italian cavalry began to dominate international competition, riders came from countries around the world to study Caprilli's system and it became the new standard for any form of equestrian pursuit that involved jumping.

Caprilli died in slightly mysterious circumstances in 1907, when his body was found on a cobbled path in Pinerolo.  It was suggested that he had been attacked by a jealous husband or a resentful superior but there were no obvious signs that he had met his death in that way and it was concluded that his mount must have slipped on some ice, throwing him off, and that he had hit his head on the cobbles.

The duomo in Piazza San Donato in Pinerolo

Travel tip:

Pinerolo is a beautiful town in the shadow of the alps, some 50km (31 miles) south-west of Turin.  It has a charming main square, the Piazza San Donato, overlooked by the cathedral of the same name, which dates back to the ninth century and which has a Romanesque bell tower and a Gothic façade. The church of Santa Croce, in Vicolo Barone, is another picturesque sight.

The commemorative plaque outside 115 Viale Italia

Travel tip:

In Livorno, where Caprilli was born, a commem- orative plaque marks the family home in Viale Italia, at number 115.  He was honoured in 1937 when the local horse racing track was renamed Ippodromo Federico Caprilli. At one time it boasted a fully illuminated track and could accommodate crowds of up to 10,000 spectators but it closed in 2016 after the company that owned it went out of business.

More reading:

Frankie Dettori - Milan-born jockey among all-time greats

The traditional horse race, the Palio di Siena

Luigi Beccali - Italy's first Olympic track gold medallist

Also on this day:

1848: The death of operatic genius Gaetano Donizetti


(Picture credits: Horse jumping by Henry Bucklow; Pinerolo duomo by Mattana; plaque by Piergiuliano Chesi; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Domenico Dragonetti - musician

Venetian was best double bass player in Europe

Domenico Dragonetti: a lithograph from the
New York City Public Library collection

The composer and musician Domenico Dragonetti  - Europe's finest double bass virtuoso - was born on this day in 1763 in Venice.

Apart from the fame his talent brought him, Dragonetti is remembered as the musician who opened the eyes of Ludwig van Beethoven and other composers to the potential of the double bass.

They met in Vienna in 1799 and experts believe it was Dragonetti’s influence that led Beethoven to include passages for double bass in his Fifth Symphony.

From 1794 onwards until his death in 1846 at the age of 83, Dragonetti lived in London but it was in Venice that he established his reputation.

The son of a barber who was also a musician, Domenico Carlo Maria Dragonetti taught himself to play the guitar and the double bass as a child using his father’s instruments.  It was not long before word of his precocious ability spread and he was sent to the Ducal Palace of San Marco for tuition from Michele Berini, who was widely respected as the best double bass player in Venice.

Berini declared after only 11 lessons that there was nothing more he could teach the young Dragonetti, who at the age of just 13 was appointed principal player in opera buffa, the comic opera genre that was becoming popular in Venice, possibly at Teatro San Moisé, Teatro San Cassiano or Teatro San Samuele.  A year later, he was made principal double bass player in the mainstream, serious opera at Teatro San Benedetto.

Dragonetti with his three-
stringed da Salò double bass

In 1787 he was accepted for the orchestra at the Chapel of San Marco, who valued him so highly they twice increased his annual salary to stop him going to Russia, where the Tsar was keen to recruit him.  Such was his dexterity with the instrument he was given solo pieces to perform, which was highly unusual.

An example of Dragonett's ability to exploit the potential of the instrument came when he was staying at the Monastery of St Giustina in Padua, where he produced a sound that woke the monks in the middle of the night, thinking it was thunder.

In 1794, the Chapel of San Marco agreed that he could accept an invitation to play at the King’s Theatre in London and gave him paid leave for a year.  In the event, he settled in England and never returned for more than brief visits.

He made his debut at the King’s Theatre in December 1794 and within only a few months had become famous. He was able to provide for his extended family in Venice with his earnings, but also invested in art and purchased musical instruments previously owned by Stradivari, Maggini, and Montagnana, which he would later bequeath to members of the orchestra.

He became a prominent figure in the musical events of the English capital, performing at the concerts of the Philharmonic Society of London.  Prominent figures in London society, such as the Prince Consort and the Duke of Leinster, would invite him to play in private concerts. He and his close friend, the cellist Robert Lindley, found themselves in demand across Europe and embarked on many tours.

A bust of Gasparo da Salò, in Salò on the
shores of Lake Garda

In 1795, on a visit to London, the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn met Dragonetti and they became friends. In turn, Haydn invited Dragonetti to Vienna, where he was introduced to Beethoven. He also became acquainted with Paganini, Spohr, Hummel, Liszt and Rossini. He collaborated with many composers but also wrote several pieces for double bass in his own right.

Dragonetti was unusually tall for an Italian of his era and blessed with formidable strength and stamina, which was one factor that helped him get so much out of the instrument, playing parts that many double bass players would have thought impossible.

His favoured instrument was a massive, three-stringed bass made by the renowned luthier Gasparo da Salò, which he kept all of his life, turning down a number of offers, including one of 20,000 lire.  There are different stories as to how he acquired the instrument. One says he was given it by the Benedictine nuns of St Peter's monastery in Vicenza, where Dragonetti lived while he was paying in the Grand Opera. Another says it was bought from the monks of St Peter's by the Chapel of San Marco and given to Dragonetti as an enticement to stay.

The bow with which he played, which evolved during his career to suit his physical size and style of playing, became known as the Dragonetti bow.

He died at his lodgings in Leicester Square in central London in April 1846. He was buried initially in the vaults of the Roman Catholic Chapel of St Mary, Moorfields. In 1889 his remains were moved to the Roman Catholic cemetery at Wembley.

The Teatro San Benedetto in its heydey

Travel tip:

None of the Venice theatres – the San Moisé,  the San Cassiano or the San Samuele – in which Dragonetti might have played in opera buffa exists today. The San Benedetto closed in the early 20th century and was remodelled as a cinema.  Renamed Teatro Rossini in 1868 in honour of the composer Gioachino Rossini, it reopened as the Cinema Rossini in 1937. Nowadays, the building, in Salizzada de la Chiesa o del Teatro, which is between Teatro la Fenice and the Grand Canal in the San Marco district, holds a multi-screen cinema.


Travel tip:

Dragonetti’s prized da Salò double bass is said to have been stored in a room in Venice for 150 years after his death, where it inevitably fell into disrepair. However, the Venice authorities had the good sense to hire the modern-day luthier Sergio Scaramelli to restore the 400-year-old instrument in 2007 and it is now on display in the museum inside the Basilica di San Marco.

Let TripAdvisor advise on Venice hotels

More reading:

Giovanni Battista Pergoloesi - genius of opera buffa

The beautiful music of Antonio Vivaldi

La Fenice opera house destroyed by fire

Also on this day:

1794: The birth of opera singer Gianni Battista Rubini

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Saint Gerard Majella

Patron saint of expectant mothers

St Gerard Majella

Gerardo Maiella, a poor tailor from what is now Basilicata who became the Catholic Church’s patron saint of expectant mothers, was born on this day in 1726.

Maiella, from the hillside town of Muro Lucano near Potenza, then part of the Kingdom of Naples, was credited with a number of miracles. The one that led him to be associated with childbirth relates to a handkerchief he dropped when visiting a family as a lay brother of the Congregation of the Redeemer, having become famous locally on account of his supposedly mystical powers.

According to the story, one of the daughters of the family picked up the handkerchief and ran out of the house to return it to him, at which he told her to keep it, suggesting  she ‘might need it some day’.  Years later, as a pregnant young woman fearing for her life in a painfully difficult labour, she remembered his words and asked for the handkerchief to be placed on her. Immediately, the pain ceased and she gave birth to a healthy child.

At the time, only about one in three pregnancies ended in a live birth and Maiella was hailed for his miraculous intervention. Word spread of the story and Italian mothers adopted him as their patron.

He was beatified in January 1893 by Pope Leo XIII and canonised as Saint Gerard Majella in December 1904 by Pope Pius X.

A statue of the Saint in Wittem, in the Netherlands

The youngest of five children, Gerardo was the son of a tailor who died when he was 12, leaving the family in poverty.

His mother sent him to her brother’s workshop so that he could learn his father’s trade. Despite being bullied by the foreman of the workshop, Gerardo saw out his four-year apprenticeship and after a period working as a servant to the Bishop of Lacedonia he set about making a living from his new skills, first as an employee of other tailors, then in his own shop. He reputedly gave his mother a third of what he earned to keep him and his three surviving sisters, distributing the rest among the poor people of his town and making offerings for the souls in purgatory.

Rejected twice by the Capuchin Order on the grounds of his frail appearance and supposedly poor health, in 1749 he joined the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer - also known as Redemptorists – an order founded in 1732 by St Alphonsus Liguori at Scala, near Naples, with a mission to preach the word of God to the poor.

St Gerard's Church at Lostock Hall,
near Preston in Lancashire

Maiella took the vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience. He remained the friend of the poor and worked on behalf of the order in many different jobs. He was said to have the gift of reading consciences and was permitted to counsel communities of religious women.

His intercession is now sought not only for expectant mothers but unborn children, women in childbirth, mothers generally, good confessions and, somewhat incongruously, falsely accused people.

This stemmed from an incident when Maiella was accused maliciously of breaking his vows by having a relationship with a young woman. When confronted by Alphonsus Liguori about the accusation, Gerardo remained silent. The girl later admitted the accusation was a lie and cleared his name.

Among other miracles credited to him were restoring life to a boy who had seemingly fallen to his death from a cliff, blessing the small amount of wheat possessed by an impoverished family so that it lasted for a year, multiplying the loaves of bread he was distributing to the poor and even walking across the surface of a stormy sea to rescue a stricken fishing boat.

Suffering from tuberculosis, Gerardo died in the chapel of Santa Maria Materdomini in Caposele, some 35km (22 miles) from Muro Lucano, where he was serving the Redemptorist order as clerk of works for a building project, on October 16, 1755, the date which is commemorated each year as St Gerard’s feast day.

The Basilica di San Gerardo developed from the chapel
in Materdomini where Maiella died 

There are churches in many parts of the world dedicated to St Gerard, the first of which was built in 1908 in Wellington, New Zealand.

In England, the town of Preston and the city of Bristol have churches named in his honour, as does Bellshill in the Scottish county of Lanarkshire.

There are Catholic parishes dedicated to St Gerard Majella in the Borough of Queens in New York and in the Del Rey section of Los Angeles, while St Gerard's Chapel in St Lucy's Church in Newark, New Jersey has since 1977 been a national shrine.

Muro Lucano perches on a hillside near Potenza

Travel tip:

Muro Lucano is situated about 50km (31 miles) north-west of Potenza.  With a population of around 5,500 it is built on a slope overlooking the Muro ravine, its houses built on a series of terraces. The area has significance in history as the site of a battle between Hannibal and Marcellus in the second Punic War, while its castle is said to have witnessed the murder of Queen Joan of Naples on the orders of her adopted son, Charles III of Naples.

Travel tip:

The village of Materdomini, a frazione of Caposele, grew from a hamlet after the chapel of Santa Maria Materdomini was developed into the Basilica of Santa Gerardo Maiella and became a centre for pilgrimage dedicated to the worship of St Gerard.

More reading:

How the festival of San Gennaro is celebrated across the world

The missionary saint from Limone sul Garda

Why St Thomas Aquinas is so important among saints

Also on this day:

1483: The birth of Renaissance great Raphael

(Picture credits: Saint Gerard by Nashastudiya; Wittem statue by Kris Roderburg; Mura Lucano by Pitichinaccio; San Gerardo Basilica by Gerrusson; all via Wikimedia Commons)




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