11 May

Filippo De Pisis - painter and poet

Artist known for extravagant lifestyle

The painter and poet Filippo De Pisis, whose works grace the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome among other galleries, was born Luigi Filippo Tibertelli De Pisis in Ferrara on this day in 1896.  A close associate for a while of Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà, De Pisis is best known for his cityscapes, metaphysically-inspired maritime scenes, and still life pictures, especially depicting flowers.  De Pisis, who was homosexual, also made many homoerotic sketches of the male nude. Later in life, he lived in Venice and became somewhat eccentric, travelling everywhere in his personal gondola.  Born into a noble family, as a boy he was known as Gigi. He was educated at home and was strongly influenced by his sister, Ernesta Tibertelli, who was a distinguished illustrator with libertarian views, and who probably introduced De Pisis to mystical writings.  De Pisis spent his childhood reading, drawing, collecting butterflies and wildflowers and writing poetry. He studied literature and philosophy at the University of Bologna, and published a volume of poems, Canti della Croara, in 1916.  Read more…

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Fanny Cerrito - ballerina

Neapolitan star thrilled audiences across Europe

One of the most famous ballerinas of the Romantic era, Francesca 'Fanny' Cerrito was born on this day in 1817, in Naples.  Her talent for dancing emerged early and after training in the ballet school of the famed Naples opera house Teatro di San Carlo she made her debut there in 1832, aged only 15.  She quickly became the darling of San Carlo and wowed dance audiences in many Italian cities. By the age of 21 she had obtained the position of prima ballerina at La Scala in Milan, working under the direction of Carlo Blasis, another Neapolitan, who was renowned for his rigorous and exacting classes.  When Cerrito and the Swedish-born ballerina, Marie Taglioni, who had Italian heritage, danced in the same programme in Milan, the event caused considerable excitement in the city, with audiences divided in their support for one or the other.  Cerrito's fame spread around Europe and for nine seasons between 1840 and 1848 she became a major attraction at Her Majesty’s Theatre, London, where she worked with the French choreographer Jules Perrot and enjoyed what many critics regarded as her finest performance in Cesare Pugni's Ondine.  Read more…

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Valentino Garavani - fashion icon

Designer favoured by the world's best dressed women

The fashion designer best known simply as Valentino was born in Voghera, a town about 70km (43 miles) south of Milan in the province of Pavia, on this day in 1932.  The favourite designer of the world’s best dressed women from the 1960s onwards, he built up a business that he eventually sold for $300 million.  Born Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani, he became interested in fashion while still in primary school. After working initially for his aunt Rosa, with the financial support of his parents he moved to Paris to pursue his interest, studying at the École des Beaux-Arts and at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne.  His first taste of working life came in the salons of Jean Dessès and Guy Laroche.  Armed with the knowledge and experience he gained at the feet of two French masters, he left Paris in 1959 to set up his first fashion house in Rome, on the fashionable Via Condotti. He quickly gained kudos for his bright red dresses, in a shade that became widely known as "Valentino red."  In July 1960, Valentino met Giancarlo Giammetti at the Café de Paris on the Via Veneto in Rome.  Read more…

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Ignazio Fiorillo – composer

Talented Neapolitan influenced music in Germany

Ignazio Fiorillo, who is remembered as an opera seria composer, was born in Naples on this day in 1715.  Fiorillo often composed music for the libretti of the acclaimed writer, Pietro Metastasio, creating the type of noble and serious operas that were fashionable in Europe in the 18th century.  After studying music at the Naples Conservatory, Fiorillo composed the opera L’egeste, which premiered in Trieste in 1733.  Another of his operas, Mandane, was first performed at the Teatro Sant’Angelo in Venice in 1736.  Fiorillo was later engaged as a composer for an ensemble specialising in performances for children and toured Europe with them.  In 1749 they stayed in Braunschweig in Germany at the court of Carl I von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel. Fiorillo was appointed court composer the following year and during his remaining time at Braunschweig composed most of his operas.  He became composer to the court of Frederick II Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel in 1762 and went on to improve significantly the quality of court opera in Kassel. He also composed intermezzi and stage music for court theatre.  Read more…

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10 May

NEW - Ettore Scola - screenwriter and film director

Master of dark comedy and social drama

The screenwriter and director Ettore Scola, whose films encompassed elements of commedia all’italiana and neorealism, was born on this day in 1931 in Trevico, a mountainous village in Campania.  Scola, regarded by some as the last in the line of brilliant postwar Italian filmmakers, is best remembered for his 1977 drama Una giornata particolare (A Special Day), starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, which won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film in 1978.  A Special Day was also nominated for an Academy Award as were three other films that Scola directed or co-directed during a career that spanned more than 60 years.  Scola made his first movie as a director in 1964 with the comedy Se permettete parliamo di donne - Let’s Talk About Women - which starred Vittorio Gassman. He was only 33 but was already a widely respected scriptwriter, which had been his profession since the age of 21.  He had regularly sent suggestions for gags and sketches to the Italian comic actor Totò and others when he was a 15-year-old at high school.  Scola was born to parents who were themselves both actors.  His home village, high up in the Campanian Apennines more than 60km (37 miles) from the city of Avellino, had no cinema. Read more…

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Miuccia Prada – fashion designer

Talented businesswoman studied politics and mime

Miuccia Prada, the businesswoman behind the fashion label Prada, was born Maria Bianchi on this day in 1949 in Milan.  The youngest granddaughter of the fashion firm’s founder, Mario Prada, she took over the family business in 1978 having previously been a mime student and a member of the Italian Communist Party.  Since then the company, which is famous for its luxury goods, has gone from strength to strength and taken over other labels. Prada has been listed as the 75th most powerful woman in the world, worth an estimated $11 billion.  After graduating with a PhD in political science from the University of Milan, Maria Bianchi trained at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano in mime and was a performer for five years.  As a member of the Italian Communist party she became involved in the women’s rights movement.  She took the name Miuccia Prada in the 1980s, making her first impact on the fashion world with an unusual handbag design in 1985, which was followed by her first women’s ready-to-wear collection.  The Miu Miu line was introduced in 1992 as a less expensive womenswear line.  Read more…

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Carlo Filangieri - military general

Brilliant soldier who served several masters

The military general Carlo Filangieri, who fought for both the Napoleonic and Bourbon leaders of Naples in the 19th century and is best known for his suppression of the Sicilian uprising of 1848, was born on this day in 1784 in Cava de’ Tirreni in Campania.  Filangieri was a key strategist for Joachim Murat, the flamboyant cavalry leader Napoleon had made King of Naples, achieving a major victory at personal cost in Murat’s ultimately failed campaign against Austria in 1815.  When Murat was defeated and the Bourbon monarch Ferdinand IV was reinstated as King of Naples, Filangieri was retained, going on to serve his successor, Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies, under whose orders he put down the revolution of 1848.  Filangieri was from a noble family in Naples, the son of Gaetano Filangieri, a celebrated philosopher and jurist who had the title of Prince of Satriano, a town in Calabria, which Carlo would inherit.  His family were staying at the Villa Eva in Cava de’ Tirreni at the time of his birth, because it was felt his father’s poor health would benefit from living away from Naples.  Read more…

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Antonio Ghirelli - journalist

Neapolitan writer specialised in football and politics

Antonio Ghirelli, a patriarch of Italian journalism, was born on this day in 1922 in Naples.  As passionate about football as he was about politics, Ghirelli was equally at home writing about both. At different times he edited the three principal Italian sports daily newspapers, La Gazzetta dello Sport, Tuttosport and Corriere dello Sport, but also wrote with distinction in the editorial and opinion pages of such respected titles as L'Unità, Paese Sera, Avanti!, Corriere della Sera, Il Mondo and Il Globo.  Sandro Pertini, who was President of Italy from 1978 to 1985, so respected his wisdom that he invited him to be head of the Quirinale press office. His politics were in line with those of the Socialist Pertini, as they were with Bettino Craxi, Italy’s first Socialist prime minister, for whom he was principal press officer during Craxi’s two spells in office.  Ghirelli’s first taste of politics came at university in Naples, when he wrote for a young Fascist journal.  Any sympathies he might have had with the Fascists soon disappeared, however, as Mussolini’s early socialist ideals became corrupted by his fervent nationalism and intolerance of political opponents.  Read more…

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Antonio Priuli - Doge of Venice

Doge clamped down on Spanish ‘spies’

Antonio Priuli, who was the 94th Doge of Venice, was born on this day in 1548 in Venice.  He took office in 1618 in the midst of allegations that the Spanish were conspiring to invade Venice. He immediately began a brutal process of ferreting out individuals suspected of plotting against La Serenissima, the Most Serene Republic of Venice.  The so-called ‘spy war’ did not end until 1622 and resulted in the imprisonment and deaths of many innocent people.  Priuli was the son of Girolamo Priuli and Elisabetta Cappello. He grew up to enjoy a successful career as a sailor and a soldier and married Elena Barbarigo, with whom he had 14 children.  In 1618 Priuli was appointed provveditore, a type of governor, of Veglia, an island in the Adriatic, which now belongs to Croatia.  That same year, following the death of Doge Nicolo Donato, Priuli was recalled from Veglia to become the next Doge.  At the time it was believed that the Spanish, led by the Spanish Ambassador to Venice, Alfonso de la Cueva, 1st Marquis of Bedmar, had landed mercenaries on Venetian territory. It was thought Bedmar had successfully infiltrated the Venetian military.  Read more…

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Ettore Scola - screenwriter and film director

Master of dark comedy and social drama

Ettore Scola is seen by some as the last
of the great postwar Italian directors

The screenwriter and director Ettore Scola, whose films encompassed elements of commedia all’italiana and neorealism, was born on this day in 1931 in Trevico, a mountainous village in Campania.

Scola, regarded by some as the last in the line of brilliant postwar Italian filmmakers, is best remembered for his 1977 drama Una giornata particolare (A Special Day), starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, which won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film in 1978.

A Special Day was also nominated for an Academy Award as were three other films that Scola directed or co-directed during a career that spanned more than 60 years.

Scola made his first movie as a director in 1964 with the comedy Se permettete parliamo di donne - Let’s Talk About Women - which starred Vittorio Gassman. He was only 33 but was already a widely respected scriptwriter, which had been his profession since the age of 21.

He had regularly sent suggestions for gags and sketches to the Italian comic actor Totò and others when he was a 15-year-old at high school.

Scola was born to parents who were themselves both actors.  His home village, high up in the Campanian Apennines more than 60km (37 miles) from the city of Avellino, had no cinema, but films were occasionally shown on a screen erected in the main square and Scola says he has memories of watching Laurel and Hardy shorts as a small boy.

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni in A
Special Day, regarded as Scola's finest work

In the late 1940s, he left the village to attend university in Rome, first to study medicine and then law but dropped out without graduating.  He found work on a satirical magazine called Marc’ Aurelio, where the director Federico Fellini was a member of the editorial board. The magazine had helped launch Fellini’s career and Scola found it opened doors for him, too.

Scola collaborated with directors such as Mario Monicelli, Dino Risi, and Antonio Pietrangeli, three giants of the commedia all’italiana genre. Often working in tandem with fellow writer Ruggero Maccari, he was part of Pietrangeli’s team for dramas including Adua and Her Friends (1960) and I Knew Her Well (1965). The two worked for Risi on comedies such as Il Sorpasso (1962) and I Mostri (1963).

Commedia all’italiana, which Scola once described as a natural off-shoot of gritty neorealism, was a genre that emerged in the late 1950s. The films had the traditional elements of bawdy comedy and farce but were at the same time a vehicle for examining the political and social issues of postwar Italy. “Serious” subjects such as marriage, religion, contraception and divorce were often looked at through the prism of satire and farce, sometimes causing deep offence to the Catholic Church.

Monica Vitti with Mastroianni (left) and Giancarlo
Giannini in Scola's Dramma della gelosia

Let’s Talk About Women and other early films by Scola brought some success at the box office while attracting no great critical acclaim, but that began to change in the ‘70s, which began with Dramma della gelosia (anglicised as The Pizza Triangle), which featured Monica Vitti as a florist in Rome torn between a middle-aged bricklayer (Marcello Mastroianni) and a young pizza chef (Giancarlo Giannini).

Between 1974 and 1977, Scola made three of his most important works: C'eravamo tanto amati (We All Loved Each Other So Much) in 1974, Brutti, sporchi e cattivi (Down and Dirty) in 1976 and Una giornata particolare (A Special Day) in 1977.

The first, a comedy starring Nino Manfredi, Satefania Sandrelli and Vittorio Gassman, followed three former partisan fighters as they returned to very different civilian lives in Rome. Consisting of interlinked stories, including one sequence in which Scola recreated the Trevi Fountain scene from Fellini's La dolce vita, it was described by one critic as “a loving homage to Fellini, De Sica and post-war Italian cinema”.

Brutti, sporchi e cattivi, again starring Manfredi, was particularly Felliniesque, a comedy of the grotesque featuring a large, impoverished Apulian family living on the wrong side of the law in Rome, headed by an irascible patriarch who wins a huge insurance payout for losing an eye but hides it from his family.

Four of Scola's movies were
nominated for Oscars

A Special Day was arguably Scola’s greatest triumph, a sensitive story of of two lonely residents of a seedy apartment building who are drawn together on the day in 1938 when the populace in the streets is cheering Hitler’s visit to Mussolini in Rome. He cast Sophia Loren as the repressed wife of a fervent Fascist, and Marcello Mastroianni as a gay man, an anti-fascist, who is waiting to be deported to Sardinia. The two become unexpectedly close.

After further Oscar nominations for I nuovi mostri (The New Monsters, also titled Viva Italia for English-speaking audiences) in 1978, Le Bal in 1983 and The Family in 1987, Scola made 10 more films before announcing his retirement in 2003, emerging again in 2013, when he directed Che strano chiamarsi Federico (How Strange to be Named Federico), an affectionate semi-documentary on his friend, Fellini.

Away from his film-making, Scola was often politically active. A member of the Italian Communist Party, in the late 1980s he was shadow culture minister. At around the time of his retirement, he was an outspoken critic of the right-wing populist, Silvio Berlusconi.

Upon Scola’s death in 2016 of pneumonia following heart problems at the age of 84, the then Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, said his passing “leaves a huge void in Italian culture”.

Steep streets are characteristic of the village
of Trevico, high in the Campania Apennines

Travel tip:

Trevico, Scola’s home village, has the distinction of being the highest inhabited place in Campania, situated at the top of a steep hill in the Apennines with an altitude of 3,576 feet (1,090m). The house where Scola was born and spent his early childhood is located among the alleys of the historic centre in a panoramic position and retains many of its original features. Now known as the Palazzo Scola and renovated after the damage suffered following the 1980 earthquake, in 2003 it was donated by the Scola family to the municipality of Trevico. 

The facade of Roma Ostiense railway station
was built entirely in Tavertine marble

Travel tip:

The suburban railway station of Roma Ostiense, the third largest in Rome after Termini and Tiburtina, owes its striking appearance to the visit to Rome by the German leader Adolf Hitler in 1938, which featured in Ettore Scola’s Golden Globe winner A Special Day. The existing rural station at Ostiense, about 5km (3 miles) south of the city centre close to the fashionable former working class neighbourhood of Testaccio, was demolished with the aim of creating a monumental station to receive the German dictator, although it was not actually finished until 1940. Architect Roberto Narducci designed the station, of which the entire facade is made of Travertine marble and the entrance is marked by a columned portico, in the architectural style favoured by Hitler.  A road built to connect the station with Porta San Paolo was initially named Via Adolf Hitler but was changed after the Second World War to Viale delle Cave Ardeatine, as a way of commemorating the victims of a mass killing of 335 civilians and political prisoners in Rome by the Nazi troops in 1944.

Also on this day:

1548: The birth of Antonio Priuli, Doge of Venice

1784: The birth of military general Carlo Filangieri

1922: The birth of journalist Antonio Ghirelli

1949: The birth of fashion designer Miuccia Prada

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9 May

Victor Emmanuel III abdicates

Last ditch bid to save the monarchy fails

Italy’s longest-reigning King, Victor Emmanuel III (Vittorio Emanuele III di Savoia), abdicated from the throne on this day in 1946.  To try to save the monarchy, Victor Emmanuel III had earlier transferred his powers to his son, Umberto. When he formally abdicated he hoped the new King, Umberto II, would be able to strengthen support for the monarchy.  Victor Emmanuel III went to live in Alexandria in Egypt , where he died, after just 18 months in exile, in December 1947.  In contrast with his father, who had been King of Italy for nearly 46 years, Umberto reigned for just over a month, from 9 May to 12 June. The country had voted in a referendum to abolish the monarchy and Italy was declared a republic. Umberto went into exile and was later nicknamed Re di maggio, the May King.  Victor Emmanuel III had at one time been a popular King of Italy, ascending to the throne in 1900 after his father was assassinated in Monza.  During his reign, Italy had been involved in two world wars and experienced the rise and fall of Fascism.  At the height of his success he was nicknamed by the Italians Re soldato (Soldier King).  Read more…

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Ottavio Missoni - fashion designer

Former prisoner of war was also an Olympic hurdler

The fashion designer Ottavio Missoni died on this day in 2013 at the age of 92 following an extraordinary life.  He passed away at his home in Sumirago, 55km (34 miles) north-west of Milan, having requested his release from hospital in order to spend his last days with his family.  Missoni was the co-founder of the Italian fashion brand Missoni, which he set up in 1953 with his wife, Rosita. The company became known around the world for its brightly coloured geometric knits and zigzag patterns and were among the pioneers of Italian ready-to-wear clothing lines.  Earlier, he had been an infantryman during the Second World War, fighting at the Battle of El Alamein in 1942. He was captured by the 7th Armoured Division of the British Army, popularly known as the Desert Rats, and spent the remainder of the war in an English prisoner-of-war camp in Egypt.  After the war, he pursued his passion for competitive athletics, becoming good enough to be selected in the Italian team for the 1948 Olympics in London, where he reached the final of the 400m hurdles event.  Missoni was born in Dubrovnik, on the Dalmatian coast, in 1921. His mother was a countess.  Read more…

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Giovanni Paisiello - composer

Audience favourite with a jealous streak

The composer Giovanni Paisiello, who wrote more than 90 operas and much other music and was enormously popular in the 18th century, was born on this day in 1740 in Taranto.  Paisiello was talented, versatile and had a big influence on other composers of his day and later, yet he was jealous of the success of rivals and is remembered today primarily as the composer whose passionate fans wrecked the premiere of Gioachino Rossini’s opera Almaviva, which was based on the same French play as Paisiello’s Il barbiere di siviglia, which was regarded as his masterpiece.  Rossini’s opera would eventually be more commonly known as Il barbiere di siviglia, but not until after Paisiello had died.  Nonetheless, Paisiello’s supporters still felt Rossini was attempting to steal their favourite’s thunder and many of them infiltrated the audience at Almaviva’s opening night in Rome and disrupted the performance with constant jeers and catcalls.  History has shown that perhaps they were right to be worried: today, Rossini’s Barber of Seville is one of the world’s most popular operas, yet Paisiello’s is rarely performed.   Read more…

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Carlo Maria Giulini - conductor

Boy violinist who became a maestro of the baton

Carlo Maria Giulini, who conducted many of the world’s great orchestras in a career spanning 54 years, was born on this day in 1914 in Barletta, a town on the Adriatic coast 66km (41 miles) north of the port city of Bari.  Appointed musical director of Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1953, he went on to become one of the most celebrated conductors of orchestral performances, developing long associations with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia of London in particular, as well as the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  He became renowned for projecting serene authority from the podium, as well as his selfless devotion to the score. A handsome man who was always impeccably tailored, he had a magisterial presence. Initially most recognised for the breadth and detail he brought to the operas of Verdi and Mozart, he eventually became as well known for his orchestral repertoire.  Carlo Maria Giulini was born to a Neapolitan mother and a father from Lombardy. Although born in the south of Italy, he was raised in Bolzano. Read more…

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