Pino Presti – bass player and composer

Talented musician could sing, play guitar, compose and conduct

Pino Presti has been one of the Italian music scene's
most important figures since the 1960s

Pino Presti, one of the most important personalities in the Italian music business, was born Giuseppe Prestipino Giarritta on this day in 1943 in Milan.

He is a bass guitar player, arranger, composer, conductor and record producer and his work ranges between the different music genres of pop, jazz, funk, latin and dance.

His father, Arturo Prestipino Giarritta, was a well-known violinist and Presti began studying piano and music theory at the age of six.

He taught himself to play the bass guitar and began playing professionally at the age of 17, having developed his own special technique using either the pick or thumb.

Presti was a pioneer of electric bass and was probably the first to play a Fender Jazz Bass in Italy.

His talent for playing the instrument led him to collaborate with the major Italian pop artists of the 1960s, including the famous singer, Mina, who is Italy's all-time top-selling female recording artist. Presti arranged and conducted 86 tracks and composed four songs for her, also sometimes backing her as a singer.

Presti enjoyed a long working relationship
with the major Italian star, Mina

Among the many other artists he worked with were Bobby Solo, Gigliola Cinquetti and Adriano Celentano. 

In 1976 he created and produced for Atlantic Records, the album, Ist Round, which was considered the first funk dance production and one of the most innovative albums of the 1970s in Italy.

In 1977 he signed a contract with RAI2 to be arranger, conductor and composer of original music for the famous TV show, Auditorio A, and he was responsible for conducting a big band of 56 notable musicians.

Presti also collaborated with some of the biggest names on the international music scene such as Shirley Bassey, Wilson Pickett, Stephane Grappelli and Maynard Ferguson.

In 2013 he produced the tribute album Shirley Bunnie-Foy, consisting of 17 tracks performed by jazz vocalist Shirley Bunnie-Foy during her 60-year career.

In 2014 he composed, co-produced and released under the pseudonym Mad of Jazz, the album Deep Colours and in 2016 he composed the music for the advertising campaign of Scavolini, an Italian kitchen and bathroom manufacturer.

Between 1967 and 1985 Presti trained in Shotokan karate under Japanese masters and obtained his 5th degree black belt in Rome in 1987.

Since 2004, he has lived in Nice in the South of France.

The Piccolo Teatro in Milan

Travel tip:

Milan, where Presti was born and lived for many years, has a wealth of theatres with a long tradition of staging different entertainment. Teatro Litta next to Palazzo Litta in Corso Magenta is believed to be the oldest theatre in the city. Teatro Dal Verme in San Giovanni sul Muro opened in 1872 and the Piccolo Teatro in Via Rivoli opened in 1947. Milan’s most famous theatre, Teatro alla Scala, in Piazza della Scala, across the road from Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II,  was first inaugurated in 1778. The theatre has a fascinating museum that displays costumes and memorabilia from its long history. The entrance is in Largo Ghiringhelli, just off Piazza Scala. It is open every day except the Italian Bank Holidays and a few days in December. Opening hours are from 9.00 to 12.30 and 1.30 to 5.30pm.

One side of the Sforza Castle in Milan

Travel tip

One of the other main sights in Milan is the impressive Sforza castle, Castello Sforzesco, built in the 15th century by Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan. After Ludovico Sforza became Duke of Milan in 1494 he commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to fresco several rooms. The castle now houses some of the city’s museums and art galleries. For more information visit www.milanocastello.it

More reading:

How Mina changed the rules for women in 1960s Italy

Adriano Celentano spans the ages of Italian pop music

Gigliola Cinquetti - Italy's first queen of Eurovision

Also on this day:

1945: The birth of 60s singing star Rita Pavone

1974: The death of pioneering psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli


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Luca Marenzio – composer

Madrigal writer influenced Monteverdi

Luca Marenzio is believed to have been a
singer employed by the Gonzaga family

Luca Marenzio, a prolific composer of madrigals during the late Renaissance period, died on this day in 1599 in the garden of the Villa Medici on Monte Pincio in Rome.

Marenzio wrote at least 500 madrigals, some of which are considered to be the most famous examples of the form, and he was an important influence on the composer Claudio Monteverdi.

Born at Coccaglio, a small town near Brescia in 1553, Marenzio was one of seven children belonging to a poor family, but he received some early musical training at Brescia Cathedral where he was a choirboy.

It is believed he went to Mantua with the maestro di cappella from Brescia to serve the Gonzaga family as a singer.

Marenzio was then employed as a singer in Rome by Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo and, after the Cardinal’s death, he served at the court of Cardinal Luigi d’Este.

He travelled to Ferrara with Luigi d’Este and took part in the wedding festivities for Vincenzo Gonzaga and Margherita Farnese.

While he was there he wrote two books of madrigals and dedicated them to Alfonso II and Lucrezia d’Este.

Marenzio's first book of madrigals was published in 1580

Marenzio went on to establish an international reputation as a talented composer of madrigals and he was also an expert lutenist. He was much admired in England and his madrigals were printed in N Yonge’s Musica Transalpina, published in 1588, a collection of music that stimulated the composition of English madrigals.

After the death of Luigi d’Este, Marenzio entered the service of Ferdinando I de’ Medici in Florence, where he formed friendships with composers Piero Strozzi and Antonio de Bicci.

On his return to Rome he entered the service of Virginio Orsini, nephew of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and he lived in the Orsini palace. Another important patron was Cardinal Cinzio Aldobrandini, nephew of the reigning pope, Clement VIII, who assigned him an apartment in the Vatican.

Marenzio then travelled to Poland to be maestro di cappella at the court of Sigismund III Vasa in Warsaw. He wrote and directed sacred music there, which unfortunately has since been lost.

The visit to Poland affected his health and he did not live long after his return to Rome. While his brother was looking after him, he died in the garden at the Villa Medici on August 22, 1599.

Marenzio was buried in the Church of San Lorenzo in Lucina in Rome.

Vineyards near Coccaglio, which is on the edge of the
Franciacorta wine-making area, near Brescia

Travel tip:

Coccaglio, Marenzio’s birthplace, is a town in Lombardy, about 32km (20 miles) west of Brescia and 35km (22 miles) southeast of Bergamo.  The municipality is located in the southern edge of Franciacorta, the area famous for its sparkling wine of the same name, which is known as the Italian answer to Champagne, being produced using the same method as the classic French bubbly, as opposed to the faster fermentation process used in the popular Prosecco.

The Villa Medici has been the home of the
French Academy in Rome since 1803

Travel tip:

The Villa Medici, where Marenzio died, is on the Pincian Hill next to the church of Trinità dei Monti in Rome, at the head of the Spanish Steps. The villa, built in 1554 in the Mannerist style to a design by Bartolomeo Ammanati, has housed the French Academy in Rome since 1803. In ancient times the site of the Villa Medici was part of the gardens of Lucullus. Behind the Villa Medici stretches out the vast park and gardens of the Villa Borghese.

More reading:

The genius of Claudio Monteverdi

Federico II Gonzaga, the ruler of Mantua who spent his childhood as a political hostage

How Eleonora Gonzaga became Holy Roman Empress

Also on this day:

1849: History's first air raid hits Venice

1914: The death of the progressive Bishop Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi

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Lino Capolicchio - actor

Acclaimed for role in Vittorio de Sica classic

Lino Capolicchio's acting talents shone on the
 stage, television and the big screen

The actor and director Lino Capolicchio, who starred in Vittorio de Sica’s Oscar-winning film The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, was born on this day in 1943 in Merano, an alpine town in the Trentino-Alto Adige region of northern Italy.

Capolicchio appeared in more than 70 films and TV dramas, and dubbed the voice of Bo Hazzard in the Italian adaptation of the American action-comedy The Dukes of Hazzard.

As a director, he won awards for Pugili, a drama-documentary film set in the world of boxing based on his own storylines, but it is for The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, for which he won a David di Donatello award for best actor, that he is best remembered.

The movie is about a wealthy Jewish family in Ferrara in the 1930s, whose adult children, Micol and Alberto, enjoy blissful summers entertaining friends with tennis and parties in the garden the family’s sumptuous villa.

Capolicchio’s character, Giorgio, from another middle-class Jewish family, falls in love with Micol but she only toys with his attentions. In any event, everything changes with the outbreak of war as northern Italy’s Jewish population become targets for the Nazis and their Fascist allies.

Capolicchio with his co-star Dominique Sanda in Vittorio
de Sica's Oscar winner The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

The movie won De Sica one of his four Oscars as a director. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow both won Best Foreign Language Film, while Bicycle Thieves and Sciuscià were both awarded honorary Oscars.

Trained at the Silvio D’Amico Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome, Capolicchio made his stage debut in 1964 at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano in a play by Carlo Goldoni under the direction of Giorgio Strehler, who also used him in some subsequent Shakespeare productions.

By 1967 his acting talents were held in such high regard that he was given a small role in Franco Zeffirelli’s movie version of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, which starred Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

His first major starring role came in Escalation (1968), a drama directed by Roberto Faenza, before the chance to play Giorgio in The Garden of the Finzi-Contadinis followed in 1970. The movie was such a success, winning critical acclaim as well as public popularity, that Capolicchio became famous almost overnight.

Capolicchio continued to work well into his
70s with a number of TV roles

Many more parts followed, including several films for the director Pupi Avati, including his 1976 movie La casa dalle finestre che ridono (The House with the Laughing Windows), the 1984 film Noi tre (The Three of Us), in which he plays Mozart’s father, and Ultimo minuto (Last minute) in 1988.

For a period in the late 80s, Capolicchio focussed on teaching, taking the acting chair at the Experimental Centre of Cinematography in Rome. During this period he discovered new talents such as Francesca Neri, Sabrina Ferilli and Jaja Forte.  Later, while he was holding auditions for his film Pugili, he came across a young actor of great talent who has gone on to enjoy a successful career in Pierfrancesco Favino.

Pugili, shot in 1995, was named Best Film by the international press at the Turin Film Festival.  Awarded the Vittorio de Sica Award in 2012 for best actor and director, he continued working into his 70s, with parts in TV dramas such as La piovra and the massively popular Una grande famiglia.

Updated August 2022: Lino Capolicchio sadly passed away in Rome in May, 2022, at the age of 78.

Trauttmansdorff Castle is one of the attractions of Merano

Travel tip:

Located in a basin surrounded by mountains that rise up to almost 3,350m (11,000ft), Merano is a town of around 40,000 inhabitants in Trentino-Alto Adige, known also as the South Tyrol, which is most famous for its spas. The writers Franz Kafka and Ezra Pound were both residents at one time or another. Among the attractions for visitors are the Gothic St. Nicholas' Church and, a little outside the town, the Trauttmansdorff Castle and its gardens.

The Rotonda Foschini 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.

More reading:

Vittorio de Sica - the maestro behind Bicycle Thieves and other classics in Italian cinema history

The Shakespeare adaptations that made Franco Zeffirelli into a household name

How La Dolce Vita actor Marcello Mastroianni became the epitome of Italian cool

Also on this day:

1862: The birth of adventure novelist Emilio Salgari

1969: The death of Giuseppe Meazza, Italian football's first superstar


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Stelvio Cipriani – composer

Musician wrote some of Italy’s most famous film soundtracks

One of Stelvio Cipriani's first jobs was as
piano accompanist for the singer Rita Pavone

Stelvio Cipriani, an award-winning composer of film scores, was born on this day in 1937 in Rome.

One of his most famous soundtracks was for the 1973 film, La polizia sta a guardare (also released as The Great Kidnapping). The main theme was used again by Cipriani in 1977 for the film, Tentacoli, and also featured in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof in 2007.

Although Cipriani did not come from a musical background, he was fascinated with the organ at his church when he was a child.

His priest gave him music lessons and then Cipriani went to study piano and harmony at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome at the age of 14.



His first job was playing in a band on a cruise ship and then he became the accompanist for the popular Italian singer, Rita Pavone.

Cipriani with actress Antonella Lualdi
at the Giffoni film festival in 1975

Stelvio wrote his first movie soundtrack for the 1966 spaghetti western, The Bounty Killer. This was followed by a score for The Stranger Returns in 1967, starring Tony Anthony. He wrote for other films starring Anthony, as well as for many poliziotteschi - Italian crime films - a type of film popular in the 1970s.

Stelvio was awarded a Nastro d’Argento for Best Score for the 1970 film The Anonymous Venetian.  This is still considered one of the best and most famous Italian film soundtracks.

In an interview in 2007 Cipriani revealed that he had composed music for Pope John Paul II and was working at the time with Pope Benedict XVI.

Cipriani wrote Il Tema di Karol, a piano solo dedicated to Karol Wojtyla, who became Pope John Paul II, which was released on CD in 2013.

The composer will celebrate his 81st birthday today.

The Via della Conciliazione, looking towards the basilica
of St Peter, was conceived by Mussolini

Travel tip:

The Rome Cipriani was born into in 1937 had been radically changed by the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini after he became Prime Minister in 1922. The classical city had been built between the first century BC and the fourth century AD, the Christian city between the fourth and the 18th centuries and Mussolini wanted to build la Terza Roma, the third Rome, which would be an Empire for modern times. One of the major changes ordered by him was the building of the Via della Conciliazione, the wide avenue along which today’s visitors approach Saint Peter’s Basilica from Castel Sant’Angelo. It was commissioned by Mussolini to be a symbol of reconciliation between the Holy See and the Italian state after the Lateran Treaty was signed. Roughly 500 metres long, the vast colonnaded street designed by the architect Marcello Piacentini was intended to link the Vatican to the heart of Rome. At the time it had the opposite effect as local people were upset by the many buildings and houses that had to be demolished causing residents to be displaced.

The new headquarters of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia
were designed by the architect Renzo Piano

Travel tip:

The St Cecilia Academy, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, where Cipriani studied music in the 1950s, is one of the oldest musical academies in the world. It was founded in Rome by Pope Sixtus V in 1585 at the Church of Santa Maria ad Martires, better known as the Pantheon. Over the centuries, many famous composers and musicians have been members of the Academy, which lists opera singers Beniamino Gigli and Cecilia Bartoli among its alumni. Since 2005 the Academy’s headquarters have been at the Parco della Musica in Rome, which was designed by the architect Renzo Piano.

More reading:

The composer who created the sounds of The Godfather

The brilliant film music of Ennio Morricone 

Rita Pavone - the precocious star who conquered America

Also on this day:

1561: The birth of Jacopo Peri, composer of the first opera

1799: The poet and revolutionary Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel is hanged

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