22 February

NEW - Giovanni Zenatello - opera singer and director

Tenor star who turned Verona’s ancient Arena into major venue

The early 20th century opera star Giovanni Zenatello, who was not only a highly accomplished performer on stages around the world but also the driving force behind the establishment of the Arena di Verona as a major venue, was born on this day in 1876 in Verona.  Zenatello spent a large part of his career in the United States but is remembered with enormous respect in Italy - and in particular in his home city - for having teamed up with impresario Ottone Rivato and others to put on a spectacular staging of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida at the Arena in 1913, the first operatic production of the century to take place within the remains of the Roman amphitheatre and the forerunner of hundreds more.  The tenor was already an important figure in Italian opera for his interpretations of Verdi’s Otello and most of the other dramatic or heroic leading male roles in the popular works of the day.  He had also been the first to sing the role of Pinkerton in Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.  Zenatello initially trained as a baritone and when he made his professional stage debut in Belluno in 1898, taking on the roles of Silvio in Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Alfio in Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, it was as a baritone.  Read more…

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Giulietta Masina - actress

Married to Fellini and excelled in his films

The actress Giulietta Masina, who was married for 50 years to the film director Federico Fellini, was born on this day in 1921 in San Giorgio di Piano, a small town in Emilia-Romagna, about 20km (12 miles) north of Bologna.  She appeared in 22 films, six of them directed by her husband, who gave her the lead female role opposition Anthony Quinn in La Strada (1954) and enabled her to win international acclaim when he cast her as a prostitute in the 1957 film Nights of Cabiria, which built on a small role she had played in an earlier Fellini movie, The White Sheik.  Masina's performance in what was a controversial film at the time earned her best actress awards at the film festivals of Cannes and San Sebastián and from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists (SNGCI).  Both La Strada and Nights of Cabiria won Oscars for best foreign film at the Academy Awards.  Masina also won best actress in the David di Donatello awards for the title role in Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits (1965) and a second SNGCI best actress award for his 1986 film Ginger and Fred.  Although born in northern Italy, one of four children, her parents sent her to live with a widowed aunt in Via Lutezia in the Parioli area of Rome.  Read more...

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Mario Pavesi – entrepreneur

Biscuit maker who gave Italian motorists the Autogrill

Italy lost one of its most important postwar entrepreneurs when Mario Pavesi died on this day in 1990.  Pavesi, originally from the town of Cilavegna in the province of Pavia in Lombardy, not only founded the Pavesi brand, famous for Pavesini and Ringo biscuits among other lines, but also set up Italy’s first motorway service areas under the name of Autogrill.  Always a forward-thinking businessman, Pavesi foresaw the growing influence American ideas would have on Italy during the rebuilding process in the wake of the Second World War and the way that Italians would embrace road travel once the country developed its own motorway network.  He was one of the first Italian entrepreneurs to take full advantage of advertising opportunities in the press, radio, cinema and later television.  Born in 1909 into a family of bakers, Pavesi moved to Novara in 1934, opening a pastry shop in Corso Cavour, where he sold a range of cakes and confectionery and served coffee. During the next few years, until Italy became embroiled in the war, he expanded the business in several ways.  Read more…

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Enrico Piaggio - industrialist

Former aircraft manufacturer famed for Italy's iconic Vespa motor scooter

Enrico Piaggio, born on this day in 1905 in the Pegli area of Genoa, was destined to be an industrialist, although he cannot have envisaged the way in which his company would become a world leader.  Charged with rebuilding the business after Allied bombers destroyed the company's major factories during World War II, Enrico Piaggio decided to switch from manufacturing aircraft to building motorcycles, an initiative from which emerged one of Italy's most famous symbols, the Vespa scooter.  The original Piaggio business, set up by his father, Rinaldo in 1884, in the Sestri Ponente district of Genoa, provided fittings for luxury ships built in the thriving port. As the business grew, Rinaldo moved into building locomotives and rolling stock for the railways, diversifying again with the outbreak of World War I, when the company began producing aircraft.  In 1917 the company bought a new plant in Pisa and in 1921 another in nearby Pontedera, which became a major centre for the production of aircraft engines and is still the headquarters of Piaggio today.   Aeroplanes remained the focus of the business, which Enrico and his brother, Armando, inherited with the death of their father in 1938.  Read more…

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Renato Dulbecco - Nobel Prize-winning physiologist

Research led to major breakthrough in knowledge of cancer

Renato Dulbecco, a physiologist who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his role in drawing a link between genetic mutations and cancer, was born on this day in 1914 in Catanzaro in Calabria.  Through a series of experiments that began in the late 1950s after he had emigrated to the United States, Dulbecco and two colleagues showed that certain viruses could insert their own genes into infected cells and trigger uncontrolled cell growth, a hallmark of cancer.  Their findings transformed the course of cancer research, laying the groundwork for the linking of several viruses to human cancers, including the human papilloma virus, which is responsible for most cervical cancers.  The discovery also provided the first tangible evidence that cancer was caused by genetic mutations, a breakthrough that changed the way scientists thought about cancer and the effects of carcinogens such as tobacco smoke.  Dulbecco, who shared the Nobel Prize with California Institute of Technology (Caltech) colleagues Howard Temin and David Baltimore, then examined how viruses use DNA to store their genetic information.  Read more…

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Giovanni Zenatello - opera singer and director

Tenor star who turned Verona’s ancient Arena into major venue

Giovanni Zenatello sang all the major
tenor roles in a 35-year career

The early 20th century opera star Giovanni Zenatello, who was not only a highly accomplished performer on stages around the world but also the driving force behind the establishment of the Arena di Verona as a major venue, was born on this day in 1876 in Verona.

Zenatello spent a large part of his career in the United States but is remembered with enormous respect in Italy - and in particular in his home city - for having teamed up with impresario Ottone Rivato and others to put on a spectacular staging of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida at the Arena in 1913, the first operatic production of the century to take place within the remains of the Roman amphitheatre and the forerunner of hundreds more.

The tenor was already an important figure in Italian opera for his interpretations of Verdi’s Otello and most of the other dramatic or heroic leading male roles in the popular works of the day.  He had also been the first to sing the role of Pinkerton in Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.

Zenatello initially trained as a baritone and when he made his professional stage debut in Belluno in 1898, taking on the roles of Silvio in Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Alfio in Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, it was as a baritone. 

However, it is said he was never comfortable in the baritone range and when a chance came to take the tenor role of Canio in Pagliacci at the Real Teatro Mercadante in Naples the following year, stepping in at short notice when the tenor due to play the role was indisposed, Zenatello seized the opportunity and never looked back.

Zenatello was famous for his
interpretation of Verdi's Otello

By 1902, having gained experience and maturity, he made his debut at Teatro alla Scala, Italy’s premier opera house in Milan, where he would remain part of the company for the next five years, performing in most of the major tenor roles, making an impact in particular in Verdi’s Otello.

It was at La Scala in 1904 that Zenatello was part of Madama Butterfly’s infamous premiere, when a hostile audience, unimpressed with what the critics slammed as a rushed and under-rehearsed production, greeted the cast with boos and catcalls and forced Puccini to pull the opera after one night. 

It was relaunched some weeks later in Brescia. Rosina Storchio, who had been cast as Cio-Cio San in the original in Milan, did not reappear, but Zenatello gave the character of Pinkerton, a US naval officer, a successful second debut.  The controversy did no harm to Zenatello’s reputation, even if it left the composer feeling somewhat chastened. 

Zenatello made his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1905 and at the Manhattan Opera House in New York in 1907. He was never part of the company at the New York Metropolitan but stepped in to sing the role of Radamès in Aida in 1909 when Enrico Caruso was undergoing a medical procedure in Milan. 

Based in Manhattan, where he shared his home with the Spanish mezzo-soprano Maria Gay, Zenatello was a member of the Boston Opera Company from 1909 to 1914 but often toured, in South America and Mexico as well as Europe.   He succeeded Francesco Tamagno, the original Otello, in being recognised as the greatest exponent of the Verdi role, which he performed more than 300 times.

Zenatello with the Spanish soprano
Maria Gay, with whom he shared his life

It was while he was back in Italy in 1913, visiting his home city, that Zenatello had the idea of marking the centenary of Verdi’s birth by staging a large opera show within the ruins of the Arena, which had occasionally been used for sporting events, musical and theatrical performances since the Renaissance but had never hosted a complete opera. He and Maria and two friends - composer Ferruccio Cusinati and impresario Ottone Rovato - thought that the grand spectacle of Aida would work perfectly within the imposing space of the amphitheatre and asked a Verona architect, Ettore Fagiuoli, to design the sets. 

The performance, in the heat of August, was a huge success and Zenatello and Gay returned in 1914, this time putting on Georges Bizet’s Carmen. It was the start of the Arena’s annual summer festival. 

Zenatello retired from performing in 1933 and devoted himself to teaching. His singing school in New York helped develop the careers of several future stars, among them the coloratura soprano Lily Pons, whom he discovered in Paris and trained up to perform at the Met, and his fellow Veronese tenor Nino Martini, who made his Met debut in 1933 in Rigoletto, opposite Lily Pons.

In 1947, in the role of artistic director of the summer season at the Arena,  Zenatello made another decision that would have a profound influence on the opera world, when he gave a young and relatively unknown soprano called Maria Callas the main part in Amilcare Ponchielli’s La Gioconda.

She had been recommended to Zenatello by Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, a bass who had been due to star with Callas in a Chicago production of Turandot that would have been the American-born soprano’s first major performance had the company not folded on the eve of the run. Zenatello watched her audition in New York and was quickly convinced, as was Tullio Serafin, the conductor in Verona, who would go on to play an integral role in Callas’s career.

Zenatello died in New York in 1949 at the age of 73.

The Arena di Verona held more than 30,000
spectators for events in Roman times

Travel tip:

The Arena di Verona in Piazza Bra is a wonderful surviving example of a first-century Roman amphitheatre.  The arena was built in AD 30 on a site which was then beyond the city walls. It could host more than 30,000 spectators in ancient times, double the capacity permitted today.  Having fallen into disrepair following the collapse of the Roman empire, the outer of what were three rings of arches disappearing completely, the Arena was the scene of jousting events and other tournaments and games during the Renaissance, with some use for plays and musical concerts documented later.  Since Zenatello and his friends established it as the world’s premier open-air opera venue, it has become the stage for regular pop concerts as well, with many of the biggest names giving performances there. 

Find accommodation in Verona with Booking.com

A view of the interior of the Teatro Filarmonico
in Verona, the city's principal opera theatre

Travel tip:

Verona’s musical scene does not begin and end with summer operas in the Roman amphitheatre. Either side of the outdoor season, which runs from June to September, the Arena’s resident orchestra and chorus is based at the Teatro Filarmonico in Via dei Mutilati, just a few minutes’ walk away. Designed by Francesco Galli Bibiena, the ducal architect at Mantua, it was built between 1716 and 1732 and opened with a performance of La fida ninfa, an opera by Antonio Vivaldi. It had to be rebuilt after a fire in 1749 and after it was destroyed by enemy bombing during the Second World War. Patiently rebuilt so that its interior exactly resembled the original, it was not re-inaugurated until 1975, opening with Antonio Salieri’s Falstaff. Nowadays, it hosts ballet, opera and concert seasons. 

More reading:

The Italian impresario who transformed the New York Met

The Neapolitan who founded the San Francisco Opera

The music publisher who 'discovered' the great Puccini

Also on this day:

1905: The birth of industrialist and scooter manufacturer Enrico Piaggio

1914: The birth of Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Renato Dulbecco

1921: The birth of award-winning actress Giulietta Masina

1990: The death of Autogrill pioneer Mario Pavesi

(Picture credits: Arena di Verona by depetukhova from Pixabay; Teatro Filarmonico by Adert via Wikimedia Commons)

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21 February

Domenico Ghirardelli – chocolatier

Built famous US business with skills learned in Genoa

The chocolatier Domenico Ghirardelli, founder of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company in San Francisco, was born on this day in 1817 in a village just outside Rapallo in Liguria.  Also known as Domingo, Ghirardelli arrived in San Francisco in 1849 during the rapid expansion years of the Gold Rush, having spent the previous 10 years or so in Peru, where he had run a successful confectionery business.  After making money as a merchant, initially ferrying supplies to prospectors in the gold fields, he set up his first chocolate factory in 1852, drawing on the skills he acquired as an apprentice in Genoa.  By the end of the century, the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company was one of the city’s most successful businesses, with a prestige headquarters on North Point Street, a short distance from Fisherman’s Wharf, in a group of buildings that became known as Ghirardelli Square.  The son of a spice importer, Ghirardelli was born in the village of Santa Anna, just outside Rapallo, about 25km (16 miles) along the Ligurian coast from Genoa, in the direction of La Spezia to the southeast.  His father wanted him to have a trade and once he had reached his teens sent him to be an apprentice at a confectioner in Genoa.  Read more…

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Giuseppe Abbati - painter and revolutionary

Early death robbed Italian art of bright new talent

Italy lost a great artistic talent tragically young when the painter and patriot Giuseppe Abbati died on this day in 1868.  Only 32 years old, Abbati passed away in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, having contracted rabies as a result of being bitten by a dog.  Abbati was a leading figure in the Macchiaioli movement, a school of painting advanced by a small group of artists who began to meet at the Caffè Michelangiolo in Florence in the late 1850s.  The group, in which Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega and Cristiano Banti were other prominent members, were also for the most part revolutionaries, many of whom had taken part in the uprisings that occurred at different places in the still-to-be-united Italian peninsula in 1848.  Abbati, born in Naples, had joined Giuseppe Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand, losing his right eye in the Battle of the Volturno in 1860, when around 24,000 partisans were confronted by a 50,000-strong Bourbon army at Capua, north of Naples.  The son of Vincenzo Abbati, also a painter, Abbati was taken to live in Florence when he was six and to Venice before he was 10.  Read more…

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Raimondo Montecuccoli – military leader

Brilliant tactician outwitted his opponents

Raimondo, Count of Montecuccoli, a soldier, strategist and military reformer who served the Hapsburgs with distinction during the Thirty Years’ War, was born on this day in 1609 in Pavullo nel Frignano in the Duchy of Modena and Reggio.  As well as being Count of Montecuccoli, Raimondo also became a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire and the Duke of Melfi in the Kingdom of Naples.  He was born in the Castle of Montecuccolo in Pavullo nel Frignano near Modena and at the age of 16 began serving as a soldier under the command of his uncle, Count Ernest Montecuccoli, who was a General in the Austrian army.  After four years of active service in Germany and the Low Countries, Raimondo became a Captain of Infantry.  He was wounded at the storming of new Brandenburg and at the first Battle of Breitenfeld, where he was captured by Swedish soldiers.  After being wounded again at Lutzen in 1632 he was made a major in his uncle’s regiment. He then became a lieutenant–colonel of cavalry.  At the storming of Kaiserslautern in 1635 he led a brilliant charge and was rewarded by being made a colonel.  Read more…

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Death of Pope Julius II

Pope who commissioned Michelangelo for Sistine Chapel

Pope Julius II, who was nicknamed ‘the Warrior Pope’, died on this day in 1513 in Rome.  As well as conducting military campaigns during his papacy he was responsible for the destruction and rebuilding of St Peter’s Basilica and commissioning Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  He is also remembered by students of British history as being the Pope who gave Henry VIII dispensation to marry Catherine of Aragon, his brother’s widow.  Born Giuliano della Rovere, he was the nephew of Francesco della Rovere, who became Pope Sixtus IV.  His uncle sent him to be educated by the Franciscans and he was made a Bishop soon after his Uncle became Pope.  He later became Cardinal Priest of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome and was very influential in the College of Cardinals.  One of his major rivals was Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, who was elected Pope Alexander VI in 1492. After accusing him of corruption, Della Rovere retreated from Rome until Alexander died in 1503.  He was succeeded by Pope Pius III who died less than a month after becoming Pope and Della Rovere was finally elected as Pope Julius II in November 1503.  Read more…

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20 February

The Barber of Seville premieres in Rome

Rival fans wreck debut of Rossini’s most famous opera

The Barber of Seville, the work that would come to be seen as Gioachino Rossini’s masterpiece of comic opera, was performed for the first time on this day in 1816 at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.  Commissioned by the theatre’s owner, Duke Francesco Sforza-Cesarini, it had a libretto by Cesare Sterbini based on the French comedy play Le Barbier de Séville and was originally entitled Almaviva or The Useless Precaution, out of deference to Giovanni Paisiello, the most popular composer in Italy in the 18th century, whose own version of Il barbiere di Siviglia had been very successful.  The second part of the same text, by Pierre Beaumarchais, was behind Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro, which premiered four years after Paisiello’s.  Nonetheless, Paisiello’s loyal fans saw Rossini’s opera as an attempt to steal their favourite’s thunder, whatever name he gave it, and organised what was nothing short of an act of sabotage, packing the theatre on opening night and proceeding to jeer, shout and catcall throughout the whole performance, unsettling the cast and leading to a number of mishaps on stage.   Read more…

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Ferruccio Lamborghini - car maker

Tractor manufacturer inspired by Enzo Ferrari's 'insult'

Fans on one side of a great rivalry in Italy's performance car market were in mourning on this day in 1993 following the death at the age of 76 of Ferruccio Lamborghini.  Lamborghini, who made his fortune from building tractors to service Italy's post-war agricultural recovery, set up as a car maker in 1963 in direct competition with Enzo Ferrari, who had been selling sports cars with increasing success since 1947.  It is said there was no love lost between the two, not least because they first met when Lamborghini turned up at Ferrari's factory in Maranello, a few kilometres from Modena, to complain to Enzo in person that Ferrari were using inferior parts.  Lamborghini had become a collector of fast cars and owned a Mercedes-Benz 300SL, a Jaguar E-Type and two Maserati 3500 GTs among others.  He acquired his first Ferrari, a two-seater 250GT with bodywork designed by Pinin Farina, in 1958, and went on to own several more.  He was generally unimpressed, complaining that they were noisy and rough and essentially re-purposed track cars, with too little luxury refinement.  Read more…

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Francesco Maria II della Rovere - the last Duke of Urbino

Last male in famous family line

Francesco Maria II della Rovere, the last holder of the title Duke of Urbino and the last surviving male from a famous noble family, was born on this day in 1549 in Pesaro in Le Marche.  Descended from the 15th century Pope Sixtus IV, Francesco Maria II’s only male heir, Federico Ubaldo della Rovere, died without fathering a son, which meant the Duchy reverted to Francesco Maria II, who in turn was convinced he should give it to Pope Urban VIII, of the Barberini family.  Federico’s daughter, Vittoria della Rovere, had been convinced she would be made Duchess of Urbino but had to be content with the Duchies of Rovere and Montefeltro, as well as an art collection that became the property of Florence after she had married Ferdinando II de’ Medici.  Pope Sixtus IV, best known for building the Sistine Chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official papal residence in Vatican City, had come from a poor family in Savona in Liguria, but once elected pope became wealthy and powerful and set about ensuring that his personal prosperity was used to the betterment of his family.  He soon made his nephews Giuliano della Rovere (the future Pope Julius II) and Pietro Riario both cardinals and bishops.  Read more…

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Laura Bassi – scientist

Ground-breaking academic paved the way for women

Brilliant physicist Laura Bassi died on this day in 1778 in Bologna.  She had enjoyed a remarkable career, becoming the first woman to earn a Chair in Science at a university anywhere in the world.  When she was just 13 her family’s physician had recognised her potential and took charge of her education.  When she was 20 he invited philosophers from the University of Bologna along with the Archbishop of Bologna, who later became Pope Benedict XIV, to examine her progress.  They were all impressed and Bassi was admitted to the Bologna Academy of Sciences as an honorary member, the first female ever to be allowed to join.  Her theses at the university showed influences of Isaac Newton’s work on optics and light. She was a key figure in introducing his ideas about physics to Italy.  When she received her degree from the university there was a public celebration in Bologna.  Another of her theses about the property of water led to her being awarded the post of Professor of Physics at the university.  As a woman, she was not allowed to teach at the university so she gave lessons and did experiments in her own home.  Read more…

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