Tiziana ‘Tosca’ Donati - singer

Versatile performer whose range spans musicals to sacred songs

The singer Tiziana Donati, known as Tosca, during
one of her stage performances

The singer Tiziana Donati, who performs under the stage name Tosca, was born on this day in 1967 in Rome.

Winner of the Sanremo Festival in 1996, Tosca has recorded 10 studio albums, released the same number of singles and has recorded duets with many other artists.

She has enjoyed a successful stage career, appearing in numerous theatrical productions, and has been invited to perform songs for several movies, including the title track for Franco Zeffirelli’s version of Jane Eyre in 1996. She also sang and spoke the part of Anastasia in the Italian dubbed version of the Disney cartoon of the same name.

At Christmas in 1999, she participated in concerts in churches in Italy where she performed Latin songs set to music by Vincenzo Zitello and Stefano Melone.

Following this she began a collaboration with the Vatican, taking part in several televised events to commemorate the Jubilee of 2000, and was chosen to sing the Mater Iubilaei, the Marian anthem of the Jubilee, in a ceremony led by Pope John Paul II.

Throughout 2000, she toured with Musica Caeli, a concert made up of never-before performed sacred chants, staged in some of the biggest churches and cathedrals around the world.

Tosca was spotted singing in a piano bar in Rome in the
1990s before winning the Sanremo Festival in 1996

Tiziana said her love of singing began as a child when she suffered from acute articular rheumatism, a debilitating health condition affecting the joints that prevented her taking part in normal activities.  She did, however, accompany her grandmother to church almost every day and soon set her heart on becoming a member of the choir.

She went along to choir practice and was accepted and drew a sense of pride and self-worth from being asked to stand on a chair and sing at family occasions. Singing and later acting gave her a sense of purpose.

In her teens, Donati joined a theatre company in Rome and began singing in a piano bar in the city, where she was spotted by Renzo Arbore, a musician and television presenter, who invited to sing on the show Il caso Sanremo, a unique programme in which winning songs from different years of the Sanremo Festival were placed on “trial” in a set made to resemble a courtroom.

The exposure propelled her into the public eye. She adopted Tosca as a stage name and released her first album in 1992.

Tiziana Donati pictured during a studio recording
session with fellow musician Chico Buarque

Her big break, though, was winning Sanremo itself in 1996 with Vorrei incontrarti fra cent'anni - I Want To Meet You In One Hundred Years - a song written by Rosalino Cellamare, who performed under the stage name Ron, and who also provided backing vocals and guitar.

After another appearance at Sanremo the following year, she released an album, entitled Incontri e passaggi of songs written for her by artists such as Lucio Dalla, Chico Buarque de Holanda, Grazia Di Michele, Ennio Morricone and Mariella Nava, which won her the Targa Tenco prize as the year’s outstanding performer.

Since 2000, Donati has mixed concerts with stage shows and musicals and has recently worked as a section director at the Pasolini Workshop in Rome, a venture - named in honour of the film director Pier Paolo Pasolini - run in collaboration with the University of Rome and the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia to unearth and nurture new talent.

Still in demand today for high-profile roles, recently starring at the Teatro Argentina in Rome in the touring show Donne come noi - Women Like Us - based on a book of the same name about 100 Italian women who have changed their lives and those of others.

Last year, Tosca celebrated her life in music with a sell-out concert at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome in which she was joined on stage by artists including Nicola Piovani, Danilo Rea and Joe Barbieri, all of whom had become friends at different points of her career.

The saxophonist Bobby Watson has
performed at Gregory's in Rome

Travel tip:

One of Rome’s traditional music venues is the jazz club Gregory’s, which can be found in Via Gregoriana, a short walk from Piazza di Spagna and the Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti. The club has a ‘hall of fame’ that includes the likes of Bobby Durham, Victor Lewis, Steve Grossman, Gregory Hutchinson, Bobby Watson and Scott Hamilton, all of whom have performed at the venue.  The club hosts live sets almost every night, starting at around 9.30pm. A sister venue, Gregory’s By The River, stages live music during the summer months on the edge of the Tiber at Castel Sant’Angelo.

The Teatro Argentina in Rome is one of the city's
oldest opera houses, inaugurated in 1732

Travel tip:

The Teatro Argentina, where Tosca recently performed in the show Donne come noi, is a traditional opera venue in the square Largo di Torre Argentina. Built over the Curia of Pompey - the meeting hall in which Julius Caesar was murdered in 44BC - it is one of the oldest theatres in the city, commissioned by the Sforza-Cesarini family and inaugurated in 1732. Rossini's The Barber of Seville was given its premiere there in February 1816. It has staged drama productions as well as opera and music. In the mid-20th centuries, works by Luigi Pirandello, Henrik Ibsen and Maxim Gorky were performed there for the first time.

More reading:

How Enrico Caruso inspired Lucio Dalla

Why Sanremo winner Adriano Celentano is Italy's biggest-selling recording artist of all time

The Barber of Seville premieres at Teatro Argentina

Also on this day:

1875: The birth of flautist Lorenzo De Lorenzo

1991: Anti-Mafia hero Libero Grassi is murdered in Palermo

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Elisabetta Sirani – artist

Sudden death of talented young woman shocked Bologna

A self-portrait by Elisabetta Sirani

The brilliant Baroque painter and printmaker Elisabetta Sirani died in unexplained circumstances at the age of 27 on this day in 1665 in Bologna.

The body of the artist was carried to the Chapel of the Rosary in the Basilica of San Domenico in Bologna to be mourned, not just by her family, but by an entire community as she was loved and respected as an important female painter.

Elisabetta has been described as beautiful, focused and selfless and she became a symbol of the progressive city of Bologna, where the creativity of women was encouraged and they were able to express themselves through art and music.

Elisabetta’s father, Giovanni Andrea Sirani, was himself an artist and she was trained in his studio, although contemporary writers have recorded that he was reluctant to teach her to paint in the Bolognese style, as established by artists in the city in the 16th and 17th centuries as a way to distinguish themselves from the artists of Florence and Rome.

But Elisabetta acquired the technique anyway and became one of the most renowned painters in Bologna , overshadowing her father. He had been a pupil of the highly regarded Bolognese painter Guido Reni, who had died in 1642, and many local people considered Elisabetta to be a female reincarnation of him.

Sirani's beautiful painting Sant'Antonio da
Padova in adorazione del bambino

When she was just 16 her father became incapacitated by gout and so Elisabetta began running his workshop and became the breadwinner for the whole family.

She never married, despite being described as attractive, lively and warm-hearted. Some people believed that her father prevented her from marrying.

When Elisabetta died suddenly on 28 August 1665 in Bologna her death was treated as suspicious and a servant, Lucia Tolomelli, was charged with poisoning the artist. She was put on trial but Elisabetta’s father later withdrew the charges.

Modern thinking, based on the descriptions recorded of her symptoms, is that she probably died of peritonitis after suffering a ruptured peptic ulcer.

Elisabetta was given an elaborate funeral that included an enormous catafalque - a kind of moving platform - containing a life-sized sculpture of her and she was buried in the same tomb as Guido Reni.

During her brief career she had produced more than 200 paintings, 15 etchings and hundreds of drawings. She painted many religious subjects but was also an accomplished portrait painter and was much mourned by the women of Bologna who had sat for her.

She established an academy for women painters in Bologna and trained many artists at what was the first school in Europe for women painters that was outside a convent.

Her 1663 painting Virgin and Child is now in the collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington . In 1994 it was selected by the United States Postal Service for their Christmas holiday stamp series.

The Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna houses a number
of paintings by Elisabetta Sirani

Travel tip:

You can see paintings by Elisabetta Sirani in The Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna in Complesso di Sant’Ignazio in Via Belle Arti, a gallery close to Due Torri, the two towers that have become symbols of Bologna . One of the most beautiful paintings on show is Sant’Antonio da Padova in adorazione del bambino, which shows the saint kneeling at the baby’s feet. Also on display is her striking painting of Santa Maria Maddalena, which shows the saint bare-breasted and holding a crucifix.

Guido Reni's ceiling The Glory of San
Domenico is a feature of the basilica

Travel tip:

Elisabetta Sirani is buried with the artist Guido Reni in the Rosary Chapel of the 13th century Basilica of San Domenico in Piazza San Domenico. The church is close to the Archiginnasio, once the main building of the University of Bologna . Behind the red-brick façade of the church, which was added as recently as 1910, lies a treasure house of art including works by Pisano, Michelangelo, Iacopo da Bologna and Guido Reni. In the Rosary Chapel, the most important work is the Mystery of the Rosary, a group of paintings worked on by Lodovico Carracci, Bartolomeo Cesi, Denis Calvaert, Lavinia Fontana, Guido Reni and Domenichino.

More reading:

The Bolognese master Guercino

How the Bolognese painter Annibale Carracci influenced art in Rome

Why Domenichino is seen as the Raphael of the Bolognese School

Also on this day:

1909: The birth of Bicycle Thieves actor Lamberto Maggiorani

1938: The birth of journalist and TV talk show host Maurizio Costanzo


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The 410 Sack of Rome

Invasion that signalled terminal decline of Western Roman Empire

Alaric and the Visigoths entering Rome, as depicted by the
19th century German artist Wilhelm Lindenschmit the Younger

The ancient city of Rome was left in a state of shock and devastation after three days of looting and pillaging by Visigoths under the command of King Alaric came to an end on this day in 410.

An unknown number of citizens had been killed and scores of others had fled into the countryside. Countless women had been raped. Many buildings were damaged and set on fire and Alaric and his hordes made off with vast amounts of Roman treasure.

It was the first time in 800 years that an invading army had successfully breached the walls of the Eternal City and many historians regard the event as the beginning of the end for the Western Roman Empire.

It could have been more devastating still had Alaric, a Christian, been a more cruel leader.  Although he struggled to control his men - historians believe they were an ill-disciplined rabble rather than an organised fighting force - he stopped short of ordering large-scale slaughter of the Roman population, while silver and gold objects they were told had belonged to St Peter were left behind.

A book illustration showing Alaric in Athens
after conquering the city in 395

It was brought to a swift conclusion because Alaric had other targets he wished to attack in the far south of Italy and in northern Africa. In the event, he died not long afterwards of a fever, somewhere near what is now the city of Cosenza in Calabria.

Alaric had risen to become King of the Visigoths in 395, the same year that saw the death of the Emperor Theodosius I, who had signed a peace treaty with the Goths in 382. Leadership of the Eastern and Western Empires was inherited by Theodosius’s two sons, Arcadius in the east and 10-year-old Honorius in the west. The western capital was moved from Rome to Ravenna, which was more easily defended.

Wanting to create a new settlement for his tribes, Alaric staged regular attacks in northern Italy in the early part of the fifth century but these were always repelled by Honorius’s regent, the brilliant military strategist and general Flavius Stilicho.

Stilicho, who was half-German, had many soldiers of German origin under his command and wanted to enlist the help of the Visigoths to fight against the Eastern Empire. Alaric himself had even served in battle under the command of Stilicho, whom he greatly admired and even considered a friend.

But his position changed when Honorius dismissed his demand to be given land and political power and he set his sights on Rome, which was still the symbolic heart of the Empire, even if the seat of government was now in Ravenna.

Alaric is buried in the bed of a river near where he died, along
with personal treasures, as imagined by Heinrich Leutemann

He was unconcerned about Honorius but knew he faced a formidable adversary in Stilicho and it was out of fear and respect for Stilicho that he stopped short of invading Rome after advancing to its gates in 408.

But after Stilicho, suspected of planning an insurrection, was executed on the orders of Honorius later the same year, the obstacle he presented was removed.

As a consequence, after long months laying siege to the city, during which time Roman citizens became hungrier and more desperate, Alaric first set a series of demands in front of Honorius, promising to call off the siege if they were met.  When they were refused, he ordered his tribes to enter the city on August 24, 410.  They did so without much of a fight, ushered in either by corrupt officials or rebellious slaves who opened the Salarian Gate.

The collapse of the Western Roman Empire did not happen as a direct result of Alaric’s invasion. In fact a more severe sacking of the city was still to come, carried out by the Vandals in 455, but the 410 invasion was a symbolic moment in an end game that was to reach its conclusion in 476, when another Germanic leader, Flavius Odoacer, removed the Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, and declared himself King of Italy, which is the moment at which many historians consider the Western Empire to have been no more.

The facade of the cathedral in Cosenza

Travel tip:

Cosenza, a city with an urban area in which more than 260,000 people live, combines a no-nonsense modern city with a small and atmospheric old city, a medieval town with a network of steep, narrow streets, at the heart of which is a cathedral originally built in the 11th century.  The old town also boasts the 13th century Castello Svevo, built on the site of a Saracen fortification, which hosted the wedding of Louis III of Naples and Margaret of Savoy but which the Bourbons used as a prison.  The pedestrianized centre of the new city has sculptures by the likes of Dalí, De Chirico and Pietro Consagra.

Dante's tomb in Ravenna

Travel tip:

As well as being the former capital of the Western Roman Empire, Ravenna was also the city where the 13th century poet Dante Alighieri lived in exile until his death in 1321. Dante's tomb is in the church of San Pier Maggiore. The city is renowned for its wealth of well-preserved late Roman and Byzantine architecture and eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites. One of the most important examples of early Christian Byzantine art and architecture is the Basilica of San Vitale, which is famous for its fine Byzantine mosaics.

More reading:

How Rome was sacked by the Ostrogoths in 546

Mutinous troops sack Rome in 1527

The death of Dante Alighieri

Also on this day

1576: The death of the great Renaissance artist Titian

1707: The birth of actress Zanetta Farussi, mother of Casanova

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Carlo Camillo Di Rudio - soldier

Italian aristocrat who survived Battle of the Little Bighorn

Carlo Camillo Di Rudio spent 32 years
in the United States Army

Carlo Camillo Di Rudio, a military officer who became known as Charles Camillus DeRudio and gave 32 years’ service to the United States Army in the late 19th century, was born in Belluno in northern Italy on this day in 1832.

Having arrived in New York City as an immigrant from England in 1860, he served as a volunteer in the American Civil War (1861-65) before joining the Regular Army in 1867 as a 2nd lieutenant in the 2nd Infantry, an appointment which was cancelled when he failed a medical. Undeterred, he was readmitted and joined the 7th Cavalry in 1869, eventually attaining the rank of Major.

He participated in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, in which the US Army suffered a defeat to the combined forces of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribesmen. The battle was part of the Great Sioux Wars of 1876, fought for possession of the Black Hills in South Dakota, where gold had been found.

DeRudio was thrown from his horse as the American forces under Major Marcus Reno were driven back across the Little Bighorn River to regroup on the eastern side. He was left stranded on the western side and hid for 36 hours with a private, Thomas O’Neill. They were twice almost captured but eventually managed to cross the river to safety.

DeRudio had led an eventful life even before his experiences in the US military, during which he also took part in the Nez Perce War on 1877, another conflict with Native Americans.

A scene from the Battle of the Little Bighorn, as depicted
by the artist Charles Marion Russell

Born the son of Count and Countess Aquila di Rudio, he attended an Austrian military academy in Milan before leaving at the age of 15 to join the Italian patriots during 1848 uprising known as the Five Days of Milan. Later, he fought in Rome and Venice against the Austrians.

Soon afterwards, he tried to sail to America but was shipwrecked off Spain. By 1855, he was living in east London and had married Eliza, the 15-year-old daughter of a confectioner from Nottingham, with whom he eventually had six children.

In 1858 he took part in a failed attempt to assassinate the Emperor of France, Napoleon III, at the Paris Opera.  The attempt, led by another Italian revolutionary, the Carbonari leader Felice Orsini, involved three bombs and killed eight people, wounding another 150, but missed its intended target.

Orsini and his co-conspirator, Giuseppe Pieri, were executed but DeRudio’s sentence was commuted to a life sentence to be served on Île Royale, a neighbour of Devil’s Island in the western Atlantic off French Guiana.  But he and 12 others escaped from the island and landed in what was then British Guiana, more than 800km (500 miles) along the northern coast of South America.

From there he returned to England but his taste for action would not be contained and he emigrated to the United States, specifically to fight on the Union side in the Civil War.  Once commissioned to serve in the Regular Army, he was never entirely trusted by his superiors, including the then Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, who tended to disbelieve his accounts of his own military service career.

He retired on his 64th birthday and spent his final years in California, where he died in 1910 at the age of 78, while living in Pasadena.

Belluno sits in the shadow of the Dolomites

Travel tip:

Belluno, where DeRudio was born, is a beautiful town in the Dolomites, situated just over 100km (62 miles) north of Venice. The town sits in an elevated position above the Piave river surrounded by rocky slopes and dense woods that make for an outstanding scenic background. The architecture of the historic centre has echoes of the town's Roman and medieval past. Around the picturesque Piazza Duomo can be found several fine buildings, such as the Palazzo dei Rettori, the Cathedral of Belluno and Palazzo dei Giuristi, which contains the Civic Museum.

The Scuola Militare "Teulie" is in Corso Italia in Milan

Travel tip:

The military academy in Milan attended by DeRudio is known today as the Scuola Militare "Teulié", a highly selective institution attached to the Italian Army and, having been founded in 1802, one of the oldest military academies in the world. It was closed by the Austrians in 1848 after the cadets, of which DeRudio was one, took part in the Five Days of Milan, the uprising against the Austrians. It became a military hospital. During the early part of the 20th century it was a military barracks, becoming the headquarters of the III Corps of the Italian Army, before reverting to its former status as a military academy in 1996.

More reading:

How the citizens of Milan rose up to throw out the Austrians

The story of fighter pilot Silvio Scaroni

The pope from Belluno who was in office just 33 days

Also on this day:

303: The martyrdom of Sant'Alessandro of Bergamo

1498: Michelangelo accepts the commission to sculpt his masterpiece, La Pietà


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