25 October

Camillo Sivori – virtuoso violinist

Paganini’s successor was also a talented composer

Ernesto Camillo Sivori, a virtuoso violinist and composer, was born on this day in 1815 in Genoa.  Remembered as the only pupil of the great virtuoso violinist Niccolò Paganini, Sivori began his career as a travelling virtuoso at the age of 12, having by then also studied with other violin teachers.  He was acclaimed as ‘Paganini reincarnated’, or even, ‘Paganini without the flaws’, by music critics during a lengthy tour of Europe that he made between 1841 and 1845.  During his travels he met some of the best-known composers of the day, such as Mendelssohn, Schumann and Berlioz and he took part in hundreds of concerts.  After being compared to other celebrated violinists, his status as Paganini’s successor was confirmed, even though the great man had died in 1840 and was still remembered in the musical world.  Sivori had met Paganini, who was also from Genoa, when he was seven years old and had made such a favourable impression on him that Paganini gave him lessons between October 1822 and May 1823.  Paganini also wrote pieces of music for his pupil ‘to shape his spirit’ and even provided guitar accompaniment when Sivori performed these pieces privately.  Read more…

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Evangelista Torricelli – inventor of the barometer

Physicist's name lives on in scientific terminology

The inventor of the barometer, Evangelista Torricelli, died on this day in 1647 in Florence at the age of just 39.  A disciple of Galileo, Torricelli made many mathematical and scientific advances during his short life and had an asteroid and a crater on the moon named after him.  Torricelli was born into a poor family from Faenza in the province of Ravenna.  He studied science under the Benedictine monk, Benedetto Castelli, a professor of Mathematics at the Collegio della Sapienza, now known as the Sapienza University of Rome, who had been a student of Galileo Galilei.  After Galileo’s death the Grand Duke Ferdinand II de’ Medici asked Torricelli to succeed Galileo as Chair of Mathematics at the University of Pisa.  Torricelli was also interested in optics and designed and built telescopes and microscopes.  His most important invention was the mercury barometer, which he produced after he had discovered the principle of the barometer while trying to find a solution to the limitations of the suction pump in forcing water upwards.  Scientific terms such as the Torricellian tube and Torricellian vacuum are named after the scientist, as is the torr, a unit of pressure in vacuum measurements.  Read more…

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Carlo Gnocchi – military chaplain

Remembering a protector of the sick and the mutilated

Carlo Gnocchi, a brave priest who was chaplain to Italy’s alpine troops during the Second World War, was born on this day in 1902 in San Colombano al Lambro, near Lodi in Lombardy.  In recognition of his life, which was dedicated to easing the wounds of suffering and misery created by war, his birthday was made into his feast day when he was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on October 25, 2009 in Milan.  Gnocchi was the youngest of three boys born to Henry and Clementine Gnocchi. His father died when he was five years old and his two brothers died of tuberculosis before he was 13.  He was ordained a priest in 1925 in the archdiocese of Milan and afterwards worked as a teacher.  When war broke out he joined up as a voluntary priest and departed first for the front line between Greece and Albania and then for the tragic campaign in Russia, which he miraculously survived, despite suffering from frostbite.  While he was chaplain to alpine troops in the war he helped Jews and Allied prisoners of war escape to Switzerland. During this time he was imprisoned for writing against Fascism.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Paganini: The 'Demonic' Virtuoso, by Mai Kawabata

Our inherited image of Nicolo Paganini as a 'demonic violinist' has never been analysed in depth. What really made him 'demonic'? This book investigates the legend of Paganini. Separating fact from fiction, it explains how the virtuoso violinist challenged the very notion of what it meant to be a musician. Mai Kawabata considers Paganini's performance innovations, violin techniques and musical ethos in the light of contemporary attitudes towards music and the supernatural, gender, sexuality, violence, heroism and masculinity as well as conceptions of power. The many perceptions of Paganini as demonic - Faust, magician, devil, rake/libertine, Napoleon - were interrelated but not equivalent. A swirl of cultural factors coalesced in the performer to create that phenomenon of Romanticism, a larger-than-life Gothic villain. In The 'Demonic' Virtuoso, Kawabata shows how the idea of virtuosity spiralled out of control, acquiring a potent, overwhelmingly negative aura in the process, as the mythology surrounding Paganini outlived and outgrew the man to monstrous proportions. An appendix brings together late 19th-century British press and literature coverage of Paganini that contributed to the developing myth surrounding the now famous composer and performer. 

Mai Kawabata is Lecturer in Music at the University of East Anglia and a professional violinist.

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24 October

NEW - Nicola Bombacci - revolutionary

Communist who eventually allied with Mussolini

Nicola Bombacci, who was executed with Fascist leader Benito Mussolini after partisans intercepted their attempt to flee Italy in 1945, was born on this day in 1879 in Civitella di Romagna, a small town about 40 minutes by road from the city of Forlì in Emilia-Romagna.  Although he ended his life as a political ally of the right-wing dictator, Bombacci’s roots were in Marxism. Indeed, he had been a founder-member in 1921 of the Italian Communist Party, alongside among others Antonio Gramsci, the left-wing intellectual who was subsequently arrested by Mussolini and sentenced to 20 years in jail.  He shifted his position during the 1930s, seeing fascism as a form of national socialism that could unify Italy. He embraced Mussolini's Italian Social Republic, the German puppet state in northern Italy created after the Nazis had freed the deposed Mussolini from house arrest in 1943, believing it to represent a blend of Marxist principles and fascist ideology that could still be a force for good.  Born little more than 20km (12 miles) from Mussolini’s home town of Predappio, Bombacci’s connections with the future dictator can be traced back to his early 20s. Read more…

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Tito Gobbi – baritone

Singer found fame on both stage and screen

Opera singer Tito Gobbi was born on this day in 1913 in Bassano del Grappa in the Veneto region.  He had a career that lasted 44 years and sang more than 100 different operatic roles on stages all over the world.  Gobbi also sang in 25 films and towards the end of his career directed opera productions throughout Europe and America.  His singing talent was discovered by a family friend while he was studying law at the University of Padua, who suggested that he studied singing instead. As a result, Gobbi moved to Rome in 1932 to study under the tenor, Giulio Crimi.  At his first audition he was accompanied at the piano by Tilde De Rensis, the daughter of musicologist Raphael De Rensis. She was later to become Gobbi’s wife.  Gobbi made his debut in 1935 in Gubbio, singing the role of Count Rodolfo in Vincenzo Bellini’s La sonnambula, and then went to work for a season at La Scala in Milan as an understudy, which gained him valuable experience.  He made his first appearance on stage there as the Herald in Ildebrando Pizzetti’s Orseolo.  In 1942 he sang the role of Belcore in Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore at La Scala, conducted by Tullio Serafin.  Read more…

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Domitian - Roman emperor

Authoritarian ruler was last of the Flavian dynasty

The emperor Domitian, the last of three members of the Flavian dynasty to rule Rome, was born on this day in 51AD.  He was the son of Vespasian and the younger brother of Titus, during whose reigns he had a minor role in the government of the empire that was largely ceremonial. Yet when Titus died suddenly only two years after succeeding his father in 79AD, Domitian quickly presented himself to the Praetorian Guard to be proclaimed emperor.  The official record was that Titus, who had spent virtually the whole of his period on the throne dealing with the aftermath of the catastrophic eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD and a devastating fire in Rome, succumbed to a fever on a trip to the Sabine territories north of the city, but there were suspicions that he had been poisoned by his brother, perhaps in revenge for not having been given the position of power he had anticipated when Titus succeeded Vespasian. At the same time, there were rumours of an affair between Titus and Domitian’s wife, Domitia.  Vespasian and Titus had governed as the heads of a republic, but Domitian decided immediately that he wanted absolute power.   Read more…

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Sir Moses Montefiore - businessman

Italian-born philanthropist who made his fortune in London

The businessman and philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore, who made his fortune in England and became a prominent supporter of Jewish rights, was born in Livorno on this day in 1784.  Born into a Sephardic Jewish family, his grandfather, Moses Vita (Haim) Montefiore, had emigrated from Livorno to London in the 1740s, but regularly returned to Italy, as did other members of the family.  Moses Montefiore was born while his parents, Joseph Elias and Rachel - whose father, Abraham Mocatta, was a powerful bullion broker in London - were in Livorno on business.  Their son was to amass considerable wealth in his working life, accumulating such a fortune on the London stock exchange he was able to retire at 40, but in his youth his family’s situation was so perilous he had to abandon his education without qualifications in order to find a job.  First apprenticed to a firm of grocers and tea merchants, he left to become one of 12 so-called ‘Jew brokers’ in the City of London.  His early days in the city were not without setbacks, notably when a major fraud in 1806 caused him to lose most of his clients’ money.  Read more…

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Luciano Berio – composer

War casualty who became significant figure in Italian music

The avant-garde composer Luciano Berio, whose substantial catalogue of diverse work made him one of the most significant figures in music in Italy in the modern era, was born on this day in 1925 in Oneglia, on the Ligurian coast.  Noted for his innovative combining of voices and instruments and his pioneering of electronic music, Berio composed more than 170 pieces between 1937 and his death in 2003.  His most famous works are Sinfonia, a composition for orchestra and eight voices in five movements commissioned by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1968, and dedicated to the conductor Leonard Bernstein, and his Sequenza series of 18 virtuoso solo works that each featured a different instrument, or in one case a female voice alone.  Berio's musical fascinations included Italian opera, particularly Monteverdi and Verdi, the 20th-century modernism of Stravinsky, the Romantic symphonies of Schubert, Brahms and Mahler, folk songs, jazz and the music of the Beatles.  All these forms influenced him in one way or another and even his most experimental work paid homage to the past.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Singers of Italian Opera: The History of a Profession, by John Rosselli

Adelina Patti was the most highly regarded singer in history. She earned nearly $5,000 a night and had her own railway carriage. Yet a minor comic singer would perform for the cost of his food and a pair of shoes to wear on stage. John Rosselli's wide-ranging study introduces all those singers, members of the chorus as well as stars, who have sung Italian opera from 1600 to the twentieth century. Singers are shown slowly emancipating themselves from dependence on great patrons and entering the dangerous freedom of the market. Rosselli also examines the sexist prejudices against the castrati of the 18th century and against women singers. Securely rooted in painstaking scholarship and sprinkled with amusing anecdote, Singers of Italian Opera is a book to fascinate and inform opera fans at all levels.

John Rosselli was an Italian-born British historian, academic, journalist, music critic and writer on music. A former deputy London editor at The Guardian, he subsequently taught history at the University of Sussex and wrote extensively on the history of Italian music, particularly opera. He published several books on the subject.

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Nicola Bombacci - revolutionary

Communist who eventually allied with Mussolini

Nicola Bombacci led the
Italian Communist Party

Nicola Bombacci, who was executed with Fascist leader Benito Mussolini after partisans intercepted their attempt to flee Italy in 1945, was born on this day in 1879 in Civitella di Romagna, a small town about 40 minutes by road from the city of Forlì in Emilia-Romagna. 

Although he ended his life as a political ally of the right-wing dictator, Bombacci’s roots were in Marxism. Indeed, he had been a founder-member in 1921 of the Italian Communist Party, alongside among others Antonio Gramsci, the left-wing intellectual who was subsequently arrested by Mussolini and sentenced to 20 years in jail.

He shifted his position during the 1930s, seeing fascism as a form of national socialism that could unify Italy. He embraced Mussolini's Italian Social Republic, the German puppet state in northern Italy created after the Nazis had freed the deposed dictator from house arrest in 1943, believing it to represent a blend of Marxist principles and fascist ideology that could still be a force for good.

Born little more than 20km (12 miles) from Mussolini’s home town of Predappio, Bombacci’s connections with the future dictator can be traced back to his early 20s, when they attended the same teacher training college in Forlimpopoli.

Both became members of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), their political beliefs so closely aligned that both were part of the revolutionary Massimalisti wing on the far left of the party.

Benito Mussolini shared Bombacci's 
enthusiasm for left-wing politics

Their paths diverged when Mussolini began to lose faith in orthodox socialism, believing that national identity in the shape of culture, tradition, language and race had become as important as removing class divides in the kind of society he sought to create. 

In 1919 - the same year that Bombacci became Secretary of the PSI - Mussolini was hosting a rally in Milan that saw the establishment of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Group), which would evolve into the National Fascist Party two years later.

Bombacci led the PSI with notable success, winning 32.3 per cent of the vote in the 1919 general election, which made them the biggest party by votes and seats. 

However, he resigned his position only a year later, feeling his authority had been compromised when his proposed constitution of the Soviets in Italy was rejected. In the summer of 1920 he was among an Italian delegation that went to Soviet Russia, participating in the Second Congress of the Communist International, and in 1921 opted to join Gramsci and fellow Marxist Amadeo Bordiga in founding the Communist Party of Italy (PCd'I).

As support for Mussolini grew, opponents such as the Socialists and Communists increasingly became the target of violent attacks by Blackshirt thugs, no less so after his Fascist Party were handed power in 1922 following the March on Rome.

Gramsci’s arrest in 1926 followed two years after the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, 29-year-old founder and leader of the Unified Socialist Party, who had delivered a speech in parliament accusing Mussolini of winning the 1924 general election by fraud and intimidation.

Antonio Gramsci, Bombacci's fellow
communist, was arrested and jailed

Yet despite these incidents, Bombacci remained on friendly terms with his former fellow Massimalista, believing that Mussolini shared his own objective of creating a better Italy for working people, even if their methods were at odds.

Expelled from the PCI in 1927 for taking a pro-fascist position, Bombacci responded by becoming openly fascist, although he never officially joined the National Fascist Party.  By the beginning of the 1940s, Bombacci’s position had shifted to the degree that he began publishing pamphlets warning the Italian population on the dangers of Bolshevism and attacking Stalin for betraying socialist values.

Mussolini in turn helped Bombacci by providing financial support for the care of his sick son, Wladimiro, and allowing him to found and edit a new magazine, La Verità, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, promoting views aligned to those of the regime.

Their relationship became stronger still after Mussolini, freed from captivity by Nazi paratroopers after being arrested on the orders of King Victor Emmanuel III 1943, was installed as leader of the Italian Social Republic, a puppet state established on territory controlled by the Germans in northern and central Italy.

Bombacci voluntarily travelled to the republic’s headquarters in Salò, on the shores of Lake Garda, where he became an advisor to Mussolini. He was the author of the economic theory of fascist socialisation, designed to put more power in the hands of workers through the state control of businesses and the means of production. 

The bodies of Bombacci (first left)
and the others in Piazzale Loreto

In speeches he delivered to Italian workers in Genoa in 1945, he proclaimed that "Stalin will never make socialism; rather Mussolini will."

It was not long, however, before the Allied advance from the south steadily forced the German army into retreat. Sensing that it was only a matter of time before the Italian Social Republic collapsed, Mussolini hatched a plan to escape to Switzerland. 

Along with Mussolini’s mistress, Claretta Petacci, Bombacci and other loyalists, including Achille Starace and Alessandro Pavolini, accompanied the former Duce in a car hoping to reach the Swiss border. They had been on the run for only a day, however, when Mussolini was recognised at a checkpoint set up by Italian partisans at Dongo on the shores of Lake Como and captured.

Two days later, Mussolini and the others were executed. Their bodies were taken to Milan and hung by their feet from a beam above a petrol station in Piazzale Loreto, symbolically chosen as it had been the scene of a massacre of Milanese citizens by Fascist militia a year earlier.

A view from Piazza Principale
in Civitella di Romagna

Travel tip:

Nicola Bombacci was born in Civitella di Romagna, a charming small town in the province of Forlì-Cesena, about 30km (19 miles) southwest of Forlì and 40km (25 miles) southwest of Cesena. It is bisected by the Bidente river in an area of picturesque green hills. It has a well-preserved mediaeval centre with bastion walls as well as an ancient castle.  Civitella di Romagna is known for its annual cherry jam festival and hosts numerous markets throughout the year. The Santuario della Beata Vergine della Suasia, situated at the western end of the town, is a significant religious site dating back to the 18th century.

The waterfront at Salò, these days a pleasant and
popular resort among visitors to Lake Garda

Travel tip:

For all its regrettable association with such a despised figure as Mussolini, Salò has recovered to become a pleasant resort on the shore of Lake Garda, visited by many tourists each year. Its promenade, the Lungolago Zanardelli, is the longest of any of the lakeside towns and it has a Duomo, the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Annunziata, that was rebuilt in Gothic style in the 15th century. The Museo di Salò commemorates, among other things, the resistance against Fascism. During his time as leader of the Italian Social Republic, Mussolini lived about 18km (11 miles) to the north of Salò in the Villa Feltrinelli at Gargnano, a sumptuous lakeside palazzo which he confiscated from the Feltrinelli family, who had built it at the end of the 19th century as a summer residence. 

Also on this day: 

51: The birth of Roman emperor Domitian

1784: The birth of philanthropist and businessman Sir Moses Montefiore

1913: The birth of baritone Tito Gobbi

1925: The birth of composer Luciano Berio

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23 October

Alex Zanardi - racing driver and Paralympian

Crash victim who refused to be beaten

Alessandro 'Alex’ Zanardi, a title-winning racing driver who lost both legs in an horrific crash but then reinvented himself as a champion Paralympic athlete, was born on this day in 1966 in the small town of Castel Maggiore, just outside Bologna.  Zanardi was twice winner of the CART series - the forerunner of IndyCar championship of which the marquee event is the Indianapolis 500 - and also had five seasons in Formula One.  But in September 2001, after returning to CART following the loss of his contract with the Williams F1 team, Zanardi was competing in the American Memorial race at the EuroSpeedway Lausitz track in Germany when he lost control of his car emerging from a pit stop and was struck side-on by the car of the Canadian driver Alex Tagliani.  The nose of Zanardi’s car was completely severed as Tagliani's car slammed into Zanardi's cockpit, just behind the front wheel, and the Italian driver suffered catastrophic injuries. Rapid medical intervention saved his life after he lost almost 75 per cent of his blood volume but both legs had to be amputated, one at the thigh and the other at the knee.  Read more…

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Carlo Caracciolo - newspaper publisher

Left-leaning aristocrat who co-founded L’Espresso and La Repubblica 

The newspaper publisher Carlo Caracciolo, who was the driving force behind the news magazine L’Espresso and the centre-left daily La Repubblica, was born on this day in 1925 in Florence.  Caracciolo aligned himself politically with the Left and spent the last two years of World War Two fighting against the Fascists as a member of a partisan unit he joined at the age of 18.  Yet he was born into Italian aristocracy, inheriting the titles Prince of Castagneto and Duke of Melito with the death of his father in 1965. After his younger sister, Marella, married the Fiat chairman, Gianni Agnelli, in 1953, he became one of the best connected individuals in Italian society. His funeral in 2008 was attended by members of five of Italy’s most powerful dynasties: Agnelli, Caracciolo, Borghese, Visconti and Pasolini.  Tall and handsome, effortlessly elegant in his dress sense and instinctively well-mannered, he could not disguise his refined roots but never flaunted them. He was at his most comfortable in the company of left-wing intellectuals and insisted he be known only as Carlo.  At the same time, however, he was a formidable businessman.  Read more…

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Francesco Foscari – Doge of Venice

Ignominious ending to a long and glorious reign

After 34 years as Doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari was abruptly forced to leave office on this day in 1457.  Stripped of his honours, he insisted on descending the same staircase from the Doge’s Palace that he had climbed up in triumph more than a third of a century before, rather than leave through a rear entrance.  Eight days later the former Doge was dead. The story behind the downfall of Foscari and his son, Jacopo, fascinated the poet Lord Byron so much during his visit to Venice in 1816 that he later wrote a five-act play about it.  This play, The Two Foscari: An Historical Tragedy, formed the basis of Verdi’s opera, I due Foscari, and ensured that the sad story of the father and son was never forgotten.  Francesco Foscari, who was born in 1373, was the 65th Doge of the Republic of Venice. He had previously served the Republic in many roles, including as a member of the Council of Forty and the Council of Ten, Venice’s ruling bodies, and as Procurator of St Mark’s. He was elected Doge in 1423, after defeating the other candidate, Pietro Loredan.  As Doge he led Venice in a long series of wars against Milan.  Read more…

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Saint John of Capistrano

Patron saint of lawyers and chaplains

The feast day of Saint John of Capistrano (San Giovanni da Capestrano) is being celebrated today in Abruzzo and is marked by Catholics in the rest of Italy and the world.  The patron saint of the legal profession and military chaplains, St John is particularly venerated in Austria, Hungary, Poland and Croatia as well as in different parts of America.  St John was born in Capestrano, about halfway between L’Aquila and Pescara in the Abruzzo region of Italy, in 1386.  He studied law at the University of Perugia and was then appointed Governor of Perugia by King Ladislaus of Naples.  When war broke out between Perugia and the Malatesta family in 1416, John was sent to broker peace, but ended up in prison.  While in captivity he decided not to consummate his recent marriage but to study theology instead.  He entered the Order of Friars Minor at Perugia in 1416 and a few years later began preaching all over Italy as a Franciscan friar.  He was particularly effective in Germany, Austria, Croatia and Poland and, because the churches were not big enough for his audiences, he had to preach in public squares.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Alex Zanardi: My Sweetest Victory - A Memoir of Racing Success, Adversity, and Courage, by Alex Zanardi with Gianluca Gasparini 

The racing world held its collective breath in 2001 when Alex Zanardi lost both his legs in a horrifying accident at the Lausitzring in Germany. The racing world held its breath again 19 months later while witnessing his incredible return to racing. In Alex Zanardi - My Sweetest Victory Zanardi takes us from his childhood in Italy through his hard-fought racing success to the moving story of perseverance and love that motivated his recovery. Along the way, Zanardi presents the triumphs and setbacks in his racing career, culminating in back-to-back CART championships for 1997 and 1998. In riveting detail, Zanardi relates his terrible accident, the long path to recovery and his return to Lausitzring to complete the 13 laps he didn't finish in 2001. Alex Zanardi: My Sweetest Victory is an inspiring book about how personal strength and passion can triumph over even the most challenging circumstances - an autobiography whose significance extends far beyond the world of motorsports.

Gianluca Gasparini is an experienced journalist and author. His is editor and managing editor at La Gazzetta dello Sport, having previously been Head of Motorsports at the same publication.

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