5 November

Francesco Chiarello - survivor of two World Wars

Calabrian veteran lived to be 109 years old

Francesco Domenico Chiarello, who would live to be one of the world's longest surviving veterans to serve in both World Wars, was born on this day in 1898.  Chiarello was 109 years old when he died in June 2008.  Of soldiers anywhere on the planet who were active in the 1914-18 conflict and were called up again after 1939, only the Frenchman Fernand Goux outlived him.  Goux, from the Loiret department of central northern France, died just five months later, aged 108.  Chiarello also died as one of the last two surviving Italian soldiers from the First World War, outlived only by Delfino Borroni, from just outside Pavia in Lombardy, who was a tram driver during the Second World War.  Borroni recovered from serious injuries sustained in an Allied bombing raid to be 110 years old when he died four months after Chiarello.  Chiarello, a farmer from Umbriatico in the province of Crotone in Calabria,  joined the Italian army in 1918 as a member of the 19th infantry regiment from Cosenza.  He was sent to the northern front at Trento where he took part in the final Battle of Vittorio Veneto, a seminal moment in the history of the conflict and of Italy.  Read more…

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Pietro Longhi - painter

Painter who allowed us to see inside 18th century Venice

The painter Pietro Longhi, who was renowned for his accurate scenes of everyday life in Venice in the 18th century, was born on this day in 1702.  Longhi was originally called Pietro Falca and was the son of a silversmith in Venice, but he changed his name after he began painting.  He started with historical and religious scenes but his work evolved after a stay in Bologna where he encountered Giuseppe Maria Crespi, who was considered one of the greatest Italian painters at the time.  Longhi’s son Alessandro later wrote that his father had a ‘brilliant and bizarre spirit’, which led him to accurately paint people in conversation and show us the love and jealousy going on in the background.  His paintings vividly depict Venetian life and show wonderful details of the clothes and possessions of the upper and middle classes.  For example, Longhi’s painting of The Hairdresser and the Lady, which is in the Correr Museum in Venice, shows a wealthy Venetian lady having her hair dressed by a man, while a maid stands to one side holding a child. Longhi faithfully shows us how the clothing of each subject reflects the rank of the person wearing it and allows us to see the various objects scattered on the lady’s dressing table.  Read more…

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Attilio Ariosti – composer

Musical friar was once a rival of Handel

Baroque composer Attilio Malachia Ariosti, who in later life became a rival of Handel in London musical circles, was born on this day in 1666 in Bologna.  He became a Servite Friar, known as Frate Ottavio, when he was 22, but he quickly obtained permission to leave the order and become a composer at the court of the Duke of Mantua and Monferrato.  During his life, Ariosti composed more than 30 operas and oratorios as well as many cantatas and instrumental works.  Ariosti became a Deacon in 1692 and then obtained the post of organist at the Church of Santa Maria dei Servi in Bologna.  His first opera, Tirsi, was performed in Venice in 1697 and that same year he was invited to travel to Berlin by Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, the Queen of Prussia. She was a great-granddaughter of James I of England and the daughter of the Electress Sophia of Hanover, a committed patron of the arts with a keen interest in music.  The Electress Sophia had been heir presumptive to the throne of the Kingdom of Great Britain and was waiting for the death of her first cousin once removed, Queen Anne, before travelling to Britain to claim her title.  Read more…

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Alessandro Malaspina - explorer

Mapped Pacific on four-year epic journey

Alessandro Malaspina, an explorer not so well known as his compatriots, Amerigo Vespucci and Christopher Colombus, but whose contribution to mankind’s knowledge of the globe was no less important, was born on this day in 1754 in Mulazzo, a village now in the province of Massa-Carrara, about 120km (75 miles) northwest of Florence.  Like Vespucci and Columbus, Malaspina sailed under the flag of Spain, whose king, Charles III, was an enthusiastic supporter of scientific research and exploration.  He spent much of his life as an officer in the Spanish navy, and it was after completing an 18-month circumnavigation of the world on behalf of the Royal Philippines Company between September 1786 and May 1788 that he proposed to the Spanish government that he make an expedition to the Pacific similar to those undertaken by the British explorer James Cook and the Frenchman Comte de la Pèrouse.  His proposal was accepted in part after word reached Spain that a Russian expedition was being prepared with the objective of claiming territory on the northwest coast of North America that had already been claimed by Spain.  Read more…

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Filippo Taglioni - dancer and choreographer

Father of star ballerina was pioneer of Romantic ballet

The dancer and choreographer Filippo Taglioni, who choreographed the original version of the ballet classic La Sylphide for his ballerina daughter Marie Taglioni, was born on this day in 1777 in Milan.  La Sylphide was one of the earliest works to represent a new ballet genre, which became known as Romantic ballet, that gained popularity in the 19th century as an alternative to traditional classical ballet.  Romantic ballet was different in that the characters were recognisable as real people rather than the gods and goddesses and strange creatures from Roman and Greek mythology that populated classical ballet.  The work, which premiered at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opéra in 1832, cemented Marie Taglioni’s status as a star, the prima ballerina of the Romantic movement, although the version performed today - the only version to have survived - was choreographed by the Danish ballet master August Bournonville in 1836.  Filippo was part of an Italian dancing dynasty of the 18th and 19th centuries. His father and mother, Carlo Taglioni and Maria Petracchi, were both dancers. Carlo, who was born in Turin, worked in Venice, Rome, Siena and Udine.  Read more…

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4 November

Sandrone Dazieri – crime writer

Best-selling novelist in Italy now published in English

Sandrone Dazieri, an Italian author and screenwriter whose first novel published in English received enthusiastic reviews, was born in Cremona on this day in 1964.  A former chef, Dazieri became a best-selling novelist in his mid-30s with Attenti al Gorilla (Beware of the Gorilla), which introduced a complex character, based on himself and even named Sandrone, who suffers from a personality disorder that makes his behaviour unpredictable yet who solves crimes and tackles injustices.  The book spawned a series featuring the same character that not only gained Dazieri enormous popularity among Italian readers but helped him get work as a screenwriter, especially in the area of TV crime dramas.  He is the main writer on the hugely popular Canale 5 series Squadra Antimafia, to which he contributed for seven seasons.  Now, for the first time, with the help of an American translator, Dazieri has moved into the English language market with Kill the Father, published by Simon & Schuster in London in January 2017.  Already a top-selling title in Italy, the dark crime thriller received good reviews in the literary sections of English newspapers and magazines.  Read more...

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Florence's catastrophic floods

Tuscan capital devastated on same day six centuries apart

More than 3,000 people were believed to have been killed when the River Arno flooded the streets of Florence on this day in 1333.  More than six centuries later, 101 people died when the city was flooded on the same day in 1966. The 50th anniversary of the most recent catastrophe, which took a staggering toll of priceless books and works of art in the Cradle of the Renaissance, was commemorated in the city on November 4, 2016.  The 1333 disaster - the first recorded flood of the Arno - was chronicled for posterity by Giovanni Villani, a diplomat and banker living in the city.  A plaque in Via San Remigio records the level the water allegedly reached in 1333 and another plaque commemorates the level the water reached after the river flooded in 1966, exactly 633 years later.  Villani wrote in his Nuova Cronica (New Chronicle), ‘By noon on Thursday, 4 November, 1333, a flood along the Arno River spread across the entire plain of San Salvi.’  By nightfall, the flood waters had filled the city streets and Villani claimed the water rose above the altar in Florence’s Baptistery, reaching halfway up the porphyry columns.  Read more…

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Guido Reni - painter

Bolognese artist who idealised Raphael

The leading Baroque painter, Guido Reni, was born on this day in 1575 in Bologna, then part of the Papal States.  He was to become a dominant figure in the Bolognese school of painting, which emerged under the influence of the Carracci, a family of painters in Bologna. He was held in high regard because of the classical idealism of his portrayals of mythological and religious subjects.  Although his father, Daniele, wanted him to follow in his footsteps as a musician, Guido Reni passionately wanted to become an artist and was apprenticed to the Flemish painter Denis Calvaert when he was 10 years old. He focused on studying the works of Raphael, who, for the rest of his life, remained his ideal.  Reni went on to enter the academy led by Ludovico Carracci, the Accademia degli Incamminati - The academy of the newly-embarked - in Bologna. He was received into the guild of painters in the city in 1599 when he was nearly 24. After this he divided his time between his studios in Bologna and Rome.  One of his most famous works, Crucifixion of St Peter, which is now in the Vatican Museum in Rome, was painted for Cardinal Aldobrandini in 1605.  Read more…

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First night at Teatro San Carlo 

Oldest opera house in the world opens its doors in Naples

Teatro di San Carlo in Naples was officially opened on this day in 1737, way ahead of La Scala in Milan and La Fenice in Venice.  Built in Via San Carlo, close to Piazza Plebiscito, the main square in Naples, Teatro di San Carlo quickly became one of the most important opera houses in Europe and renowned for its excellent productions. The theatre was designed by Giovanni Antonio Medrano for the Bourbon King of Naples, Charles I, and took just eight months to build.  The official inauguration was on the King’s saint’s day, the festival of San Carlo, on the evening of 4 November. There was a performance of Achille in Sciro by Pietro Metastasio with music by Domenico Sarro, who also conducted the orchestra for the music for two ballets.  This was 41 years before La Scala and 55 years before La Fenice opened. San Carlo is now believed to be one of the oldest, if not the oldest, remaining opera houses in the world.  Both Rossini and Donizetti served as artistic directors at San Carlo and the world premieres of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Rossini’s Mosè were performed there. In the magnificent auditorium, the focal point is the royal box surmounted by the crown of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.   Read more…

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3 November

NEW - Giovanni Leone - controversial politician

First president to resign over a scandal

The politician Giovanni Leone, who served both as prime minister of Italy and president during a career that spanned seven decades but which was ultimately overshadowed by scandal, was born on this day in 1908 in Naples.  A co-founder, with his father, Mauro, of the Christian Democracy in 1943, Leone was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1948, served as prime minister for brief periods in 1963 and 1968 and was elected president in 1971.  He occupied the Palazzo Quirinale, the main Rome residence of the president, for seven years but was forced to resign after being implicated in the Lockheed bribery scandal, the first president to step down over such an impropriety.  The accusation levelled at him was that he accepted payment from the American aircraft manufacturer in connection with the purchase of Hercules military transport planes. The allegations originated from the United States and were published in Italy by the news magazine L’Espresso.  Other politicians were said also to have accepted bribes but Leone was accused directly after documents unearthed in the US referenced an Italian prime minister given the codename Antelope Gobbler, which was taken to mean Leone - lion.  Read more…

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Monica Vitti - actress

Star of Antonioni classics also excelled in comedy roles

The actress Monica Vitti, who became famous as the star of several films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni during the early 1960s, was born on this day in 1931 in Rome.  Antonioni, with whom she had a romantic relationship that lasted a decade, cast her as his female lead in L'avventura (1960), La notte (1961), and L'eclisse (1962), three enigmatically moody films once described as a "trilogy on modernity and its discontents".  She also starred for him in his first colour film, Il deserto rosso (1964), which continued in a similar vein.  Her performance earned her a second of four Golden Grail awards. Vitti was also honoured with five David di Donatello awards as Best Actress from the Italian Film Academy.  After splitting with Antonioni, Vitti excelled in comedy, working with directors such as Mario Monicelli, Dino Risi, Alberto Sordi and Ettore Scola.  Her performances in movies such as Monicelli’s The Girl With the Pistol (1968) and I Know That You Know That I Know (1982) saw her spoken of as one of the great actors of the Commedia all’Italiana genre alongside Sordi himself, Ugo Tognazzi, Vittorio Gassman and Nino Manfredi.  Read more...

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Vincenzo Bellini - opera composer

Short but successful career of Sicilian musical genius

The talented composer of the celebrated opera, Norma, was born Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini on this day in 1801 in Catania in Sicily. Bellini became known for his long, flowing, melodic lines, which earned him the nickname, ‘The Swan of Catania’. He enjoyed great success during the bel canto era of Italian opera in the early part of the 19th century and many of his operas are still regularly performed today.  Born into a musical family, Bellini showed early talent. It was claimed he could sing an aria at 18 months and could play the piano by the age of five. Although some writers have said these are exaggerations, Bellini is known to have already begun composing music by his teens.  He was given financial support by the city of Catania to study music at a college in Naples and while he was there he was profoundly influenced by meeting the composer Gaetano Donizetti, having heard his opera, La zingara, performed at Teatro di San Carlo.  Bellini then wrote his first opera, Adelson e Salvini, which his fellow students performed to great acclaim.  In 1825, Bellini began work on what was to be his first professionally-produced opera, Bianca e Fernando. Read more…

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Annibale Carracci - painter

Bolognese master produced his most influential work in Rome

The Baroque painter Annibale Carracci was born on this day in 1560 in Bologna.  Annibale and his followers were to become highly influential in the development of Roman painting, bringing back the classical tradition of the High Renaissance.  He was probably apprenticed as a painter with members of his own family in Bologna. But his talents began to develop during a tour of northern Italy in the 1580s. He lodged in Venice with the painter Jacopo Bassano, whose style of painting influenced him for a time.  Annibale has been credited with rediscovering the early 16th century painter Correggio, who had almost been forgotten outside Parma. Annibale’s Baptism of Christ, painted in 1585 for the Church of San Gregorio in Bologna, is a brilliant tribute to him.  In 1582 Annibale opened a studio in Bologna with his brother, Agostino Carraci, and his older cousin, Ludovico Carracci. While working there, Annibale painted The Enthroned Madonna with St Matthew in 1588 for the Church of San Prospero in Reggio.  Annibale collaborated with the other two Carracci on frescoes in the Palazzo Magnani (now the Palazzo Salem) and two other noble houses in Bologna.  Read more…

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Villa Giusti armistice

Talks held at villa in Padova ended First World War in Italy

An armistice signed between Italy and Austria-Hungary at Villa Giusti near Padua ended World War I on the Italian front on this day in 1918.  After the Allied troops were victorious in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, the Austria-Hungary commanding officers asked for a ceasefire and for peace talks. They were invited to Villa Giusti at Mandria just outside Padua, which was owned by Count Giusti del Giardino, a former mayor of Padua and an Italian senator. The principal signatories on the Italian side were Tenente Generale Pietro Badoglio and Maggior Generale Scipione Scipioni. Leading the Austria-Hungary delegation was General Viktor Weber Edler von Webenau. During the war, the Villa Giusti had been the temporary residence of King Victor Emmanuel III when he was away from the front. The armistice signed on 3 November ended the fighting and was seen by many Italians as the final phase of the Risorgimento, the movement started in 1815 to unify Italy. The bells of a nearby church rang out when news came from the villa that the armistice had been agreed.  Read more…

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Giovanni Leone - controversial politician

First president to resign over a scandal

Giovanni Leone served twice as prime
minister in the 1960s

The politician Giovanni Leone, who served both as prime minister of Italy and president during a career that spanned seven decades but which was ultimately overshadowed by scandal, was born on this day in 1908 in Naples.

A co-founder, with his father, Mauro, of the Christian Democracy in 1943, Leone was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1948, served as prime minister for brief periods in 1963 and 1968 and was elected president in 1971.  He occupied the Palazzo Quirinale, the main Rome residence of the president, for seven years but was forced to resign after being implicated in the Lockheed bribery scandal, the first president to step down over such an impropriety.

The accusation levelled at him was that he accepted payment from the American aircraft manufacturer in connection with the purchase of Hercules military transport planes. The allegations originated from the United States and were published in Italy by the news magazine L’Espresso.  Other politicians were said also to have accepted bribes but Leone was accused directly after documents unearthed in the US referenced an Italian prime minister given the codename Antelope Gobbler as one of the recipients of money.  This was taken to mean Leone - lion.

A Swiss-based businessman revealed to be associated with the deal, Antonio Lefebvre, was also a close friend of Leone. The scandal caused significant damage to Leone and his office and, after several months, he resigned.  The accusations were never proven and one of his most prominent accusers was convicted of libel, yet Leone was never fully rehabilitated.  A former defence minister, Mario Tanassi, was eventually handed a prison sentence relating to the scandal, and some commentators speculated that other high-ranking politicians who escaped censure were happy for Leone to be the scapegoat.

Leone was accused of accepting bribes over
contracts for the Hercules military transport plane

Brought up in the Pomigliano d'Arco suburb of Naples, Leone graduated in law at the University of Naples and became one of southern Italy’s most prominent lawyers and jurists, lecturing at the universities of Messina, Bari and Naples.

After the end of the Nazi occupation of Italy in World War II, Leone, who had been a military magistrate, was one of the founders of the Christian Democrat Party (DC), led by Alcide Gaspari. As the party’s provincial secretary for Naples, he became a prominent figure in the new party and was elected as a deputy in 1948 with 60,000 votes.

In all, he was elected to parliament four times, serving as speaker of the Chamber of Deputies between 1955 and 1963, and twice as prime minister, in 1963 and 1968, although on both occasions he was in office only as a stopgap because the prime candidates had been unable to command sufficient support.  Continuing to practise law and lecture while serving as a deputy, Leone remained detached from the rival factions within the DC and was thus able to fulfil the role of compromise candidate.

He became president in similar circumstances. Unable to choose between Amintore Fanfani and Aldo Moro, the Christian Democrats opted for Leone, although it took an exhausting 23 ballots for them to reach that conclusion, making it the longest presidential election in Italian political history. Controversially, his victory was assisted by votes from the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI).

The diminutive Leone pictured during a meeting
with US president Gerald Ford in 1974

Leone made an unconventional president, notable for his strong Neapolitan accent and a sense of humour that made no concession to the supposed dignity of his office.  He was caught more than once making the two-fingered ‘horns’ gesture - a traditional southern Italian gesture used as an insult or to ward off the evil eye - on one occasion during a visit to cholera patients at a Naples hospital. 

The behaviour of his family also did little for his reputation. His three sons - Mauro, Paolo and Giancarlo - led something of a playboy lifestyle, often touring Roman nightclubs with their presidential bodyguard. His wife, Vittoria, who came from a well known family in Caserta, was a glamorous woman 20 years Leone's junior and a high-profile society hostess who was frequently the subject of gossip and innuendo. 

Their exploits featured regularly in the pages of the magazine Osservatore Politico, whose editor, Mino Pecorelli, claimed he was offered a substantial sum of money to abandon what Leone saw as a personal campaign against him. Pecorelli was killed in a shooting a year after Leone resigned.

Apart from the Lockheed scandal, the other stain on Leone’s character was the Vajont Dam disaster, which occurred during his 1963 term as prime minister.  The catastrophe, in which 50 million cubic metres of water was sent cascading over a dam in Friuli-Venezia Giulia following a landslide, killed almost 2,000 people in villages situated below the dam. 

The kidnapping and murder of former prime minister
Aldo Moro took place during Leone's presidency 

The dam was jointly owned by the Italian government and the Adriatic Society of Electricity (SADE), both of whom were found to have ignored warnings of the instability of the mountainside that ultimately collapsed into the reservoir. Leone vowed to secure justice for the victims of the disaster, but soon after leaving office he was hired as head of SADE's team of lawyers, who argued successfully to reduce the amount of compensation paid to survivors and left the families of 600 victims with no compensation at all. 

Leone's presidency coincided with the so-called Years of Lead, one of the most turbulent periods of recent Italian history, marked by assassinations, bombings and terrorism. The kidnap and murder of former prime minister Moro by the Red Brigades took place just a few months before the Lockheed scandal.

In political terms, Leone was no great friend of Moro, who positioned himself on the centre-left in the spectrum of values within the DC, whereas Leone was well to the right. It had been Moro who had fostered the idea of the so-called Historic Compromise by which the Communists of Enrico Berlinguer would have become part of the government.

Yet when Moro was being held captive at a location in Rome, Leone argued that the government should negotiate with the Red Brigades for Moro’s release, perhaps even agreeing to the release of political prisoners that had been at the head of their demands. Prime minister Giulio Andreotti refused.

Leone was made a life senator despite the circumstances of his resignation and continued to make an active contribution to political life.  Retiring to his luxury villa, Le Rughe, in Via Cassia on the outskirts of Rome, he devoted himself to the study of law and, through his writings and interviews, convinced many of his detractors that the accusations made against him had been false. He died in 2001, a few days after his 93rd birthday.

Piazza Municipio in the Naples suburb of
Pomigliano d'Arco 

Travel tip:

Situated 17km (11 miles) northeast of the centre of Naples, Pomigliano d'Arco is effectively a suburb of the city, although it is an independent municipality. A former farming town, it is now much more industrial. Chosen as the site for a southern factory by car makers Alfa Romeo in 1938 - now owned by the FIAT-Chrysler group and one of the biggest auto plants in Italy - it now has factories in the aerospace and aeronautics sectors as well. During World War II, Pomigliano was the location of a large military airfield and base. 

A picturesque narrow street in the
historic centre of Formello

Travel tip:

The Via Cassia was an ancient Roman road stretching northwest of the centre of Rome that essentially traversed the central area of the Italian peninsula once known as Etruria, through what is now Tuscany and on towards the port of Genoa in Liguria.  The section immediately beyond the city centre begins after the Milvian Bridge across the Tiber and passes through the Tomba di Nerone area. Leone’s villa, Le Rughe, was situated near the small town of Formello, about 30km (19 miles) outside the city, close to where the Via Cassia merges into the SR2 motorway. Formello has a picturesque historic centre.

Also on this day:

1560: The birth of painter Annibale Carracci

1801: The birth of opera composer Vincenzo Bellini

1918: The signing of the Villa Giusti armistice

1931: The birth of actress Monica Vitti

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