12 December

NEW - Giancarlo De Carlo - architect

Forward-thinking designer helped shape modern Urbino

The architect Giancarlo De Carlo, who gained international recognition for his forward-thinking work in urban planning, was born in Genoa on this day in 1919.  De Carlo was also a writer and educator, who was critical of what he saw as the failure of 20th century architecture.   Many of his building projects were in Urbino, the city in Marche known for its 15th century ducal palace and as the birthplace of the painter Raphael.  He put forward a master plan for Urbino between 1958-64, which involved new buildings and renovations added carefully to the existing fabric of the city, described as genteel modernism and designed with the lives of Urbino citizens in mind. 

The most notable parts of the Urbino project were at the University of Urbino, where he worked for decades, constructing housing, classroom and administration buildings, carefully embedded into the hilly landscape and designed to facilitate ease of movement between parts of the campus.  He also built Matteotti New Village, a social housing project in Terni in Umbria to provide homes for the employees of Italy’s largest steel company, designed housing for working people in Matera in Basilicata and worked on the Mirano Hospital in Venice, buildings for the University of Siena, and the redevelopment of the Piazza della Mostra, Trento.  Read more…

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Guglielmo Marconi – inventor and electrical engineer

Message received meant a scientific breakthrough

Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic radio signal using equipment he had invented himself on this day in 1901 in Newfoundland.  Marconi was credited with the invention of radio as a result and shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909 with another scientist, Karl Ferdinand Braun.  The message Marconi received, which was regarded as a great scientific advance, was the letter ‘S’ in Morse Code. It had been sent from a transmission station Marconi had set up in Cornwall, 2,200 miles away.  The inventor was born in Bologna in 1874. His father, Giuseppe Marconi, was a nobleman and landowner from Porretta Terme and his mother was of Scottish and Irish descent.  Marconi was brought up in Bedford in England as a young child but after moving back to Italy he was educated privately and then went to study at the University of Bologna.  While living in the Villa Griffone at Pontecchio near Bologna he began to conduct experiments to create wireless telegraphy.  He went to England to continue his work and by 1897 had transmitted a Morse code signal over a distance of six kilometres. He then sent the world’s first wireless communication over open sea.  Read more…

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Robert Browning - English poet

Writer who called Italy his ‘university’

Victorian poet and playwright Robert Browning died on this day in 1889 at his son’s home, Ca’ Rezzonico, a palazzo on the Grand Canal in Venice.  Browning was considered one of the most important Victorian poets, who had made contributions to social and political debate through his work, and he was given the honour of being buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.  The poet’s early career had begun promisingly with his work being well received by the critics, but his long poem, Sordello, produced in 1840, was judged to be wilfully obscure and it was to take many years for his reputation to recover.  In 1846 Browning secretly married the poet, Elizabeth Barrett, who was six years older than him and had been living the life of an invalid in her father’s house in London. A few days later they went to live in Italy, leaving their families behind in England forever.  Elizabeth’s poetry became increasingly popular and after the death of Wordsworth in 1850 she was considered as a serious contender to become the next Poet Laureate. However, the position eventually went to Alfred Tennyson.  The Brownings lived in Pisa at first but then moved to Florence. Read more…

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Piazza Fontana bombing

Blast at Milan bank killed 17 and wounded 88

Italy found itself the victim of an horrific terrorist attack on this day in 1969 when a bomb blast at a Milan bank left 17 people dead and a further 88 injured.  The bomb exploded at 4.37pm in the headquarters of the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana, just 200m away from the Duomo.  It was caused by a bomb containing about 18lbs of explosives left on the third floor, killing customers and members of staff.  At around the same time, two bombs exploded in Rome, injuring 14 people. Another device, placed in the courtyard of a bank near Teatro alla Scala in Milan, was deactivated by police.  The explosions followed one month after a policeman was killed during a riot of left-wing extremists in Milan and are generally seen as the start of a period of violent social and political unrest in Italy dubbed the Years of Lead.  Over a period of almost 20 years, the Years of Lead resulted in more than 200 deaths, many committed by the left-wing terrorist group Brigate Rosse (the Red Brigades), others by far-right organisations such as Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (Armed Revolutionary Groups) and Ordine Nuovo (the New Order).  Read more…

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Loredana Marcello – Dogaressa of Venice

Doge’s wife developed treatments for plague sufferers

Loredana Marcello, who became a Dogaressa of Venice as she was the wife of Doge Alvise I Mocenigo, died on this day in 1572.  A scholar and writer, Loredana developed treatments to help people suffering from the horrific symptoms of the plague. These were put to good use during the deadly outbreak that brought Venice to a standstill in 1575, three years after her death.  Loredana was the daughter of Giovanni Alvise Marcello. She received a good education, along with her sisters, Bianca, Daria and Maria. They were all considered by the nobility in Venice to represent the ideal of the educated Renaissance woman.  Loredana wrote letters and poetry and also studied botany, under Melchiorre Giulandino, a custodian of the Botanical Garden of the University of Padua and the first to occupy the chair in botany at the university.  As part of her research into plants, Loredana developed formulas and recipes to help plague sufferers, but unfortunately all her written work has been lost.  She married Alvise I Mocenigo in 1533. He was elected Doge of Venice in 1570 but Loredana’s time living in the Doge’s Palace didn’t last very long as she died on 12 December 1572.  Read more…

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Susanna Tamaro - bestselling author

Writer’s third published novel was international hit

The writer Susanna Tamaro, whose novel Va' dove ti porta il cuore - published in English as Follow your Heart - was one of the biggest selling Italian novels of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1957 in Trieste.  Va' dove ti porta il cuore - in which the main character, an elderly woman, reflects on her life while writing a long letter to her estranged granddaughter - has sold more than 16 million copies worldwide since it was published in 1994.  Only Umberto Eco’s historical novel Il Nome della Rosa  - The Name of the Rose - has enjoyed bigger sales among books by Italian authors written in the 20th century.  Tamaro has gone on to write more than 25 novels, winning several awards, as well as contributing a column for a number of years in the weekly magazine Famiglia Cristiana and even co-writing a song that reached the final of the Sanremo Music Festival.  Born into a middle-class family in Trieste, Tamaro is a distant relative of the writer Italo Svevo on her mother’s side. Her great-grandfather was the historian Attilio Tamaro.  In 1976, after obtaining a teaching diploma, Tamaro received a scholarship to study at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, the Italian school of cinema in Rome.  Read more…

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Lodovico Giustini – composer

Church organist who wrote the first music for piano

Lodovico Giustini, composer and keyboard player, was born on this day in 1685 in Pistoia in Tuscany.  Giustini is the first composer known to write music for the piano and his compositions are considered to be late Baroque and early Classical in style.  Giustini was born in the same year as Bach, Scarlatti and Handel. His father, Francesco Giustini, was a church organist, his uncle, Domenico Giustini, was a composer of sacred music and his great uncle, Francesco Giustini, sang in the Cathedral choir for 50 years.  After the death of his father in 1725, Giustini took his place as organist at the Congregazione dello Spirito Santo in Pistoia, where he began to compose sacred music, mostly cantatas and oratorios.  In 1728 he collaborated with Giovanni Carlo Maria Clari on a set of Lamentations, which were performed later that year.  He was to hold this position for the rest of his life. In addition to playing the organ he also gave performances on the harpsichord, often playing his own music.  Giustini is mainly remembered for his collection of 12 Sonate da cimbalo di piano e forte detto volgarmente di martelletti, 12 sonatas written for the piano.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World, by Marc Raboy

A little over a century ago, the world went wireless. Cables and all their limiting inefficiencies gave way to a revolutionary means of transmitting news and information almost everywhere, instantaneously. By means of "Hertzian waves," as radio waves were initially known, ships could now make contact with other ships (saving lives, such as on the doomed S.S. Titanic); financial markets could coordinate with other financial markets, establishing the price of commodities and fixing exchange rates; military commanders could connect with the front lines, positioning artillery and directing troop movements. Suddenly and irrevocably, time and space telescoped beyond what had been thought imaginable. Someone had not only imagined this networked world but realized it: Guglielmo Marconi. As Marc Raboy shows us in Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World, Marconi was the first truly global figure in modern communications. Born to an Italian father and an Irish mother, he was in many ways stateless, working his cosmopolitanism to advantage. Through a combination of skill, tenacity, luck, vision, and timing, Marconi popularized - and, more critically, patented - the use of radio waves. In 1896, he established his Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company in London and in time established stations and transmitters in every corner of the globe, from Newfoundland to Buenos Aires, Hawaii to Saint Petersburg.  He was decorated by the Czar of Russia, named an Italian Senator, knighted by King George V of England, and awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics -  before the age of 40. 

Marc Raboy is a writer and emeritus professor in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University in Montreal. He lives in Montreal and Abercorn, Quebec.  Based on original research and unpublished archival materials in four countries and several languages, Raboy's book is the first to connect significant parts of Marconi's story.

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Giancarlo De Carlo - architect

Forward-thinking designer who helped shape modern Urbino

De Carlo's ideas often put him at odds
with more traditional urban planners

The architect Giancarlo De Carlo, who gained international recognition for his forward-thinking work in urban planning, was born in Genoa on this day in 1919. 

De Carlo was also a writer and educator, who was critical of what he saw as the failure of 20th century architecture.   Many of his building projects were in Urbino, the city in Marche known for its 15th century ducal palace and as the birthplace of the painter Raphael.  

He put forward a master plan for Urbino between 1958-64, which involved new buildings and renovations added carefully to the existing fabric of the city, described as genteel modernism and designed with the lives of Urbino citizens in mind. 

The most notable parts of the Urbino project were at the University of Urbino, where he worked for decades, constructing housing, classroom and administration buildings, carefully embedded into the hilly landscape and designed to facilitate ease of movement between parts of the campus.

He also built Matteotti New Village, a social housing project in Terni in Umbria to provide homes for the employees of Italy’s largest steel company, designed housing for working people in Matera in Basilicata and worked on the Mirano Hospital in Venice, buildings for the University of Siena, and the redevelopment of the Piazza della Mostra, Trento.

De Carlo’s buildings reflected his views on the involvement of users and inhabitants in the design process. On the Terni housing project, for example, he insisted that workers be paid to attend consultation sessions to enable him to understand better how they wanted to live. 

The Palazzo Battiferri at the University of Urbino,
part of De Carlo's biggest planning project

He was a member of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and Team 10, which brought together a new generation of architects focussed on a new type of architecture, better suited to local social and environmental conditions.

De Carlo was educated at Milan Polytechnic, where he graduated in engineering in 1943. He joined the Italian navy but with Italy’s surrender to the Allies in September of that year he went into hiding, then joined the Italian Resistance movement. Together with another architect, Giuseppe Pagano, he organized an anarchist-libertarian partisan group in Milan, the Matteotti Brigades.

He resumed his studies in 1948, obtaining an architecture degree from the University of Venice before opening his first studio in Milan.  His progressive views came to the fore when he produced a series of short films denouncing prevalent ideas about the modern metropolis and, as a professor of urban planning, often clashed with other architects, who he claimed put abstract ideas ahead of the interests of people and their environment.

His 1956 housing project in Matera ignored most of what had become the accepted principles of modern architecture in favour of design sympathetic to the geographical, social and climatic context of the region.  Architects who shared his progressive views joined together in the group known as Team 10. 

De Carlo began working on his Urbino project in 1964, winning international recognition for his designs for the University Campus. During the 1968 student uprisings, he sought constructive dialogue with the students and subsequently wrote a number of essays in which he explored his theories on what became known as “participatory architecture”, underpinned by his own libertarian socialist ideals

Among many honours, De Carlo was awarded the Wolf Prize in Arts in 1988 and the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1993. He died in Milan in 2005.

As well as being the home of Raphael, Urbino
offers the attraction of a beautiful ducal palace

Travel tip: 

Urbino, which is 36km (22 miles) inland from the Adriatic resort of Pesaro, in the Marche region, is a majestic city on a steep hill.  It was once a famous centre of learning and culture, known not just in Italy but also in its glory days throughout Europe, attracting outstanding artists and scholars to enjoy the patronage of the noble rulers. The Ducal Palace - a Renaissance building made famous by Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier - is now one of the most important monuments in Italy and is listed as a Unesco World Heritage site. Inside the palace, the National Gallery of the Marche features paintings by Titian and Raphael, who was born in Urbino, and there are more examples of Raphael’s paintings at his house - Casa Natale di Raffaello - in Via Raffaello. The University swells the city’s population by up to 20,000. Urbino is home to a number of gastronomic delights, including crescia sfogliata, a flatbread often served stuffed with melted caciotta cheese, and prosciutto di Carpegna, a local cured ham.

Matera is renowned for its famous cave district,
the Sassi di Matera, to which visitors flock

Travel tip:

Declared a European Capital of Culture in 2019, the city of Matera in Basilicata, where De Carlo completed his first important housing project, is famous for an area called the Sassi di Matera, made up of former cave-dwellings carved into an ancient river canyon. The area became associated with extreme poverty in the last century and was evacuated in 1952, lying abandoned until the 1980s, when a gradual process of regeneration began. Now, the area contains restaurants, hotels and museums and is an increasingly popular destination for visitors.  The oldest part of the city, known as the Civita, sits above the cave districts on a flat, rocky plateau. Before they were turned into new dwellings, the caves became an extension to the Civita, used for storage and stabling horses. The Cattedrale della Madonna della Bruna e di Sant'Eustachio, Matera’s duomo, built in Apulian Romanesque style in the 13th century, can be found at Civita’s highest point.  

Also on this day:

1572: The death of Loredana Marcello, Dogaressa of Venice

1685: The birth of composer Lodovico Giustini

1889: The death in Venice of the English poet, Robert Browning

1901: Guglielmo Marconi receives the first transatlantic radio signal

1957: The birth of novelist Susanna Tamaro

1969: The Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan

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11 December

Gianni Morandi – actor and pop singer

Veteran entertainer has sold 50 million records 

The singer Gianni Morandi, a Sanremo Festival winner and Eurovision Song Contest contestant who has sold more than 50 million records and had a simultaneous career as a successful TV and film actor, was born on this day in 1944 in a mountain village in Emilia-Romagna.  Morandi, whose longevity has brought comparisons with the British singer Sir Cliff Richard, is still performing today in his 70s. In fact, he had an unlikely hit in 2017 when he teamed up with 23-year-old rapper and web star Fabio Rovazzi.  Morandi, whose pop-ballad style still has a big following, showed his versatility and willingness to indulge in self-mocking humour this year by co-starring with Rovazzi in an electro-pop track and video called Volare that went to No 1 on iTunes Italy and attracted 2.5 million views in less than 24 hours.  He has also appeared in his 11th TV drama series, having a few months earlier seen the release of his 18th movie.  Morandi was born in Monghidoro, now a village of almost 4,000 people that sits on a ridge in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines some 840m (2,750ft) above sea level, about 41km (25 miles) south of Bologna.   Read more…

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Carlo Ponti – film producer

The man who married Sophia Loren twice

Carlo Ponti, the producer of many iconic Italian films, was born on this day in 1912 in Magenta near Milan.  He studied law at Milan University and, after joining his father’s law firm in Milan, became involved in the film business through negotiating contracts.  His production of Mario Soldati’s Piccolo Mondo Antico about the Italian struggle against the Austrian occupation was his first success in 1940. But he was briefly jailed for allegedly undermining relations with Nazi Germany.  He went on to produce many of the popular and financially successful films of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Vittorio de Sica's Marriage Italian Style, David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup.  But Ponti also became famous for his love affair and two marriages to the film star Sophia Loren, who was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in Pozzuoli near Naples.  Ponti met her while he was judging a beauty contest in which she was competing, was captivated by her looks, and subsequently turned her into a film star and changed her name.  He was already married but he obtained a Mexican divorce in order to marry Sophia, who was more than 20 years younger than him, as divorce was then forbidden in Italy.  Read more…

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Pope Leo X

Renaissance pope supported art but did not foresee the Reformation

Pope Leo X was born as Giovanni de' Medici, on this day in 1475 in Florence.  The second son of Lorenzo de' Medici - Lorenzo Il Magnifico - who ruled the Florentine Republic, Leo X has gone down in history as one of the leading Renaissance popes, who made Rome a cultural centre during his papacy.  He is also remembered for failing to take the Reformation seriously enough and for excommunicating Martin Luther.  Giovanni was always destined for a religious life and received a good education at his father’s court, where one of his tutors was the philosopher Pico della Mirandolo. Giovanni went on to study theology and canon law at the University of Pisa.  In 1492 he became a member of the Sacred College of Cardinals, but after his father died later that year, he returned to Florence to live with his older brother, Piero.  He was exiled from Florence in 1494 with the rest of his family, accused of betraying the Florentine republic, and spent the next six years travelling throughout northern Europe.  On his return to Italy in 1500 he settled in Rome and on the death of his brother, Piero, he became the head of the Medici family.  Read more…

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Fabrizio Ravanelli - footballer

Juventus star who became a favourite at Middlesbrough

The footballer Fabrizio Ravanelli, who won five trophies with Juventus between 1992 and 1996 before stunning the football world by joining unfashionable Middlesbrough in the English Premier League, was born on this day in 1968 in Perugia.  Playing alongside Gianluca Vialli and Alessandro Del Piero in the Juventus forward line, Ravanelli scored in the 1996 Champions League final as the Turin side beat Ajax in Rome before signing for Middlesbrough just six weeks later.  The ambitious club from the northeast of England paid £7 million (€8.5m) for Ravanelli, a club record fee and at the time the third largest sum paid for any player by an English club.  It was part of a huge spending spree by Middlesbrough, managed by former England captain Bryan Robson, that brought a string of high-profile signings to the club's Riverside Stadium including the Brazilian playmaker Juninho, England international Nick Barmby and another Italian, the Inter defender Gianluca Festa.  Ravanelli made an immediate impact, scoring a hat-trick on his Premier League debut against Liverpool, and ended the season with 31 goals in league and cup matches.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Liguria (Bradt Travel Guides), by Rosie Whitehouse 

This new, thoroughly updated edition of Bradt's award-winning guide to Liguria is the essential companion to getting the most out of a visit to this beguiling Italian region. Author Rosie Whitehouse has spent thirty years exploring Liguria and in her comprehensive guide introduces you to not just the glitz of the Riviera but also to the delights of the wild unknown hinterlands and mountain valleys, including in-depth coverage of local gastronomic delights - a key part of any Ligurian visit. This new edition includes new maps, a focus on of the growth of small, 'Slow Food' businesses, restaurants and hotels, in-depth coverage of Genoa as a cultural and weekend-break destination and the development of its striking Hennebique waterfront, the latest developments in Savona and La Spezia, more walks and bike-riding advice plus new suggested routes, revised hotel and restaurant listings and all the latest transport information. Liguria is a mountainous region of dizzy passes and breathtaking views, where the mountains plunge down into the sparkling blue waters of the Mediterranean. The narrow strip of coast includes the gems of the world famous Italian Riviera, the great port city of Genoa, the glitzy resort of Portofino, the charms of the Cinque Terre and the traditional holiday destination of Sanremo. Yet in the hinterland there are many beautiful villages and mountain walks that have yet to be discovered by tourists. With a strong regional identity all of its own, Liguria is almost a country within a country. 

Rosie Whitehouse had her first experience of Liguria when her parents bundled the family in the car and drove there in the summer of 1966. When her eldest son was just a month old she made her second trip to Liguria and fell in love with it. Thirty years later, Rosie now knows the place like the back of her hand, spending part of the year in the house that her husband's family have owned for over 45 years. 

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10 December

Luigi Pirandello - playwright, poet and novelist

Brilliant writing was born out of ‘chaos’

Sicilian writer Luigi Pirandello died on this day in Rome in 1936.  Famous for his play Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore), Pirandello was also a prolific writer of novels, short stories and poetry, some of which were written in his native Sicilian dialect.  His plays are often seen as the forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd dramas of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco.  Pirandello’s contribution to the theatre was recognised in 1934 when he was awarded the Nobel prize in literature.  Pirandello was literally born in chaos. The name of the village near Agrigento in Sicily where his mother gave birth to him in 1867 is Caos, the Italian word for ‘chaos’, or in Sicilian, u Càvusu.  He was educated at home and had written his first play by the time he was 12. When his family moved to Palermo, he completed his school education and, after a spell working with his father in the sulphur industry, he registered at the University of Palermo.  He later moved to Rome to complete his studies, which gave him the chance to go to the theatre regularly, and he also studied for a while in Bonn.  Read more…

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Giuseppe Dossena - painter

Modern impressionist who funded his art with restoration projects

The painter Emilio Giuseppe Dossena was born on this day in 1903 in the small town of Cavenago d’Adda, about 48km (30 miles) southeast of Milan, in Lombardy.  Known more often simply as Giuseppe Dossena, he showed a talent for sculpture during his early years but preferred painting and soon began to produce outstanding landscapes in a neo-impressionist style.  With a young family to support, however, he had to find ways to supplement his income and eventually found regular work restoring and decorating villas and castles for a string of rich or aristocratic clients.  In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dossena spent a number of years living in the United States, where he was employed as a restorer of priceless artworks owned by institutions ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of New York to the Playboy Club.  As a child, he grew up in difficult circumstances, not helped by the death of his father when he was only 12 years old, which meant he had to give up school along with the older of his two brothers and find a job that would help support his mother and the three other members of the family.  Read more…

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Amedeo Nazzari - movie star

Sardinian actor seen as the Errol Flynn of Italian cinema

The prolific actor Amedeo Nazzari, who made more than 90 movies and was once one of Italian cinema's biggest box office names, was born on this day in 1907 in Cagliari.  Likened in his prime to the Australian-American star Errol Flynn, with whom he had physical similarities and the same screen presence, Nazzari enjoyed a career spanning five decades.  One of his first major successes, in the title role of the 1938 drama Luciano Serra, Pilot, in which he played a First World War veteran, established him as Italy's leading male star in 1930s and he maintained his popularity in the '40s and '50s.  He is remembered also for his appearance in Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria, which won the 1957 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film.  Towards the end of his career, he featured in Henri Verneuil's 1969 Mafia caper The Sicilian Clan, for which the score was composed by Ennio Morricone.  His last big screen appearance came in 1976 in A Matter of Time, an Italian-American musical fantasy directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring his daughter, Liza Minnelli.  Nazzari was born Amedeo Carlo Leone Buffa, the son of a pasta manufacturer.  Read more…

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Errico Petrella – opera composer

Sicilian whose popularity drew scorn from rivals

The largely forgotten opera composer Errico Petrella, whose popularity in Italy in the 1850s and 1860s was second only to operatic giant Giuseppe Verdi, was born on this day in 1813 in Palermo.  He composed 25 works, mainly comedic or melodramatic in nature, and had a run of successes in the 1850s, when three of  his productions were premiered at Teatro alla Scala in Milan.  However, Petrella attracted the scorn of both Verdi and another contemporary, the German composer Richard Wagner, both of whose careers coincided exactly with Petrella’s, even down to having been born in the same year.  When Il Duca di Scilla had its first performance at La Scala in March 1859, a year on from his hugely successful Jone, which also premiered at the Milan theatre, Wagner’s criticism could have hardly been more unflattering.  Asked his opinion of the work, Wagner said: “It is an unbelievably worthless and incompetent operatic effort by a modern composer whose name I have forgotten.”  Some years earlier, admittedly before Petrella had enjoyed much success at all, Verdi had been similarly scathing in his assessment of the 1951 opera Le Precauzioni.  Read more…

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Giuseppe 'Peppino' Prisco - lawyer and football administrator

Vice-president who became Inter Milan icon

The lawyer and football administrator Giuseppe Prisco, who served as a senior figure in the running of the Internazionale football club in Milan for more than half a century, was born on this day in 1921.  Universally known as Peppino, he managed to combine a career in legal practice with a passion for Inter that he would share so publicly he became a symbol of the club whose name was chanted on the terraces.  Born in Milan into a family with its roots in Torre Annunziata, near Naples, he was said to have fallen in love with the nerazzurri at seven years old in 1929, when he witnessed his first derby against AC Milan at Inter’s old stadium, the Campo Virgilio Fossati, between Via Goldoni and Piazza Novelli to the east of the city centre.  His career as a lawyer did not begin until after he had served with the Alpini - the mountain troops of the Italian Army - on the Russian front in the Second World War. He was only 18 when he joined up but reached the rank of lieutenant in the “L’Aquila” battalion of the 9th Alpine Regiment, and as one of only three officers from 53 to return alive from the Russian front was awarded a Silver Medal for Military Valour by the Italian government.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Six Characters in Search of an Author and Other Plays, by Luigi Pirandello, translated by Mark Musa

Luigi Pirandello is the founding architect of 20th-century drama, brilliantly innovatory in his forms and themes, and in the combined energy, imagination and visual colours of his theatre.This volume of plays, translated from the Italian by Mark Musa, opens with Six Characters in Search of an Author, Pirandello's most popular and controversial work in which six characters invade the stage and demand to be included in the play. The tragedy Henry IV dramatizes the lucid madness of a man who may be King. In So It Is (If You Think So) the townspeople exercise a morbid curiosity attempting to discover 'the truth' about the Ponza family. Each of these plays can lay claim to being Pirandello's masterpiece, and in exploring the nature of human personality each one stretches the resources of drama to their limits.

Luigi Pirandello studied at the Universities of Palermo, Rome, and Bonn, where he gained his doctorate in 1891. His first published work, Mal giocondo (1889), was a collection of poems.  Six Characters in Search of an Author was Pirandello’s first real success in the theatre when it was performed in 1921. Henry IV followed the next year and confirmed his position as a playwright.

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