Vittorio Valletta - industrialist

Agnelli lieutenant who turned Fiat into an auto giant

Vittorio Valletta worked for Fiat
for 45 years, 27 as CEO

The industrialist Vittorio Valletta, whose diplomatic and deal-making skills helped him turn Fiat into the beacon of Italy’s postwar recovery, was born on this day in 1883 in Sampierdarena, a port suburb of Genoa famous for shipbuilding.

He joined Fiat in 1921, quickly rising to the top and became effectively the right-hand man to founder and president Giovanni Agnelli, as CEO practically steering the company single-handed through the turmoil of the Second World War.

After Agnelli’s death in 1945 he became president and remained in control of the company until 1966, when he finally handed over to Gianni Agnelli, the founder’s grandson, at the age of 83.

Under his leadership, Fiat grew to such a position of dominance in postwar Italy that at one stage 80 per cent of cars bought in Italy were made by Fiat. The company’s factories employed almost 100,000 people, fulfilling Giovanni’s ambition, which he handed to Valletta almost on his deathbed, to "make Fiat greater, giving more working opportunities to the people, and producing cheaper and better cars".

Valletta also pulled off one of the greatest business coups of the postwar years when he secured a contract with the government of Russia to produce 600,000 cars per year at a factory in the Volga region.

The son of a railway official originally from Brindisi, Valletta moved with his family to Turin while he was a boy. He graduated in economics from a college that is now part of the University of Turin and might have settled for the life of an accountant had his military service as a pilot not steered him into the aviation industry.

The classic Fiat 500 was Italy's 
people's car in the 1950s

He was recruited by an organisation charged with co-ordinating the aeronautical industries in assisting military aviation. After the First World War, one of the many contacts he had made asked him to run an aeroplane parts business, which subsequently transitioned into Autocostruzioni Chiribiri, a small car manufacturer.

Valletta joined Fiat in 1921 during a period in which Italian industry was having to deal with an unstable political climate in which the occupation of factories by socialist and communist workers’ collectives was common. The rise of Mussolini’s Fascists further complicated the company’s ability to pursue friction-free trade.

After Agnelli’s son Edoardo was killed in a plane crash, Valletta was appointed CEO in 1928. He spent much of the next decade travelling back and forth between Turin and Rome, trying to stay on the right side of Mussolini, who had a long-standing animosity towards Fiat and Agnelli.

The German invasion of Italy in 1943 put Fiat in a difficult position. They had made vehicles and machinery for the Italian army and were expected to continue to do so for the Nazis. Failure to do so would have led Agnelli and Valletta and others to risk arrest, the seizure of their factories and perhaps even execution.

Fiat's founder, Giovanni Agnelli,
saw Valletta as his right-hand man

Yet Valletta was a patriot, prepared to risk his own safety by deliberating creating excuses for slow production of equipment and armaments, while secretly giving financial help to the Resistance.

Despite this, when the war ended, the trade unions and political parties on the left accused Valletta of collaboration and reported him to the National Liberation Committee, who removed him from his position as head of Fiat. However, the intervention of the Christian Democrat prime minister, Alcide De Gasperi, who had persuaded communist leader Palmiro Togliati that Italy’s workforce needed a successful Fiat, led the Committee to reconsider and he was reinstated.

Agnelli died in December 1945, which brought another crisis for the Fiat board over succession. Gianni, who was heir to the empire after the death of Edoardo, was only 24 and had no experience of running a business. It was with his blessing - and vote as a board member - that Valletta, forever known as The Professor on account of his academic background, was made president.

Rebuilding the business was a herculean task, not least because so many of Fiat’s factories had been flattened in bombing raids. But Valletta put funds granted through the Marshall Plan for Europe’s postwar recovery to good use, even persuading further investment from the sceptical United States on the basis that a powerful Italian economy would help check the growth of communism the Americans feared.

Fiat’s big winners under Valletta’s guidance were the four-door Fiat 600 and its two-door brother, the 500, two massive sellers introduced in the 1950s in place of the popular but dated Topolino of the 1930s.

Gianni Agnelli took the reins at
Fiat in 1966 as Valletta retired

The company expanded in other directions, too, mass-producing tractors to mobilise the growth of agriculture, and further strengthening the West’s bulwark against the Soviets by supplying the Italian military with its first jet plane, the G-80 fighter aircraft.

The cosiness of Valletta’s relationship with the United States did not stop him pursuing his long-held ambition of breaking into the Russian market, however, and in May 1966 his diplomatic and negotiating skills resulted in an historic agreement being reached with the Soviet leader Leonid Breshnev for Fiat to develop a factory and produce a version of the Fiat 124 sedan under the name Zhiguli - later, Lada - beating competition from the French company, Renault.

It was The Professor’s last act as Fiat supremo. By then, plans were already in place for him to step down and for Gianni Agnelli to take charge, at the age of 43, alongside chief executive Gaudenzio Bono.

Valletta was made a senator for life later in the same year, described by the Italian President, Giuseppe Saragat, as "the first Fiat worker, and one of the great men who most contributed to the Italian economic miracle and to the welfare of the country".

Valletta died only a few months later, in August 1967, having suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while on holiday at his summer villa in Pietrasanta, a town slightly inland of the coast of northern Tuscany.

In recognition of the accord fostered by Valletta, Gianni Agnelli was joined by the Russian ambassador to Italy in placing a laurel wreath sent by the Russian president, Aleksej Kosygin, on his tomb at the Monumental Cemetery of Turin.

Sampierdarena is now an industrial suburb of 
the Italian port city of Genoa

Travel tip:

Sampierdarena was historically a fishing village, named after the church of San Pietro d'Arena.  During the Italian Renaissance it became a residential area, with great palaces being built such as the Palazzo Imperiale Scassi, designed by Domenico and Giovanni Ponzello according to the style of Galeazzo Alessi.  After the coming of the railways (1854) it became one of the great industrial centres of Italy, known particularly for shipbuilding and armaments. In 1926, Sampierdarena was absorbed into the greater Genoa area. Today it is part of the city’s Municipio II (Centro Ovest) zone.

The Piazza del Duomo is the main square in
Pietrasanta, a town 32km (20miles) north of Pisa

Travel tip:

Pietrasanta, which has Roman origins, was founded in 1255 around the  "Rocca di Sala" fortress of the Lombards by Luca Guiscardo da Pietrasanta, from whom it got its name. At different times belonging to Genoa and Lucca, it came under Medici control in 1484 before being seized by Charles VIII of France in 1494.  Pope Leo X, a member of the Medici family, gave Pietrasanta back to his family.  The town declined during the 17th and 18th centuries, partly due to malaria. In 1841, Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany promoted several reconstruction projects, including the reopening of once-famous quarries.  The seaside resort of Marina di Pietrasanta is 3km (1.9 miles) away.

Also on this day:

1924: The birth of racing driver Luigi Musso 

1941: The birth of conductor Riccardo Muti

1943: San Marino liberated from the Fascists

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27 July

Mario Del Monaco - tenor

Singer became famous for his interpretations of Otello

Opera singer Mario Del Monaco, who was renowned for the amazing power of his voice, was born on this day in 1915 in Florence.  His family were musical and as a child he studied the violin but he developed a passion for singing as well.  He studied at the Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro, where he first met and sang with the soprano Renata Tebaldi, who was to partner him regularly later in his career.  Del Monaco made a big impact with his debut performance as Lieutenant Pinkerton in Puccini’s Madame Butterfly in Milan in 1940.  He became popular with the audience at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in the 1950s, making many appearances in dramatic Verdi roles.  He was one of the four Italian tenors at their peak in the 1950s and 1960s, sharing the limelight with Giuseppe Di Stefano, Carlo Bergonzi and Franco Corelli.  Del Monaco became famous for his interpretation of the title role in Verdi’s Otello, which, it is estimated, he sang hundreds of times.  He started making recordings for HMV in 1948 in Milan and was later partnered by Renata Tebaldi in a series of Verdi and Puccini operas recorded for Decca.  Read more…

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Giosuè Carducci – poet and Nobel Prize winner

Writer used his poetry as a vehicle for his political views 

Giosuè Carducci, the first Italian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, was born on this day in 1835 in Tuscany.  Christened Giosuè Alessandro Giuseppe Carducci, he lived with his parents in the small village of Valdicastello in the province of Lucca.  His father, a doctor, was an advocate of the unification of Italy and was involved with the Carbonari, a network of secret revolutionary groups. Because of his politics, the family was forced to move several times during Carducci’s childhood, eventually settling in Florence.  During his time in college, Carducci became fascinated with the restrained style of Greek and Roman literature and his work as an adult often used the classical meters of such Latin poets as Horace and Virgil. He published his first collection of poems, Rime, in 1857.  He married Elvira Menicucci in 1859 and they had four children.  Carducci taught Greek at a high school in Pistoia and was then appointed as an Italian professor at the University of Bologna.  Carducci was a popular lecturer and a fierce critic of literature and society. He was an atheist, whose political views were vehemently hostile to Christianity.  Read more…

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Adolfo Celi – actor and director

Successful career of a Sicilian who was typecast as a baddy

An actor who specialised in playing the role of the villain in films, Adolfo Celi was born on this day in 1922 in Curcuraci, a hamlet in the province of Messina in Sicily.  Celi was already prominent in Italian cinema, but he became internationally famous for his portrayal of Emilio Largo, James Bond’s adversary with the eye patch, in the 1965 film Thunderball.  He had made his film debut after the Second World War in A Yank in Rome (Un americano in vacanza), in 1946.  In the 1950s he moved to Brazil, where he co-founded the Teatro Brasiliero de Comedia.  He was successful as a stage actor in Brazil and Argentina and also directed three films.  Celi’s big break came when he played the villain in Philippe de Broca’s That Man from Rio. Afterwards he was cast as the camp commandant in the escape drama, Von Ryan’s Express, in which Frank Sinatra and Trevor Howard played prisoners of war.  After appearing in Thunderball, Celi was offered scores of big parts as a villain.  He later made a spoof of Thunderball in the film, OK Connery, in which he played opposite Sean Connery’s brother, Neil.  Read more…

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26 July

Pope Paul II

Flamboyant pope who helped make books available to ordinary people

Pietro Barbo, who became Pope Paul II, died on this day in 1471 in Rome at the age of 54.  He is remembered for enjoying dressing up in sumptuous, ecclesiastical finery and having a papal tiara made for himself, which was studded with diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, topaz, large pearls and many other precious gems.  Barbo was born in Venice and was a nephew of Pope Eugenius IV through his mother and a member of the noble Barbo family through his father.  He adopted a spiritual career after his uncle was elected as pope and made rapid progress. He became a cardinal in 1440 and promised that if he was elected pope one day he would buy each cardinal a villa to escape the summer heat. He then became archpriest of St Peter’s Basilica.  It was reported that Pope Pius II suggested he should have been called Maria Pietissima (Our Lady of Pity) as he would use tears to help him obtain things he wanted. Some historians have suggested the nickname may have been an allusion to his enjoyment of dressing up or, possibly, to his lack of masculinity.  Barbo was elected to succeed Pope Pius II in the first ballot of the papal conclave of 1464.  Read more…

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Constantino Brumidi - painter

Rome-born artist responsible for murals in US Capitol Building

Constantino Brumidi, an artist whose work provides the backcloth to the daily business of government in the United States Capitol Building in Washington, was born on this day in 1805 in Rome.  Brumidi’s major work is the allegorical fresco The Apotheosis of Washington, painted in 1865, which covers the interior of the dome in the Rotunda.  Encircling the base of the dome, below the windows, is the Frieze of American History, in which Brumidi painted scenes depicting significant events of American history, although the second half of the work, which he began in 1878, had to be completed by another painter, Filippo Costaggini, as Brumidi died in 1880.  Previously, between 1855 and about 1870, Brumidi had decorated the walls of eight important rooms in the Capitol Building, including the Hall of the House of Representatives, the Senate Library and the President’s Room.  His Liberty and Union paintings are mounted near the ceiling of the White House entrance hall and the first-floor corridors of the Senate part of the Capitol Building are known as the Brumidi Corridors.  Brumidi arrived in the United States in 1852, having spent 13 months in jail in Rome.  Read more… 

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Francesco Cossiga - Italy's 8th President

Political career overshadowed by Moro murder

Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga was born on this day in 1928 in the Sardinian city of Sassari.  Cossiga, a Christian Democrat who had briefly served as Prime Minister under his predecessor, Sandro Pertini, held the office for seven years from 1985 to 1992. He was the eighth President of the Republic.  His presidency was unexceptional until the last two years, when he gained a reputation for controversial comments about the Italian political system and former colleagues.  It was during this time that another heavyweight of the Italian political scene, Giulio Andreotti, revealed the existence during the Cold War years of Gladio, a clandestine network sponsored by the American secret services and NATO that was set up amid fears that Italy would fall into the hands of Communists, either through military invasion from the East or, within Italy, via the ballot box.  Cossiga, said to have been obsessed with espionage, admitted to having been involved with the creation of Gladio in the years immediately following the end of the Second World War.  This led to renewed speculation surrounding the kidnap and murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978.  Read more… 

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25 July

Alfredo Casella – composer

Musician credited with reviving popularity of Vivaldi

Pianist and conductor Alfredo Casella, a prolific composer of early 20th century neoclassical music, was born on this day in 1883 in Turin.  Casella is credited as being the person responsible for the resurrection of Antonio Vivaldi’s work, following a 'Vivaldi Week' that he organised in 1939.  Casella was born into a musical family. His grandfather had been first cello in the San Carlo Theatre in Lisbon and he later became a soloist at the Royal Chapel in Turin.  His father, Carlo, and his brothers, Cesare and Gioacchino, were professional cellists. His mother, Maria, was a pianist and she gave the young Alfredo his first piano lessons. Their home was in Via Cavour, where it is marked with a plaque.  Casella entered the Conservatoire de Paris in 1896 to study piano under Louis Diemer and to study composition under Gabriel Fauré.  Ravel was one of his fellow students and Casella also got to know Debussy, Stravinsky, Mahler and Strauss while he was in Paris.  He admired Debussy, but he was also influenced by Strauss and Mahler when he wrote his first symphony in 1905.  Read more…

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Carlo Bergonzi – operatic tenor

Singer whose style was called the epitome of Italian vocal art

Carlo Bergonzi, one of the great Italian opera singers of the 20th century, died on this day in 2014 in Milan.  He specialised in singing roles from the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, helping to revive some of the composer’s lesser-known works.  Between the 1950s and 1980s he sang more than 300 times with the Metropolitan Opera of New York and the New York Times, in its obituary, described his voice as ‘an instrument of velvety beauty and nearly unrivalled subtlety’.  Bergonzi was born in Polesine Parmense near Parma in Emilia-Romagna in 1924. He claimed to have seen his first opera, Verdi’s Il Trovatore, at the age of six.  He sang in his local church and soon began to appear in children’s roles in operas in Busseto, a town near where he lived.  He left school at the age of 11 and started to work in the same cheese factory as his father in Parma.  At the age of 16 he began vocal studies as a baritone at the Arrigo Boito Conservatory in Parma.  During World War II, Bergonzi became involved in anti-Fascist activities and was sent to a German prisoner of war camp. After two years he was freed by the Russians and walked 106km (66 miles) to reach an American camp.  Read more…

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Battle of Molinella

First time artillery played a major part in warfare

An important battle in Italy’s history was fought on this day in 1467 at Molinella, near Bologna.  On one side were infantry and cavalry representing Venice and on the other side there was an army serving Florence.  It was the first battle in Italy in which artillery and firearms were used extensively, the main weapons being cannons fired by gunpowder that could launch heavy stone or metal balls.  The barrels were 10 to 12 feet in length and had to be cleaned following each discharge, a process that took up to two hours.  Leading the 14,000 soldiers fighting for Venice was the Bergamo condottiero Bartolomeo Colleoni. He was working jointly with Ercole I d’Este from Ferrara and noblemen from Pesaro and Forlì. Another condottiero, Federico da Montefeltro, led the army of 13,000 soldiers serving Florence in an alliance with Galeazzo Maria Sforza, ruler of the Duchy of Milan, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Giovanni II Bentivoglio, the ruler of Bologna.  Condottieri were professional military leaders hired by the Italian city-states to lead armies on their behalf.  The fighting took place between the villages of Riccardina and Molinella and so the event is also sometimes referred to as the Battle of Riccardina.  Read more…

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Agostino Steffani – composer

Baroque musician and cleric who features in modern literature

A priest and diplomat as well as a singer and composer, Agostino Steffani was born on this day in 1654 in Castelfranco Veneto near Venice.  Details of his life and works have recently been brought to the attention of readers of contemporary crime novels because they were used by the American novelist, Donna Leon, as background for her 2012 mystery The Jewels of Paradise.  Steffani was admitted as a chorister at St Mark’s Basilica in Venice while he was still young and in 1667 the beauty of his voice attracted the attention of Count Georg Ignaz von Tattenbach, who took him to Munich.  Ferdinand Maria, Elector of Bavaria, paid for Steffani’s education and granted him a salary, in return for his singing.  In 1673 Steffani was sent to study in Rome, where he composed six motets. The original manuscripts for these are now in a museum in Cambridge.  On his return to Munich Steffani was appointed court organist. He was also ordained a priest and given the title of Abbate of Lepsing. His first opera, Marco Aurelia, was written for the carnival and produced at Munich in 1681. The only manuscript score of it known to exist is in the Royal Library at Buckingham Palace.  Read more…

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