1 September

Guido Deiro - vaudeville star

Accordion player who wowed America

The musician Guido Deiro, who was the first artist to become a star playing the piano-accordion, was born on this day in 1886 in an Alpine village north of Turin.  For a while, in the early part of the 20th century, he and his brother Pietro were among the highest-paid performers on the booming American vaudeville circuit. Using his stage name, which was simply ‘Deiro’, he made more than 110 recordings, which sold in large numbers.  He ‘covered’ many popular hits and well known classical and operatic pieces and wrote compositions of his own, the most famous of them the song Kismet, which became the theme song for the Broadway musical and was used in two film versions of the story, which was based on a play by Edward Knoblauch.  Deiro became something of a celebrity and was seldom short of glamorous female company. He was married four times, on the first occasion to his fellow vaudeville star Mae West, who would go on to become much more famous as a movie actress.  He was born Count Guido Pietro Deiro in the village of Salto Canavese, near Courgnè, about 45km (28m) north of Turin. His family were long-standing rural nobility.  Read more…

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Vittorio Gassman - actor

Stage and screen star once dubbed ‘Italy’s Olivier’

Vittorio Gassman, who is regarded as one of the finest actors in the history of Italian theatre and cinema, was born on this day in 1922 in Genoa.  Tall, dark and handsome in a way that made him a Hollywood producer’s dream, Gassman appeared in almost 150 movies but he was no mere matinée idol.  A highly respected stage actor, he possessed a mellifluous speaking voice, a magisterial presence and such range and versatility in his acting talent that the Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham once called him ‘the Lawrence Olivier of Italy’.  He enjoyed a career that spanned five decades. Inevitably, he is best remembered for his screen roles, although by the time he made his movie debut in 1945, he had appeared in more than 40 productions of classic plays by Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Ibsen, Tennessee Williams, and others.  On screen, his major successes included his portrayal of the handsome scoundrel Walter opposite Silvana Mangano in Giuseppe De Santis's neorealist melodrama Riso amaro (Bitter Rice, 1948), and several commedia all’italiana classics, including Mario Monicelli’s I soliti ignoti (released in the US as Big Deal On Madonna Street, 1958).  Read more…

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Tullio Serafin – opera conductor

Toscanini’s successor furthered the career of Callas

The man who helped Maria Callas develop her singing talent, musician and conductor Tullio Serafin, was born on this day in 1878 in Rottanova near Cavarzere in the Veneto, on the Adige river just south of the Venetian Lagoon.  Serafin studied music in Milan and went on to play the viola in the orchestra at Teatro alla Scala under the baton of Arturo Toscanini.  He was later appointed assistant conductor and then took over as musical director at the theatre when Toscanini left to go to New York.  Serafin conducted at La Scala between 1909 and 1914, from 1917 to 1918 and then returned briefly at the end of the Second World War.  He became a conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1924 and stayed with them for ten years before returning to Italy to become artistic director at the Teatro Reale in Rome.  During his career he helped the development of many singers, including Rosa Ponselle, Magda Olivero and Joan Sutherland.  Serafin’s most notable success was with Maria Callas, with whom he collaborated on many recordings. He is credited with helping the American-born singer achieve a major breakthrough in 1949.  Read more…

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31 August

Altiero Spinelli - political visionary

Drafted plan for European Union while in Fascist jail

Altiero Spinelli, a politician who is regarded as one of the founding fathers of the European Union, was born on this day in 1907 in Rome.  A lifelong Communist who was jailed for his opposition to the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, he spent much of the Second World War in confinement on the island of Ventotene in the Tyrrhenian Sea, one of an archipelago known as the Pontine Islands.  It was there that he and two prisoners, Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni, agreed that if the forces of Fascism in Italy and Germany were defeated, the only way to avoid future European wars was for the sovereign nations of the continent to join together in a federation of states.  The document they drew up, which became known as the Ventotene Manifesto, was the first document to argue for a European constitution and formed the basis for the Movimento Federalista Europeo, which Spinelli, Rossi and some 20 others launched at a secret meeting in Milan as soon as they were able to leave their internment camp.  In a nutshell, the Ventotene Manifesto put forward proposals for creating a European federation of states so closely joined together they would no longer be able to go to war with one another.  Read more…

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Amilcare Ponchielli - opera composer

Success of La Gioconda put musician on map

The opera composer Amilcare Ponchielli was born on this day in 1834 in Paderno Fasolaro, near Cremona, about 100km south-east of Milan in what is now Lombardia.  Ponchielli's works in general enjoyed only modest success, despite the rich musical invention for which he was later applauded.  One that did win acclaim in his lifetime, however, was La Gioconda, which was first produced in 1876 and underwent several revisions but remained unaltered after 1880.  Well known for the tenor aria, Cielo e mar, and the ballet piece, Dance of the Hours, La Gioconda is the only opera by Ponchielli still performed today and many recordings have been made, featuring some of the biggest stars of recent times.  Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi and Montserrat Caballe are among those to have played the role of Gioconda, written for soprano, while the lead tenor part of Enzo, whose affections are sought both by Gioconda and another major character, Laura, has been taken by Giuseppe Di Stefano, Carlo Bergonzi, Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo among others.  Ponchielli had such a talent for music that he won a scholarship to Milan Conservatory at nine years old.  Read more…

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Gino Lucetti – failed assassin

Anarchist tried to kill Mussolini with grenade

Gino Lucetti, who acquired notoriety for attempting to assassinate Italy’s Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in Rome in 1926, was born on this day in 1900. A lifelong anarchist, part of a collective of like-minded young men and women from Carrara in Tuscany, he planned to kill Mussolini on the basis that doing so would save the lives of thousands of potential future victims of the Fascist regime.  Lucetti hatched his plot while in exile in France, where he had fled after taking a Fascist bullet in the neck following an argument in a bar in Milan, clandestinely returning several times to Carrara to finalise the details.  After enlisting the help of other anarchists, notably Steffano Vatteroni, who worked as a tinsmith in Rome, and Leandro Sorio, a waiter originally from Brescia, he returned to Rome to carry out the attack.  Vatteroni was able to obtain information about Mussolini’s movements from a clerical worker in the dictator’s Rome offices, including details of his regular motorcades through the city. These were carefully choreographed affairs in which cheering citizens lined the streets, enabling Mussolini to present an image to the world of a popular leader.  Read more…

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Luca Cordero di Montezemolo – aristocrat and businessman

Former driver who led Ferrari to Formula One success

Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, a former racing driver, chairman of Ferrari and Fiat and president of employers’ federation Confindustria, was born on this day in 1947 in Bologna.  He is one of the founders of NTV, an Italian company that is Europe’s first private, open access operator of 300km/h (186 mph) high-speed trains.  Montezemolo is a descendant of an aristocratic family from Piedmont, who served the Royal House of Savoy for generations. He is the youngest son of Massimo Cordero dei Marchesi di Montezemolo and Clotilde Neri, niece of the surgeon, Vincenzo Neri. His uncle was a commander in the Italian Navy in World War II and his grandfather and great grandfather were both Generals in the Italian Army.  After graduating with a degree in Law from Rome Sapienza University in 1971, Montezemolo studied for a master’s degree in international commercial law at Columbia University.  His sporting career began at the wheel of a Giannini Fiat 500. He then drove briefly for the Lancia rally team, before joining the auto manufacturing conglomerate Fiat. In 1973 he moved to Ferrari, where he became Enzo Ferrari’s assistant. Read more… 

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Isabella de’ Medici – noblewoman

Tuscan beauty killed by her husband

Isabella Romola de’ Medici, the daughter of the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, was born on this day in 1542 in Florence.  She was said to have been beautiful, charming, educated and talented and was the favourite child of her father, Cosimo I de’ Medici.  But she died at the age of 33, believed to have been murdered by the husband her family had chosen for her to marry.  While Isabella was growing up she lived first in Palazzo Vecchio and later in Palazzo Pitti in Florence with her brothers and sisters. Her brother, Francesco, who was a year older than her, eventually succeeded his father as Grand Duke of Tuscany.  The Medici children were educated by tutors in classics, languages and the arts and Isabella particularly loved music.  When Isabella was 11 she was betrothed to 12-year-old Paolo Giordano Orsini, heir to the Duchy of Bracciano in Tuscany, because her father wanted to secure the southern border of Tuscany and his relationship with the Orsini family.  Five years later, when Isabella was 16, they were married at the Medici country estate, Villa di Castello.  Read more…

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30 August

NEW - Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo – painter and printmaker

Famous artist’s son developed his own style

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, who became famous for his paintings of Venetian life and of the clown, Pulcinella, was born on this day in 1727 in Venice.  Also known as Giandomenico Tiepolo, he was one of the nine children born to the artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and his wife, Maria Guardi, the sister of painters Francesco and Giovanni Guardi. Perhaps not surprisingly, Giandomenico inherited the talent to go into the same profession as his father and uncles and, by the age of 13, he had become the elder Tiepolo’s chief assistant. His younger brother, Lorenzo, also became a painter and worked as an assistant to his father.  By the age of 20, Giandomenico was already producing his own work for commissions. However, he continued to accompany his father when he received his major commissions in Italy, Germany and Spain.  He assisted his father with a grand stairwell fresco for a prince’s palace in Wurzburg in Bavaria in 1750 and with decorations for the Villa Valmarana ai Nani in Vicenza in 1757 and the Royal Palace of Madrid in 1770.  The elder Tiepolo died while in Madrid and after Giandomenico returned to live in Venice.  Read more…

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Joe Petrosino - New York crime fighter

Campanian immigrant a key figure in war against Mafia

Joe Petrosino, a New York police officer who dedicated his life to fighting organised crime, was born Giuseppe Petrosino in Padula, a southern Italian town on the border of Campania and Basilicata, on this day in 1860.  The son of a tailor, Prospero Petrosino, he emigrated to the United States at the age of 12.  The family lived in subsidised accommodation in Mulberry Street, part of the area now known as Little Italy on the Lower East Side towards Brooklyn Bridge, where around half a million Italian immigrants lived in the second half of the 19th century.  Giuseppe took any job he could to help the family, at first as a newspaper boy and then shining shoes outside the police headquarters on Mulberry Street, where he would dream of becoming a police officer himself.  In 1878, by then fluent in English and known to everyone as Joe, Petrosino became an American citizen but it took him five years and repeated applications to realise his dream of joining the police. At 5ft 3ins he was technically too short to meet the criteria for an officer but after the police began to use him as an informant it was decided he could be of use in the fight against Italian organised crime.  Read more…

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Andrea Gabrieli - composer

Father of the Venetian School

The Venetian composer and organist Andrea Gabrieli, sometimes known as Andrea di Cannaregio, notable for his madrigals and large-scale choral works written for public ceremonies, died on this day in 1585.  His nephew, Giovanni Gabrieli, is more widely remembered yet Andrea, who was organist of the Basilica di San Marco – St Mark’s – for the last 19 years of his life, was a significant figure in his lifetime, the first member of the Venetian School of composers to achieve international renown. He was influential in spreading the Venetian style of music in Germany as well as in Italy.  Little is known about Andrea’s early life aside from the probability that he was born in the parish of San Geremia in Cannaregio and that he may have been a pupil of the Franco-Flemish composer Adrian Willaert, who was maestro di cappella at St Mark’s from 1527 until 1562.  In 1562 – the year of Willaert’s death – Andrea is on record as having travelled to Munich in Germany, where he met and became friends with Orlando di Lasso, who wrote secular songs in French, Italian, and German, as well as Latin.  There was evidence in the later work of Di Lasso of a Venetian influence. Read more…

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Emanuele Filiberto – Duke of Savoy

Ruler who made Turin the capital of Savoy

Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, who was nicknamed testa di ferro (iron head) because of his military prowess, died on this day in 1580 in Turin.  After becoming Duke of Savoy he recovered most of the lands his father Charles III had lost to France and Spain and he restored economic stability to Savoy.  Emanuele Filiberto was born in 1528 in Chambery, now part of France. He grew up to become a skilled soldier and served in the army of the emperor Charles V, who was the brother-in-law of his mother, Beatrice of Portugal, during his war against Francis I of France. He distinguished himself by capturing Hesdin in northern France in July 1553.  When he succeeded his father a month later he began the reacquisition of his lands.  His brilliant victory over the French at Saint Quentin in northern France in 1557 on the side of the Spanish helped to consolidate his power in Savoy. The peace of Cateau-Cambresis in 1559 ended the wars between Charles V and the French Kings and restored part of the Duchy of Savoy back to Emanuele Filiberto on the understanding that he would marry Margaret of France, the sister of King Henry II.   Read more…

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Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo – painter and printmaker

Famous artist’s son developed his own style

Many of Tiepolo's works, such as this carnival scene
in Venice, featured the comic character Pulcinella

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, who became famous for his paintings of Venetian life and of the clown, Pulcinella, was born on this day in 1727 in Venice.

Also known as Giandomenico Tiepolo, he was one of the nine children born to the artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and his wife, Maria Guardi, the sister of painters Francesco and Giovanni Guardi.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Giandomenico inherited the talent to go into the same profession as his father and uncles and, by the age of 13, he had become the elder Tiepolo’s chief assistant. His younger brother, Lorenzo, also became a painter and worked as an assistant to his father.

By the age of 20, Giandomenico was already producing his own work for commissions. However, he continued to accompany his father when he received his major commissions in Italy, Germany and Spain.

He assisted his father with a grand stairwell fresco for a prince’s palace in Wurzburg in Bavaria in 1750 and with decorations for the Villa Valmarana ai Nani in Vicenza in 1757 and the Royal Palace of Madrid in 1770.

The elder Tiepolo died while in Madrid and after Giandomenico returned to live in Venice, his own style of painting began to develop. His portraits and scenes of life in Venice were realistic and characterised by movement and his use of colour. He drew inspiration for his paintings from the lives of both peasants and aristocrats.

One of the panels from the Via Crucis cycle,
in the Oratory of the Crucifix at San Polo

Giandomenico also received many commissions for drawings and reproduced his own and his father’s paintings as etchings.

He produced more than 100 separate sketches of Pulcinella, a physically deformed clown who was the standard character of commedia dell’arte in Venice and later became the Punch in Punch and Judy. The sketches were created as entertainment for children, but also poked fun at the pretensions and behaviour of the viewers of Pulcinella’s shows.

He accepted commissions for religious paintings also. Many can be seen in the Chiesa di San Polo in Venice, including the 14 panels of his Via Crucis cycle, which can be seen in the adjacent Oratory of the Crucifix.

Frescoes that Giandomenico painted for the Tiepolo family villa at Zianigo near Mirano were removed from the walls of the building at the beginning of the last century and nearly sold to a French buyer, but the export of the paintings was blocked by an Italian Government minister. They were subsequently acquired by the city of Venice and put on display at Ca’ Rezzonico on the Grand Canal, in a replica of their original arrangement at the villa.  

The paintings were executed between 1759 and 1797 solely for the entertainment of Giandomenico and his family. The ones featuring Pulcinella were the last to be painted and are perhaps the most famous of the cycle. Giandomenico was said to have been obsessed by the commedia dell’arte character during the last years of his life and is thought to have used him in his paintings as a vehicle to reflect his own irreverent and sarcastic spirit.

Giandomenico Tiepolo died in Venice in 1804, aged 76.

The Villa Valmarana ai Nani in Vincenza, where
Tiepolo and his father painted frescoes

Travel tip:  

Villa Valmarana ai Nani was built in 1669 near the gates of the city of Vicenza. The villa takes its name from the 17 stone sculptures of nani, dwarves, that once decorated the garden and have now been placed on the walls surrounding the villa. It is believed they were sculpted by Francesco Uliaco based on drawings by Giandomenico Tiepolo. The villa is famous for the frescoes by Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo in the palazzina, owner’s residence, which were commissioned by Giustino Valmarana in 1757. The present day Valmarana family still live in the villa.

Frescoes by Giandomenico Tiepolo on display
at Ca' Rezzonico, the palace on the Grand Canal

Travel tip:

Ca’ Rezzonico on the Grand Canal in Venice, which now houses Giandomenico Tiepolo’s frescoes on its second floor, was built in the 16th century to a design by the architect Baldassare Longhena. Before the building was complete the architect died and the unfinished construction was later bought by Giambattista Rezzonico, who commissioned Giorgio Massari to complete it. In the 19th century it was purchased by Pen Browning, the painter son of the poet, Robert Browning. The poet died there during a visit in 1889. The frescoes removed from Giandomenico’s villa went on display in Ca ‘Rezzonico in 1936. The palace is also now home to the Museum of 18th Century Venice.

Also on this day:

1580: The death of Emanuele Filiberto, Duke of Savoy

1585: The death of Venetian composer Andrea Gabrieli

1860: The birth of New York crime fighter Joe Petrosino

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