Ezio Pinza - opera and Broadway star

Poor boy from Rome who made his home at the Met

Ezio Pinza

The opera star Ezio Pinza, who had 22 seasons at the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1926 to 1948 and sang to great acclaim at many other of the world’s most famous opera houses, was born on this day in 1892 in Rome.

Pinza, a bass who was blessed with a smooth and rich voice and matinee idol looks, also had a successful career in musical theatre on Broadway and appeared in a number of Hollywood films.

Born Fortunio Pinza in relative poverty in Rome, he was the seventh child born to his parents Cesare and Clelia but the first to survive.  He was brought up many miles away in Ravenna, which is close to the Adriatic coast, about 85km (53 miles) from Bologna and 144km (90 miles) from Venice.

He dropped out of Ravenna University but studied singing at Bologna’s Conservatorio Martini and made his opera debut at Cremona in 1914 in Bellini’s Norma.

Pinza signed up to fight for his country in the First World War, after which he resumed his career in 1919. Within a short time he was invited to perform at Italy’s most prestigious opera house, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where he came under the baton of the brilliant but demanding conductor, Arturo Toscanini.

Toscanini recognised his talent and under his guidance, Pinza began to prosper. For a bass his voice had unusual beauty and Pinza had a great drive to make the most of the opportunity it gave him.

Ezio Pinza in the Broadway production of South
Pacific that made his name in musical theatre

His family’s circumstances had meant that he missed out on a formal education.  As a consequence, he was not able to read music, yet he had a sharp ear. He would listen to his part played on the piano and then sing it accurately, even picking up stylistic nuances.

Seen as a successor to the great Italian basses Francesco Navarini, Vittorio Arimondi and Nazzareno De Angelis, by November 1926 he had been invited to sing at the Metropolitan Opera, where he made his debut in Spontini's La vestale, which starred the popular American soprano Rosa Ponselle in the title role.

As he became established, Pinza became associated with Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Figaro and Sarastro, as well as many roles in the Italian operas of Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi, and Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, which was sung in Italian.

Engagements at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, soon followed. He sang in London from 1930 to 1939 and was invited to sing at the Salzburg Festival in 1934-1937 by the German conductor Bruno Walter.

Like many Italians, he felt at home in America. Pinza sang again under the baton of Toscanini in 1935, this time with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall as the bass soloist in performances of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, one of which was broadcast on radio and recorded.

His life was rudely interrupted in 1942 after America had entered the Second World War.  All Italians and Germans living in the United States came under close scrutiny from the authorities and Pinza was accused of having a connection with Benito Mussolini, the Italian Fascist dictator.

With no warning, plain clothes FBI officers arrived at his house at Mamaroneck in Westchester County, overlooking Long Island Sound, and arrested him. After being taken to the Foley Square courthouse in Manhattan, where he was not allowed an attorney, he was detained at Ellis Island.

Pinza was only four months away from being granted his American citizenship and, fortunately for him, his fame afforded him more consideration than most of his compatriots and he was allowed to go free again after 12 weeks.

Pinza's grave

After the war, he announced his retirement from opera in 1948, when the Metropolitan Opera honoured him by naming the fountains at the new Metropolitan Opera House at the Lincoln Centre after him.

He was not finished as a singer. Embarking on a second career in Broadway musicals, he achieved more success. His role in Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, in which the lead male part of the French planter Emil de Becque and the classic song Some Enchanted Evening were created specifically for him, turned him into a still bigger celebrity. In 1950, he received a Tony Award for best lead actor in a musical.

The fame brought him movie and television work and enabled him to buy a plush house next to the golf course at Westchester Country Club at Rye, where he was a member.  Sadly, he died suddenly in 1957 at the age of 64, having suffered a stroke. He is buried at Putnam Cemetery at Greenwich, Connecticut.

Travel tip:

Ravenna was the capital city of the Western Roman Empire from 402 until its collapse in 406. The city’s Basilica of San Vitale, one of the most important examples of early Christian Byzantine art and architecture, is famous for its wealth of Byzantine mosaics, the largest and best preserved outside Turkey, including masterpieces studded with gold, emerald and sapphire. The city was where the poet Dante lived in exile until his death in 1321. His tomb can be found in the Basilica of San Francesco, and the pretty Piazza del Popolo.

Travel tip:

The Conservatorio Martini, where Pinza received his formal musical education, can be found in Bologna’s Piazza Rossini, adjacent to the church of San Giacomo Maggiore, about 10 minutes’ walk from the city’s central square, Piazza Maggiore. Opened in 1804 as the Liceo Filarmonico di Bologna, its prestige was enhanced by its association with the composer Gioachino Rossini, who had attended the conservatory as a student, and returned later in life as a consultant.

Home

Luca Cadalora - motorcycle world champion

Modena rider won titles in 125cc and 250cc categories

Luca Cadalora in action in 1993

Luca Cadalora, the motorcycle racer who was three times a world champion, was born on this day in 1963 in Modena, Emilia Romagna.

Currently working as coach to Italy’s seven-times world champion Valentino Rossi, Cadalora began his professional motorcycle racing career in 1984, riding an MBA in the 125cc world championship.

He picked up a respectable 27 points to finish eighth in his debut season, his best performance a second place in the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring, but had a very disappointing second season, finishing only three races to collect a meagre four points.

His switch to the Garelli team, the dominant force at the time in the 125cc class, catapulted him to fame.

Cadalora and team-mate Fausto Gresini, his fellow Italian, battled it out for the title through the season, each finishing with four wins. Cadalora took the upper hand by winning four of the first seven races and it was his consistency over the campaign that clinched the title. He failed to complete only one of 11 races and finished in the top four in the other 10, finishing runner-up in his last three to pip Gresini by 114 points to 109.

Cadalora is now coach to
Valentino Rossi

That success earned him a promotion to the 250cc class with Giacomo Agostini's Marlboro Yamaha factory racing team in 1986.  Again he was competitive consistently, improving year by year, finishing seventh, sixth, fifth and third for Agostini.

But again it was a switch of team that made the difference.  With five GP wins under his belt, he switched to the Rothmans Honda factory racing team in 1991.

Winning an impressive eight races, he roared to his first 250cc world championship aboard an Erv Kanemoto-tuned Honda NSR250, collecting 237 points.  This time his closest rival was the German Helmut Bradl, who won five races, but fell 17 points short of his rival.

Cadalora successfully defended his title with Honda in 1992, claiming his third world championship.  Bradl failed to win a single GP this time and Cadalora won by a much wider margin, beating the Italian Loris Reggiani, riding for Aprilia, by 44 points.

In 1993 he graduated to the blue riband 500cc division as Wayne Rainey's team mate in the Kenny Roberts-Yamaha team.

Seven-times world MotoGP champion Valentino
Rossi teamed up with Cadalora in 2016

In three seasons on the Roberts Yamaha, he displayed flashes of brilliance and usual consistency, winning two GPs in each of those seasons and finishing as high as second to Mick Doohan in 1994.

Cadalora rejoined Kanemoto for the 1996 season racing a Honda NSR500. Despite lacking any major sponsors, he still managed to finish the season in third place aboard the Kanemoto-Honda.

For the 1997 season, he was contracted as official Yamaha rider in the new Promotor Racing team backed by an Austrian businessman.   After only a handful of races, however, the team collapsed due to financial problems. WCM rescued the team with the help of a Red Bull sponsorship and Cadalora ended the season in sixth place.

At the beginning of the 1998 season, WCM and Cadalora lost Yamaha official support. He returned to the Rainey-Yamaha works team for a few races to replace an injured Jean-Michel Bayle, then helped develop the new MuZ race bike.

Cadalora finished his career with Kenny Roberts' Modenas team in 2000, retiring with 34 Grand Prix victories in his three classes.

In 2016, Cadalora returned to the top level of motorcycle racing as trackside coach to Valentino Rossi, the all-time great among Italian riders, helping him finish second in the MotoGP class for the third year running as he strives to equal his compatriot, Giacomo Agostini’s record of eight world titles in the 500cc/Moto GP category.

He has signed on for a second year, with Rossi leading the field after the first four races.

Modena's cathedral is on Piazza Grande
at the heart of the city

Travel tip:

Cadalora’s home city of Modena is one of Italy’s most pedestrian-friendly cities, its historic centre off limits to traffic except for residents, commercial operators and tourists staying at city centre hotels with special permits. The centre is walkable, with most of the main sights enclosed within the former city walls.  The cobbled Piazza Grande is the heart of the city and is where visitors can find the city’s cathedral, dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta and consecrated in 1184, and the 86-metre tall Ghirlandia Tower.

Travel tip:

During his two 250cc world title seasons,  Cadalora won the Italian GP both years, the second time at the Mugello circuit in Tuscany. The Mugello is a historic region in northern Tuscany, which takes its name from the Mugello river. Located north of Florence, the region was occupied by the Etruscans, who have left many archeological traces, and subsequently colonised by the Romans. The towns of Borgo San Lorenzo, Scarperia and San Piero a Sieve are part of the Mugello.

More reading:

The 15 world titles of Giacomo Agostini

How Valentino Rossi joined the all-time greats

Home

Massimo Moratti - business tycoon

Billionaire chairman oversaw golden era at Internazionale

Massimo Moratti followed his father, Angelo, in
becoming chairman of Internazionale of Milan

The billionaire tycoon and former chairman of the Internazionale football club, Massimo Moratti, was born on this day in 1945 in Bosco Chiesanuova, a small town in the Veneto about 20km (12 miles) north of Verona.

His primary business, the energy provider Saras, of which he is chief executive, owns about 15 per cent of Italy’s oil refining capacity, mainly through the Sarroch refinery on Sardinia, which has a capacity of about 300,000 barrels per day.

Moratti is estimated to have net wealth of about €1.28 billion ($1.4 billion) yet is said to have spent close to €1.5 billion of his personal fortune on buying players during his chairmanship of Inter, which lasted from 1995 until 2013 and encompassed a period of unprecedented success.

Between 2005 and 2011 Inter won the Serie A title five times, the Coppa Italia and the Supercoppa Italiana four times each, the Champions League once and the FIFA World Club cup once.

The five Scudetti came in consecutive seasons from 2006 to 2010, equalling the league record.

The only comparable period was the 1960s, when Massimo's father, Angelo, was chairman and Inter won three Scudetti and the European Cup, forerunner of the Champions League, twice, with the team known as Grande Inter – ‘the great Inter’.

Moratti is a billionaire businessman who made his fortune
from the family's energy company, Saras

Moratti would go to any lengths to sign the best players. His most famous purchase was the Brazilian striker Ronaldo – then considered the best player in the world – from Barcelona in the summer of 1997, but two years later he paid a then world-record €48 million for Lazio striker Christian Vieri.

Other superstars who wore the famous blue and black stripes in his time included Roberto Carlos, Hernán Crespo, Roberto Baggio, Zlatan Ibrahimović, Luís Figo and Patrick Vieira.

Yet he was notorious for hiring and firing coaches. In his time in office there were 15 changes of coach. Even during the years of success, he ditched Roberto Mancini for José Mourinho.

Mancini won three consecutive Serie A titles, the Coppa Italia twice and the Supercoppa Italiana twice, yet failed to win in Europe, which is where Moratti found him wanting.

Moratti was vindicated when, under Mourinho, Inter won the Champions League in 2010.  In fact, the Portuguese coach led the team to an unprecedented treble that season, winning Serie A and the Coppa Italia as well.

The fourth son of industrialist Angelo, who founded Saras, Moratti was born in the family villa in Bosco Chiesanuova. He graduated from Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli with a master's degree in political science.

On his father's death in 1981, he inherited his shares in the Saras Group, whose main business is the refining of petroleum.

Moratti is also the owner of Sarlux, based in Cagliari, which focuses on the production of electricity from waste oil. He has another company involved in generating electricity from alternative sources such as wind energy.

Members of the Inter team that won the Scudetto five
times between 2006 and 2011

In fact, he is married to the environmental activist Emilia Moratti (née Bossi), with whom he has have five children. Moratti is a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador.

As Inter chairman he had a long-time rivalry with SilvioBerlusconi, the owner of AC Milan, which even extended to him supporting the left-wing candidate Giuliano Pisapia in a bid to oust his sister-in-law, Letizia, as Mayor of Milan.

Letizia had served in Berlusconi’s Forza Italia government as Minister of Education between 2001 and 2006 and was elected Mayor of Milan in 2006 under the flag of another of Berlusconi’s parties, the centre-right alliance Casa della Libertà (House of Freedoms).

In May 2011, however, Moratti put his weight behind the former communist Pisapia, who emerged as a surprise winner.

Moratti scaled back his interest in Internazionale in November 2013, when International Sports Capital took control of 70 per cent of the club. Indonesian businessman Erick Thohir, a part-owner of that company, was elected chairman, with Moratti in the role of honorary chairman.

In June 2016, he sold the remainder of his stake in the club to Thohir's Nusantara Sports Ventures HK Limited for €60 million. Thohir then resold those shares to Zhang Jindong's Suning Holdings Group.

The family connection remained through Moratti's wife, Emilia, who had a place on the club’s advisory board, but Massimo Moratti himself ceased to be involved.

The Piazza Chiesa in Bosco Chiesanuova

Travel tip:

Bosco Chiesanuova, part of a picturesque area known as Lessinia, offers visitors a range of outdoor activities from summertime nature walks and horse riding to skiing and ince skating in the winter months. The town’s beautiful squares are notable for balconies overflowing with geraniums and roof-tops groaning under the weight of snow, depending on the season. In the attractive Piazza Chiesa is the beautiful church of San Benedetto and San Tommaso Apostolo.

Pula in Sardinia has many Roman ruins such as this arch
in the centre of the town

Travel tip:

The Sarroch refinery in Sardinia is close to Pula, about 25km (15 miles) south of Cagliari, which is renowned as ‘the prettiest town in southern Sardinia’, famous for relaxing beaches and a spectacular coastline, but also for its history.  The beach at nearby Nora has a Roman amphitheatre right by the sea, which stages concerts during the summer. Another beach, at Porto d’Agumo, is guarded by two Spanish watchtowers. The town fans out from a beautiful central piazza full of interesting restaurants, gelateria and bars.

More reading:

Internazionale - birth of a football superpower

How Roberto Mancini coached Inter to a record three consecutive Serie A titles

Luigi Riva - the prolific striker who slipped through Inter's net

Also on this day:

1974: The birth of singer-songwriter Laura Pausini


Home

Anna Maria Alberghetti - singer and actress

Child prodigy who rejected Hollywood to become Broadway star

Anna Maria Alberghetti's good looks made
her attractive to movie studios

The actress and operatic singer Anna Maria Alberghetti was born on this day in 1936 in the Adriatic resort of Pesaro.

She moved with her family to the United States in her teens and became a Broadway star, winning a Tony Award in 1962 as best actress in a musical for her performance in Bob Merrill’s Carnival, directed by Gower Champion.

Alberghetti was a child prodigy with music in her blood. Her father was an accomplished musician, an opera singer and concert master of the Rome Opera Company, who also played the cello. Her mother was a pianist.

They influenced the direction in which her talent developed and by the age of six she was singing with symphony orchestras with her father as her vocal instructor.

After success touring Europe, Anna Maria was invited to perform in the United States and made her debut at Carnegie Hall in New York at the age of 14. Given the state of Italy after the Second World War, the idea of settling permanently in America became too attractive for the family to resist.

Alberghetti in an early publicity shot
for the MGM studios

At that time, Anna Maria’s focus was on a career as an opera singer but the American cinema industry was obsessed with European actresses and saw in her someone with the same qualities as her contemporary Anna MariaPierangeli, the beautiful actress from Sardinia who became better known as Pier Angeli.

Paramount was the studio that showed the most interest, foreseeing a bright future for her on screen.  She made her debut in the hypnotic Gian Carlo Menotti's chamber opera The Medium in 1951. It was an art-house movie that was well appreciated by the devotees of that genre but Paramount had bigger plans for their new discovery.

However, her talent was used strangely used. After an extended operatic solo in the Bing Crosby comedy Here Comes the Groom (1951), she played a Polish émigré befriended by a singer (played by Rosemary Clooney) who discovers the girl has musical talent of her own in The Stars Are Singing (1953).

But thereafter, her vocals were required less and less as Paramount pushed her towards mainstream parts, casting her in adventure stories and comedies. It was not a path she wanted to follow and after being cast in the Jerry Lewis farce Cinderfella (1960), in which all the songs were sung by Lewis and none by her, she became disillusioned and quit cinema to seek expression on the Broadway stage.

It was on Broadway that she found stardom, landing the part of Lili in the musical Carnival for which she received outstanding reviews. Her delightful and moving performance was rewarded with the Tony Award.

Alberghetti in the Broadway hit Carnival
which established her stardom

More success followed in the title role in Fanny (1963), Maria in West Side Story (1964), Marsinah in Kismet (1967) and Luisa in The Fantasticks (1968), to name just a few. 

Via the Ed Sullivan TV show, she became a familiar face – and voice - to millions of American households and appearances in other TV shows followed, as well as a recording career.

She often figured in the gossip pages of newspapers and magazines after romantic associations with a number of famous figures in the entertainment world, including the singer Vic Damone, the actors Bob Wagner  and Dick Contino and Count Alberto Mochiand, a 30-year-old Italian doctor who bought her a pearl and diamond engagement ring.

She was briefly engaged to the producer-composer Buddy Bregman but cancelled the wedding plans and began dating Claudio Guzman, the Chile-born television director, whom she married in September 1964. They had two children, Alexander, Pilar, but divorced in 1972.  

Travel tip:

Pesaro, in the Marche region on Italy's Adriatic coast, is a traditional seaside resort blessed with sandy beaches, particularly popular with Italians. Situated to the north of the region, it is around 40km (25 miles) south of the better known resort of Rimini and represents an interesting alternative, although with a population of 95,000 it is by no means a quiet backwater. A feature, too, is its many cycle paths, which earned Pesaro the nickname City of Bicycles.

Rossini's birthplace is now a museum

Travel tip:

The older part of Pesaro, inland from the grid of streets parallel with the shoreline where most of the hotels and holiday apartments are situated, has no shortage of history.  Look out for the Ducal Palace and Rocca Costanza, the palace and castle built by the Sforza family in the 15^th century and the 16^th century Villa Imperiale, built in the 16^th century for Duke Francesco Maria della Rovere and his wife.  The Piazza del Popolo is a pleasant main square where there is a regular market. The town’s most famous son, the opera composer Gioachino Rossini, is commemorated in many ways, in particular with the a museum at his birthplace in what is now Via Rossini and the Conservatorio Statale di Musica in Piazza Oliveri.

More reading:

Rossini's legacy to Pesaro

Pier Angeli - talented actress who died tragically young

How screen siren Virna Lisi turned her back on glamour roles

Also on this day:

1567: Composer Claudio Monteverdi baptised

Home