Luciano Berio – composer

War casualty who became significant figure in Italian music

Luciano Berio was an experimental
composer with a prolific output

The avant-garde composer Luciano Berio, whose substantial catalogue of diverse work made him one of the most significant figures in music in Italy in the modern era, was born on this day in 1925 in Oneglia, on the Ligurian coast.

Noted for his innovative combining of voices and instruments and his pioneering of electronic music, Berio composed more than 170 pieces between 1937 and his death in 2003.

His most famous works are Sinfonia, a composition for orchestra and eight voices in five movements commissioned by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1968, and dedicated to the conductor Leonard Bernstein, and his Sequenza series of 18 virtuoso solo works that each featured a different instrument, or in one case a female voice alone.

Berio's musical fascinations included Italian opera, particularly Monteverdi and Verdi, the 20th-century modernism of Stravinsky, the Romantic symphonies of Schubert, Brahms and Mahler, folk songs, jazz and the music of the Beatles.

All these forms influenced him in one way or another and even his most experimental work paid homage to the past. In writing operas, concerti, string quartets or pieces for solo instruments, Berio could be said to have contributed to tradition, even if composing pieces that followed traditional forms was far from his thinking.

The apparent chaos of Sinfonia, for example, may seem as far away from a traditional symphony as is possible and yet conforms to the principle of what constitutes a symphony, a combination of different moods, keys and emotions. 

Berio at a formal appearance in The Hague in 1972, pictured
with Princess Beatrix and Prince Claus of The Netherlands

The eight voices often speak or shout rather than sing, yet in superimposing texts by authors ranging from James Joyce to Samuel Beckett and snatches from many classical and romantic works of music on to a framework of the scherzo of Mahler's Second Symphony, Berio creates, by definition, a symphony.

Berio came from a musical background. Both his grandfather Adolfo and father Ernesto were organists and he might have become a concert pianist but for the misfortune that befell him in the Second World War.

It was late in the conflict – 1944 – when he was called up. He considered joining the resistance movement, but feared what the consequences might be for his family and so accepted conscription.  Given a loaded gun on his first day, he was trying to learn how it worked when it went off, badly injuring his right hand.

He spent three months in a military hospital before fleeing to Como, joining the partisans after all. When, after the war, he entered the Milan Conservatory, it was clear his hand injury would prevent him achieving proficiency as a pianist, at which point he decided to concentrate on composition.

A suite for piano he had written in 1947 was his first work to be publicly performed. He earned his keep by accompanying singing classes and accepting conducting engagements in small opera houses.

The Studio Fonologia in Milan that Berio helped establish

One of the singers he accompanied was Cathy Berberian, an American soprano with whom he fell in love and married within a few months. He visited the United States for the first time on honeymoon and thereafter became a frequent visitor, where he won a scholarship to study at Tanglewood in Massachusetts, the summer home of the Boston Philharmonic.

At the same time, Berio was beginning to experiment with electronic music.  He and Bruno Maderna, another Italian he had met at an annual summer school on Germany where avant-garde composers would congregate, became co-directors of an electronic studio within the Milan studios of the state broadcaster, RAI.

He and Berberian divorced in 1964 but Berio continued to spend much of his time in New York with his second wife, Susan Oyama, a Japanese psychology student. He had founded the Juilliard Ensemble while teaching at the Juilliard School of Music. He resigned from the Juilliard in 1971, divorcing Oyama in the same year.

He returned to Italy and bought a house to renovate in the hill town of Radicondoli, near Siena, where he planted vineyards and fruit trees. He moved into the house in 1975 and was soon married for a third time, to the Israeli musicologist, Talia Pecker.  

Berio, whose other acclaimed works include Opera and Coro, both composed in the 1970s, La Vera Storia (1981) and Outis (1996), remained an active composer until his death.  He was Distinguished Composer in Residence at Harvard University until 2000, when he became president of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, where he was living at the time of his death.

The waterfront at Imperia, looking towards Porto Maurizio

Travel tip:

Oneglia, where Luciano Berio was born, ceased to exist as a town in its own right in 1923, when it and its neighbour, Porto Maurizio, were subsumed into a new city of Imperia, created by Benito Mussolini as part of his drive to create ideal Fascist cities. Today, Imperia is part industrial port and part tourist resort.  What used to be Oneglia is at the eastern end of Imperia, around Piazza Dante, which is at the centre of a long shopping street, Via Aurelia.

The church of Santi Simone e Guida
in the ancient town of Radicondoli

Travel tip:

Radicondoli, situated about 50km (31 miles) west of Siena, is a beautiful walled medieval town of Etruscan origins, perched on a hilltop and offering outstanding views of the surrounding countryside, looking out over typical rolling Tuscan hills.  The town itself, with quaint cobbled streets, is home to little more than 1,000 inhabitants, with an economy and lifestyle based on farming, and a diet rich in local produce.

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Francesco Foscari – Doge of Venice

Ignominious ending to a long and glorious reign

Lazzaro Bastiani's profile portrait of the
65th Doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari

After 34 years as Doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari was abruptly forced to leave office on this day in 1457.

Stripped of his honours, he insisted on descending the same staircase from the Doge’s Palace that he had climbed up in triumph more than a third of a century before, rather than leave through a rear entrance. Eight days later the former Doge was dead.

The story behind the downfall of Foscari and his son, Jacopo, fascinated the poet Lord Byron so much during his visit to Venice in 1816 that he later wrote a five-act play about it.

This play, The Two Foscari: An Historical Tragedy, formed the basis of Verdi’s opera, I Due Foscari, and ensured that the sad story of the father and son was never forgotten.

Francesco Foscari, who was born in 1373, was the 65th Doge of the Republic of Venice. He had previously served the Republic in many roles, including as a member of the Council of Forty and the Council of Ten, Venice’s ruling bodies, and as Procurator of St Mark’s. He was elected Doge in 1423, after defeating the other candidate, Pietro Loredan.

As Doge he led Venice in a long series of wars against Milan, which was then governed by the Visconti, who were attempting to dominate northern Italy.

An 1872 representation of the two Foscaris - Francesco and
Jacopo - by the Spanish painter Ricardo Maria Navarette Fos

The war was extremely costly for Venice, whose real source of wealth and power was at sea. Under Foscari’s leadership, Venice was eventually overcome by the forces of Milan under the leadership of Francesco Sforza, but meanwhile some of Venice’s eastern territories had been lost to the Turks.

In 1445, Foscari’s only surviving son, Jacopo, was tried by the Council of Ten on charges of bribery and corruption and exiled from the city. After two further trials, in 1450 and 1456, Jacopo was imprisoned on Crete, where he died.

After receiving the news of Jacopo’s death, Foscari withdrew from his Government duties. His enemies conspired to depose him and the Doge was forced to abdicate by the Council of Ten on October 23, 1457.

Foscari’s death, just over a week later at the age of 84, provoked such a public outcry that the former Doge was given a state funeral in Venice.

As well as being the subject of Byron’s play, Foscari’s life features as an episode in Italy, a long poem written by Samuel Rogers.

Byron’s play was the basis for the libretto written by Francesco Maria Piave for Giuseppe Verdi’s opera I Due Foscari, which premiered on November 3, 1844 in Rome. Mary Mitford also wrote a play about Foscari’s life, which opened in 1826 at Covent Garden, with the celebrated actor, Charles Kemble, playing the lead role.

The Doge's Palace has been the seat of the Venetian
government since the early days of the republic

Travel tip:

The Doge’s Palace, where Francesco Foscari lived for 34 years, was the seat of the Government of Venice and the home of the Doge from the early days of the republic. For centuries this was the only building in Venice entitled to the name palazzo. The others were merely called Cà, short for Casa. The current palazzo was built in the 12th century in Venetian Gothic style, one side looking out over the lagoon, the other side looking out over the piazzetta that links St Mark’s Square with the waterfront. It opened as a museum in 1923 and is now run by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia.

The church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari

Travel tip:

Francesco Foscari’s tomb is in the chancel of the magnificent church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice. This huge, plain Gothic church in Campo dei Frari in San Polo is known simply to Venetians as the Frari. The church also houses the tombs of Monteverdi, Rossini, Titian and Doge Nicolo Tron. It has works of art by Titian, Bellini, Sansovino and Donatello. The church is open daily from 9.00 to 5.30 pm and on Sundays from 1.00 to 5.30 pm.

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Valeria Golino - actress

Neapolitan starred with Hoffman and Cruise in Rain Man

Valeria Golino has won multiple awards
for films made for the Italian market

The actress Valeria Golino, who found international fame when she played opposite Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise in the hugely successful movie Rain Man, was born on this day in 1965 in Naples.

Golino was cast as the girlfriend of Tom Cruise’s character, Charlie Babbitt, in Barry Levinson’s comedy, in which Babbitt’s estranged father dies and leaves most of his multi-million dollar estate to another son, an autistic savant named Raymond (Dustin Hoffman) whose existence Charlie knew nothing about.

The 1988 movie won four Oscars and grossed more than $350 dollars. Although Golino was not nominated for her performance in Rain Man, she has won a string of other awards over a career so far spanning almost 35 years.

She is one of only three stars to win Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival on two occasions, for the 1986 drama Storia d’amore (“A Tale of Love”), directed by Francesco Maselli, and for Giuseppe M Gaudino’s 2015 drama Per amor vostro (“For Your Love”).

Golino was close to being selected to star opposite Richard Gere in another massive US hit, Pretty Woman, making it to the final audition stage for the 1990 romantic comedy but eventually losing out to Julia Roberts.

In the same year, Roberts also pipped her to the lead female role in the science-fiction horror film Flatliners.

Golina has been acting for the big screen
since making her debut in 1983

Golino did have other success in America, again in the comedy field, with Big Top Pee-Wee, Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux.

Back home in Italy, she was cast in meatier, dramatic roles, bringing her great respect. The winner of several Nastro d’Argento awards from Italian film journalists, she landed her first David di Donatello for Best Actress for La guerra di Mario (“Mario’s War”), Antonio Capuano’s film about the relationship between a mother, played by Golino, and her rebellious adopted son, a boy taken away from an abusive real mother.

Mario’s War also won her an Italian Golden Globe.  Her second David di Donatello was for Best Supporting Actress in Paolo Virzi’s 2013 film Il capitale umano (“Human Capital”).

Golino has revealed a talent for directing, too. Her first short film, Armandino e il Madre, for which she also wrote the script, received a favourable reaction and her first feature film as director, Miele (“Honey”), was screened at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and won a commendation.

Miele, the story of a woman who works with an Italian hospital doctor in the illegal facilitating of assisted suicides, earned her a Nastro d’Argento as Best New Director as well as an Italian Golden Globe for Best First Feature.

Valeria Golino receives her award at the
2015 Venice Film Festival

Born in Naples into a middle-class background – her father was an academic specialising in German studies, her mother a Greek-born artist – her formative years were spent alternating between Athens and Sorrento after her parents split up.

Although her mother instilled in her a love of the cinema, she had no great ambition to act as she grew up.  In fact, after undergoing surgery to correct a curvature of the spine, she set her sights on the medical profession, dreaming of becoming a cardiologist.

For one reason or another, the opportunity to pursue a career in medicine never came about.  She took some modelling assignments, which she found unfulfilling.  Life changed for her at 17 years old when her uncle, the L’Espresso journalist Enzo Golino, recommended her to Lina Wertmüller, a film director whom he knew socially, for a part in her upcoming movie, Scherzo del destino (“A Joke of Destiny”), alongside the renowned Commedia all’italiana actor, Ugo Tognazzi.

Despite being hospitalised for five months after a car crash disturbed the metal rod implanted in her back to correct the weakness in her spine, her acting career took off at the age of 20 after she played a life-loving cleaning lady in Maselli’s Storia d’amore.

Although she tries to keep her private life out of the public eye, Golino has been a regular in Italian gossip magazines following a series of relationships with other well-known figures in the movie business, the most recent with Riccardo Scamarcio, an actor and director 14 years her junior whom she was with for 10 years.  Nowadays, she largely lives in Rome.

Beautiful views abound in Sorrento

Travel tip:

From the age of five years, Golino’s Italian home was in Sorrento, the popular resort town that occupies a cliff-top position overlooking the Bay of Naples, about 48km (30 miles) along the coast from the city of Naples, heading south.  The journey takes about an hour using the Circumvesuviana railway or hydrofoil across the bay, but considerably longer by road because of the almost constant traffic.  Sorrento, which has Greek origins but was developed by the Romans, is a lively place to stay but with much charm and stunning views from numerous vantage points.

Pictures of Piazza del Plebiscito accompanied the
opening credits for Marriage, Italian Style

Travel tips:

Naples has a connection with the film industry going back to the early years of the 20^th century, when movie makers had already seen its potential for offering a spectacular or atmospheric backdrop.  In later years, Roberto Rossellini, Eduardo de Filippo, Vittorio de Sica and Francesco Rosi set many of their great films in the city.  The actress Sophia Loren, whose Neapolitan movies included Marriage, Italian Style and Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, in both of which she co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni, was born in Rome but grew up in Naples and nearby Pozzuoli and regards herself as a Neapolitan.

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Domenichino - Baroque master

Artist whose talents rivalled Raphael

Domenichino's picture St John the Evangelist
sold for £9.2 million in 2009

The painter Domenico Zampieri, in his era spoken of in the same breath as Raphael, was born on this day in 1581 in Bologna.

Better known as Domenichino (“Little Domenico”), the nickname he picked up early in his career on account of his small stature, he painted in classical and later Baroque styles in Rome, Bologna and Naples.

Noted for the subtle, almost serene lighting and understated colours of his compositions, he painted portraits, landscapes, religious and mythological scenes and had a prolific output. Among his most notable works were significant frescoes commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese for the Badia (monastery) at Grottaferrata, outside Rome, and for Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini at the Villa Belvedere (also known as the Villa Aldobrandini) in nearby Frascati, as well as Scenes from the Life of Saint Cecilia at the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, not far from Piazza Navona, in Rome itself.

Domenichino’s paintings can be seen in art galleries in many countries, with the largest single collection held by the Louvre in Paris.

One of his most celebrated paintings, the depiction of St John the Evangelist that he worked on between 1621 and 1629 and which has been described as a “masterpiece epitomising the grandeur and nobility of Roman Baroque", sold for £9.2 million at auction in London in December 2009 only to be the subject of an intervention by the British government to keep it from leaving the United Kingdom.

Domenichino's talent put him not far behind
Raphael among the Italian greats

The painting had been on a wall at the Glyndebourne Opera House in Sussex for more than 100 years, having been bought by the owners of the house for 70 guineas in 1899. Put up for sale at Christie’s it was bound for the United States before the culture minister, Margaret Hodge, imposed an export bar. It was sold eventually to a British buyer on condition that it was on public display for at least three months each year.

The son of a shoemaker, Domenichino studied in Bologna, first in a local studio and then joining Lodovico Carracci’s Accademia degli Incamminati.

He left Bologna for Rome in 1602 to work under Annibale Carracci and became one of the most talented apprentices to emerge from Carracci's supervision.

Following Annibale Carracci's death in 1609, his Bolognese pupils, the best of whom were Domenichino, Francesco Albani, Guido Reni and Giovanni Lanfranco, became the leading painters in Rome, upstaging even the followers of Caravaggio, who had left Rome in 1606.

Domenichino's masterpiece, his frescoes of Scenes of the Life of Saint Cecilia in the Polet Chapel of San Luigi dei Francesi, was commissioned in 1612 and completed in 1615.

At the same time he was painting his most celebrated altarpiece, The Last Communion of Saint Jerome, for the church of San Girolamo della Carità, noted for the accuracy of facial expressions, which would subsequently be compared with Raphael's great Transfiguration and was at one time hailed as "the best picture in the world".

Domenichino's River Landscape with Boatmen and Fishermen
demonstrates qualities that influenced many landscape painters 

He would later move away from the rigid classicism of his early work towards a broader, less conventional Baroque style, evident in the last works he produced in Rome and in his fresco cycle, Scenes from the Life of San Gennaro (1631–41), which he painted for the Cappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro, in the Duomo in Naples.

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries Domenichino’s paintings were regarded as second only to those of Raphael.

His work fell from favour in the mid-19th century but his importance to the evolution of Baroque classicism was recognized again in the 20th century.

Domenichino also occupies an important place in the history of landscape painting, his work known to have had a deep influence on the classical landscapists Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain.  In 1996 the first major exhibition of his work was held at the Palazzo Venezia in Rome.

He died in Naples in 1641 while still working at the Duomo. There were suspicions he had been poisoned by the Spanish painter Jusepe di Ribera, the leading member of a group of three artists known as the Naples Cabal, furious to have been passed over for the Cappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro commission in favour of an outsider.

Part of the Domenichino fresco
cycle at San Luigi dei Francesi

Travel tip:

The Baroque church of San Luigi dei Francesi can be found in Via della Dogana Vecchia, a couple of blocks to the east of Piazza Navona in the heart of Rome’s historic centre. Built in the 16th century to serve the French community in Rome, it is notable not only for Domenichini’s fresco Scenes from the Life of Saint Cecilia but for the cycle of paintings by Caravaggio about the life of St. Matthew in the Contarelli Chapel.

The Cattedrale di San Gennaro, as the Naples Duomo is
more frequently known

Travel tip:

The Duomo of Naples, known locally more often as the Cattedrale di San Gennaro, was completed in the 14^th century after being commissioned by King Charles I of Anjou, the youngest son of Louis VIII of France. Nowadays the seat of the Archbishop of Naples, it is most famous for housing a vial supposedly containing the dried blood of San Gennaro, the city’s patron saint.  The blood is put on public display twice a year, in May and September, when it usually is seen miraculously to liquefy. If the blood fails to liquefy on these days, legend has it that a disaster will befall Naples. Many have doubted the authenticity of the blood and the miracle.  A recent hypothesis is that it actually contains iron oxide (rust) in the form of a thixotropic gel that has the colour of old blood and would become less viscous if shaken or otherwise agitated, and therefore appear to liquefy.

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