Domenico Bartolucci – composer

Talented musician served under six popes

Cardinal Domenico Bartolucci

Cardinal Domenico Bartolucci, director of the Sistine Chapel Choir for 40 years and a talented and prolific composer, was born on this day in 1917 in Borgo San Lorenzo in Tuscany.

Bartolucci was considered one of the most authoritative interpreters of the works of composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and he led the Sistine Chapel Choir in performances all over the world.

His own compositions are said to fill more than 40 volumes and include masses, hymns, madrigals, orchestral music and an opera.

Bartolucci was born in Borgo San Lorenzo near Florence, the son of a brick factory worker who loved the music of Verdi and Donizetti. Bartolucci was recruited as a singer at the seminary in Florence at a young age. After the death of his music master, Bartolucci succeeded him as director of music for the Chapel of the Duomo of Florence and began to compose masses, motets and organ music.

Bartolucci went to Rome to deepen his knowledge of sacred music and served as deputy master of the choir at the Church of St John Lateran. In 1947 he was appointed Master of the Choir of St Mary Major, and in 1952 was appointed deputy master of the Sistine Chapel Choir.

Bartolucci was director of the Sistine Chapel Choir from
1956 until his retirement in 1996

Pope Pius XII gave him the position of permanent director of the Pontifical Sistine Chapel Choir in 1956. During his 40 years of leadership he strengthened the choir and took it to perform in countries all over the world.

Bartolucci had been a child prodigy and composed his first mass at the age of 12. His best known mass is the Misa Jubilei, written in the Holy Year of 1950. His biggest musical influences were Palestrina and the opera composer, Giuseppe Verdi. Bartolucci’s own three-act opera, Brunelleschi, dedicated to the history and construction of Filippo Brunelleschi’s colossal dome atop Florence’s cathedral, is yet to be performed.

Pope Benedict XVI created Bartolucci a cardinal in 2010 in recognition of his contribution to the church in the area of sacred ecclesiastical music. He became the fourth oldest member of the College of Cardinals and because he was over 80 was not eligible to vote in a papal conclave.

Bartolucci died in 2013 at the age of 96. After his funeral mass at St Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis described him as ‘an ‘illustrious composer and musician, who exercised his long ministry particularly through sacred music, which is born of faith and expresses faith.’

The unusual campanile at the church of
Pieve di San Lorenzo

Travel tip:

Borgo San Lorenzo, the birthplace of Bartolucci, is the largest of the towns and villages of the Mugello, the green, hilly area to the north and west of Florence. The Romanesque church of Pieve di San Lorenzo has a campanile that is circular in its lower stages and hexagonal above. Nearby are the Medici properties of Castello del Trebbio and the Villa di Cafaggiolo, both built for Cosimo il Vecchio in the 15th century.

Travel tip:

The Sistine Chapel, whose choir Bartolucci led for 40 years, is in the Apostolic Palace, where the Pope lives, in Vatican City. The chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, the uncle of Pope Julius II, who had it restored during his papacy. Between 1508 and 1512, Michelangelo painted the ceiling at the request of Pope Julius II.  His amazing masterpiece is in bright colours, easily visible from the floor, and covers more than 400 square metres.

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Alessandra Ferri – ballerina

Dancing star who believes age is a matter of attitude

Alessandra Ferri made a comeback in ballet
six years after her 'retirement'

Prima ballerina assoluta Alessandra Ferri, who retired in 2007 but then made a triumphant return to ballet in 2013, celebrates her 55th birthday today.

She is scheduled to dance at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York later this month, at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow at the beginning of June, at Hamburg Staatsoper at the end of June, at the Ravello Festival in Italy in July and in Tokyo in August.

In a recent newspaper interview, Ferri said she was happy to be breaking barriers as an older woman in a youth-dominated world. She said she still has full confidence in her abilities and believes ageing is largely an attitude and her advice to other women of her age is ‘to keep moving’.

Ferri was born on May 6, 1963 in Milan and began studying ballet at La Scala Theatre Ballet School. She moved to the upper school of the Royal Ballet School in London, where she won a scholarship that enabled her to continue studying there.

She joined the Royal Ballet in 1980 and won the Laurence Olivier Award for her first major role in 1982. She was promoted to the rank of principal dancer in 1983.

Ferri became principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre under the direction of Mikhail Baryshnikow in 1985.

Ferri in a production of Remeo and Juliet in 2016

She began a close association with La Scala Theatre Ballet in 1992, becoming recognised as prima ballerina assoluta of the company, but she remained a guest star of the American Ballet Theatre. 'Prima ballerina assoluta' is a title awarded to the most notable of female ballet dancers of their generation and is a rare honour.

Ferri has appeared at the top venues for ballet all over the world and has performed with the leading male dancers, including Rudolf Nureyev in Los Angeles on the occasion of his 50th birthday in 1988.

She married the photographer, Fabrizio Ferri, with whom she had two daughters.

Since her return from retirement, Ferri has danced roles in Italy and at the Royal Ballet and Royal Opera House in London. After her birthday celebrations today she has a packed schedule of appearances for the rest of the year.

The entrance to Villa Rufolo is off
the main scare in Ravello

Travel tip:

Alessandra Ferri will dance on July 7 at the Belvedere di Villa Rufolo in Ravello for the town’s 2018 music and arts festival. The Villa Rufolo, dating from the 13th century, overlooks the cathedral square of Ravello, a town perched high above the dramatic Amalfi Coast.

Travel tip:

La Scala Theatre Ballet School, where Alessandra Ferri studied, was founded in 1813 in association with the international ballet company based at Teatro alla Scala in Milan. The theatre is in Piazza della Scala in the centre of the city across the road from the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, an elegant arcade lined with cafes, shops and restaurants, built to link Piazza della Scala with Piazza del Duomo, Milan’s cathedral square.

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Francesco Bussone da Carmagnola – Condottiero

Adventurous soldier lived on in literature

Bussone was beheaded for alleged treason aginst
the Republic of Venice

The soldier of fortune, Francesco Bussone da Carmagnola, who has been featured in poetry, books and an opera, was executed on this day in 1432 in Venice.

The military leader had been seized, imprisoned and brought to trial for treason against La Serenissima, the Most Serene Republic of Venice, and was beheaded between the columns of San Marco and San Todaro at the entrance to the Piazzetta.

Francesco Bussone had been born at Carmagnola near Turin into a peasant family. He began his military career at the age of 12, serving under the condottiero, Facino Cane, who was in the service of the Marquess of Monferrat at the time, but later fought for Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan.

After the death of Gian Galeazzo, the duchy was divided up, but his son Filippo Maria was determined to reconquer it by force. He gave command of the army to Bussone da Carmagnola, who had taken over Cane’s role after his death.

Carmagnola subdued Bergamo, Brescia, Parma, Genoa and many smaller towns until the whole duchy was under Filippo Maria’s control.

The landmark columns of San Marco and San Todaro at the
entrance to the Piazzetta, just off St Mark's Square in Venice

Filippo Maria rewarded Carmagnola financially, but fearing he might become a danger, did not give him further military commands. He made him governor of Genoa instead, but an aggrieved Carmagnola offered his services to the Venetians in 1425.

The Doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari, was anxious to go to war with Milan and accepted Carmagnola’s word that it was an opportune moment.

Venice wanted a quick and decisive operation but, as a soldier of fortune, it was in Carmagnola’s interest to make the operation last as long as possible, so some battles were won and others lost, with no definite result achieved.

His most decisive victory was the Battle of Maclodio in 1427 when his Venetian forces triumphed over the Milanese near Brescia. Carmagnola was given a palace at San Stae, property in Brescia and a letter of appreciation from the Doge.

But he decided not to advance on Cremona, to release all his prisoners and to retire his army for the winter. The Venetians lost patience with him and the Council of Ten decided to bring him to justice.

The cover of an early edition
of Manzoni's drama

When summoned to Venice to discuss future operations, he arrived in 1432 without any suspicion of what lay ahead of him. He found it was too late in the day to meet the Doge, but as he turned to get back into his gondola, one of the men sent to meet him directed him to the Pozzi prison instead. He was sentenced to death after a trial and beheaded as a traitor.

Alessandro Manzoni made Francesco Bussone the subject of a poetical drama, Il Conte di Carmagnola, in 1820.

More recently, a drama-documentary about Bussone's life was released on a DVD, directed by Claudio Uberti and starring Omar Pedrini.

The opera, Le Comte de Carmagnola, with music by Ambroise Thomas, was produced at the Paris Opera in 1841. The French soprano, Elizabeth Vidal, has recorded one of the main arias from the opera.

Carmagnola was also one of the characters portrayed in Rafael Sabatini’s historical novel, Bellarion, published in English in 1926.

In Milan, there is a plaque on a wall in Via Rovello, not far from the Sforza Castle, marking the house in which Bussone lived when he was in the service of Gian Galeazzo Visconti.

Piazza Sant'Agostino in Carmagnola. The town's war
memorial is in the foreground

Travel tip:

Carmagnola, where Francesco Bussone was born, is a town 29km (18 miles) south of Turin. In the oldest part of town, the Church of Sant’Agostino, in Piazza Sant’Agostino, dates back to 1406. A gastronomic fair, la Sagra del Peperone, is held between the last week of August and the first week of September. During the Sagra of 2010, Carmagnola was entered into the Guinness Book of Records for producing the biggest ever peperonata, a sauce made with peppers, weighing in at 1,190 kg.

The remains of the Trezzo Bridge, which provided access to
the Visconti castle, on the left, across the Adda

Travel tip:

During a siege in 1416, Bussone da Carmagnola ordered the destruction of the Trezzo Bridge, the largest existing medieval single arch bridge, for military reasons. The bridge, at Trezzo sull’Adda in Lombardy was completed in 1377 and held the record for the largest span for hundreds of years. It was not until early in the 20th century that masonry bridges with larger openings were constructed. The Trezzo bridge provided access to a Visconti castle high above the Adda, but Carmagnola deliberately caused it to collapse by weakening one of its supports, robbing the world of an architectural marvel.

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Marella Agnelli - noblewoman and socialite

Married for 50 years to Fiat patriarch Gianni Agnelli

Marella Agnelli enjoyed a lifestyle
of wealth and privilege

Donna Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto, the noblewoman from an old Neapolitan family who married the jet-setting chairman of car giants Fiat, Gianni Agnelli, was born on this day in 1927 in Florence.

Simply known as Marella Agnelli, she was propelled by her marriage at the age of 26 into a world in which she became a socialite and style icon, devoting her life to collecting art, decorating the numerous homes she and her husband kept in Europe and beyond, and attending and hosting lavish, exclusive parties.

The couple would eventually have homes in Rome, Paris, New York,  Corsica and Saint-Moritz, as well as several houses in and around Agnelli’s home city of Turin, including the Agnelli estate in the foothills of the Italian Alps.

As member of the House of Caracciolo, she was regarded as high Italian nobility, although she admitted that the conservative aristocratic circles in which she grew up were a long way removed from the new life she took on at Agnelli’s side.

Her father was Don Filippo Caracciolo, 8th Prince di Castagneto, 3rd Duke di Melito, and hereditary Patrician of Naples, who married an American whiskey heiress, Margaret Clarke. One of her brothers, Don Carlo Caracciolo, founded the newspaper La Repubblica.

She and Agnelli met when she was 18. Marella was familiar with him both through the gossip columns - he was a notorious playboy - and through the tales she heard of his wartime exploits as part of a tank regiment on the Eastern Front and in north Africa.  He was 24 and, after his parents had both died young, became head of the Agnelli family.

Marella and Gianni Agnelli arriving at a function in 1966

The couple did not become engaged until the summer of 1953, marrying in November of the same year in the chapel of Osthoffen Castle, just outside Strasbourg, the French city where her father was based as secretary-general of the Council of Europe.

Before they were married Marella had been developing her photography skills in the New York studio of Erwin Blumenfeld and returned to Italy as a correspondent for the upmarket magazine publisher Condé Nast but effectively gave up her career to be a wife and society hostess.

She and Agnelli’s lives revolved around late autumns in New York, the skiing season in Saint-Moritz and summers on the French Riviera, entertaining a circle of friends that included the Kennedys, the Kissingers, the Rockefellers.

Their son, Edoardo, was born in New York in 1954, their daughter, Margherita, in Lausanne the following year.

Each year, from mid-August until the end of September, while Gianni attended to business in Turin, Marella and the children would be based at the Agnelli family estate at the foot of the Alps at Villar Perosa, 40km (25 miles) from Turin. It had been home to the family since the early 19th century.  She and Agnelli also had a city residence in Corso Matteotti in Turin.

Marella Agnelli became known for elegance and style

Their homes were known for their elegance and style, much of it the work of Marella, for whom the artistic talents that might have flourished had she maintained her budding career in photography were channelled into interior design, whether at Villa Frescot, in the hills above Turin, their duplex apartment on Park Avenue in New York, or the country estate, where Marella enlisted the garden designer Russell Page in transforming the grounds into a living work of art.

It was their love of art on canvas that drew the Agnellis to New York, where they became friends with Leo Castelli, the contemporary art dealer from Trieste who had emigrated to New York, who introduced them to upcoming young artists such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Tom Wesselmann, Frank Stella and Robert Indiana, whose paintings they collected with such enthusiasm they had an apartment in Milan designed by Gae Aulenti, the architect who designed the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, specifically for their collection.

Among the circle of friends they built in New York was the author Truman Capote, who famously who dubbed Marella and a group of elegant and beautiful socialites of the time, including Barbara “Babe” Paley, Lucy Douglas “CZ” Guest and Nancy “Slim” Keith, as his “swans”.

Marella and Capote became very close, the American spending much time in Italy as well as keeping their company in New York, but they fell out eventually after Marella saw a chapter of his novel Answered Prayers, in which he  exposed the lives and secrets of many people who had regarded him as a confidant.

After Gianni Agnelli’s death in 2003, Marella acquired Ain Kassimou, a villa in Marrakech, Morocco, that had been built in the 19th century for a relative of Leo Tolstoy, and she spent a good deal of her time there.  Nowadays, aged 91, she still lives in the family house at Villar Perosa.

The Agnelli house in Villar Pelosa has been in the family
since the early part of the 19th century

Travel tip:

The country house and estate at Villar Perosa, a 45-room stuccoed rococo villa with commanding views of the Alps,  has been in the the Agnelli family since 1811. The Fiat founder, Giovanni Agnelli - Gianni’s grandfather - had been born there in 1866. As well as Russell Page, the English landscape gardener, the Agnellis hired Gae Aulenti to create the timbered pool house.

The Tarot Card Garden at Garavicchio

Travel tip:

The Caracciolo family’s country estate in Tuscany, spread over 500 acres, is near the medieval village of Garavicchio, some 200km (125 miles) south of Florence and 125km (78 miles) northeast of Rome along the Tyrrhenian Sea coast. At the heart of the estate is a 16th century farmhouse positioned so as to enjoy views towards the sea on one side and rolling Tuscan hills on the other.  An unusual feature of Garavicchio is its Tarot Card Garden, a wooded area featuring 22 brightly coloured sculptures inspired by Tarot symbols.

More reading: 

How Gianni Agnelli became the most powerful man in Italy

Giovanni Agnelli - the man who founded Fiat

Gae Aulenti, trailblazer for women in architecture

Also on this day:

1527: Mutinous troops sack Rome

1655: The birth of Bartolomeo Cristofori, inventor of the piano


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