22 August

Bruno Pontecorvo - nuclear physicist

Defection to Soviet Union sparked unsolved mystery 

Bruno Pontecorvo, a nuclear physicist whose defection to the Soviet Union in 1950 led to suspicions of espionage after he had worked on research programmes in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, was born on this day in 1913 in Marina di Pisa.  One of eight children born to Massimo Pontecorvo - a Jewish textile manufacturer who owned three factories - Bruno was from a family rich in intellectual talent. One of his brothers was the film director Gillo Pontecorvo, another the geneticist Guido Pontecorvo.  Bruno studied engineering at the University of Pisa but after two years switched to physics. He received a doctorate to study at the University of Rome La Sapienza, where Enrico Fermi had gathered together a group of promising young scientists, dubbed “the Via Panisperna boys” after the street where the Institute of Physics was then situated.  Read more…

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Flavius Stilicho - Roman general

Last defender of the Western Empire

The military commander Flavius Stilicho, who for part of his career could be considered the most powerful man and de facto ruler of the Western Roman Empire, was executed on this day in 408 in Ravenna.  Stilicho had successfully defended the empire against several barbarian invasions and gained his power through acting as regent when the death of Theodosius I in 395 left the Western Empire in the hands of Honorius, his 10-year-old son.  But as a soldier of partly Vandal descent, Stilicho had always aroused suspicion within the Roman court and his failure to deal with the advance across northern Europe of the rebellious Constantine III, leader of the Romans in Britain, combined with rumours that he planned to install his own son, Eucherius, as emperor of the Eastern Empire following the death of Arcadius, sparked a mutiny of the Roman army at Ticinum. Read more…

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Giada De Laurentiis - TV chef

Food Network star who was born in Rome

The TV presenter, chef, author and restaurateur Giada Pamela De Laurentiis was born in Rome on this day in 1970.  A classically-trained chef who learned her craft in Paris, she worked in the kitchens of a number of restaurants in Los Angeles before breaking into television. Since 2003 she has been a regular on the Food Network, the American cable channel.  Born into a theatre and movie background, De Laurentiis takes her name from her mother, the actress Veronica De Laurentiis, whose parents were the producer Dino De Laurentiis and the actress Silvana Mangano.  Her father is the actor-producer Alex De Benedetti.  Giada spent her first seven years in Rome, where her mother still has a home near the Spanish Steps, but after her parents divorced she and her sisters moved to Los Angeles.  Her grandfather had a home in Hollywood. Read more…

History’s first air raid

Balloon bombs dropped on Venice

Venice suffered the first successful air raid in the history of warfare on this day in 1849.  It came six months after Austria had defeated the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in the First Italian War of Independence as the Austrians sought to regain control of Venice, where the revolutionary leader Daniele Manin had established the Republic of San Marco.  The city, over which Manin’s supporters had seized control in March 1848, was under siege by the Austrians, whose victory over the Piedmontese army in March 1849 had enabled them to concentrate more resources on defeating the Venetians.  They had regained much of the mainland territory of Manin’s republic towards the end of 1848 and were now closing in on the city itself, having decided that cutting off resources while periodically bombarding the city from the sea would bring Venice’s capitulation.  Read more…

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Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi – bishop

Progressive priest who shaped the destiny of a future Pope

Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, Bishop of Bergamo, who was a mentor for the future Pope John XXIII, died on this day in 1914 in Bergamo.  He was Bishop of the Diocese of Bergamo from 1905 until his death and is remembered with respect because of his strong involvement in social issues at the beginning of the 20th century when he sought to understand the problems of working class Italians.  Radini-Tedeschi was born in 1857 into a wealthy, noble family living in Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna.  He was ordained as a priest in 1879 and then became professor of Church Law in the seminary of Piacenza.  In 1890 he joined the Secretariat of State of the Holy See and was sent on a number of diplomatic missions.  In 1905 he was named Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bergamo by Pope Pius X and was consecrated by him in the Sistine Chapel.  Read more…

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Luca Marenzio – composer

Madrigal writer influenced Monteverdi

Luca Marenzio, a prolific composer of madrigals during the late Renaissance period, died on this day in 1599 in the garden of the Villa Medici on Monte Pincio in Rome.  Marenzio wrote at least 500 madrigals, some of which are considered to be the most famous examples of the form, and he was an important influence on the composer Claudio Monteverdi.  Born at Coccaglio, a small town near Brescia in 1553, Marenzio was one of seven children belonging to a poor family, but he received some early musical training at Brescia Cathedral where he was a choirboy.  It is believed he went to Mantua with the maestro di cappella from Brescia to serve the Gonzaga family as a singer.  Marenzio was then employed as a singer in Rome by Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo and, after the Cardinal’s death, he served at the court of Cardinal Luigi d’Este.  He travelled to Ferrara with Luigi d’Este and took part in the wedding festivities for Vincenzo Gonzaga and Margherita Farnese.  While he was there he wrote two books of madrigals and dedicated them to Alfonso II and Lucrezia d’Este.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Pontecorvo Affair - A Cold War Defection and Nuclear Physics, by Simone Turchetti 

In the autumn of 1950, newspapers around the world reported that the Italian-born nuclear physicist Bruno Pontecorvo and his family had mysteriously disappeared while returning to Britain from a holiday trip. Pontecorvo was known to be an expert working for the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment so his disappearance raised concern for the safety of atomic secrets, especially when it became known in the following months that he had defected to the Soviet Union. Was Pontecorvo a spy? Did he know and pass sensitive information about the bomb to Soviet experts? At the time, nuclear scientists, security personnel, Western government officials, and journalists assessed the case, but their efforts were inconclusive. In the years since, some have downplayed Pontecorvo's knowledge of atomic weaponry, while others have claimed him as part of a spy ring that infiltrated the Manhattan Project. The Pontecorvo Affair draws from newly-disclosed sources to challenge previous attempts to solve the case, offering a balanced and well-documented account of Pontecorvo, his activities, and his possible motivations for defecting. 

Simone Turchetti is an independent research fellow at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Manchester.

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21 August

Emilio Salgari – adventure novelist

Author’s heroes and stories are still part of popular culture

Emilio Salgari, who is considered the father of Italian adventure fiction, was born on this day in 1862 in Verona.  Despite producing a long list of novels that were widely read in Italy, many of which were turned into films, Salgari never earned much money from his work. His life was blighted by depression and he committed suicide in 1911.  But he is still among the 40 most translated Italian authors and his most popular novels have been adapted as comics, animated series and films. Although he was not given the credit at the time, he is now considered the grandfather of the Spaghetti Western.  Salgari was born into a family of modest means and from a young age wanted to go to sea. He studied seamanship at a naval academy in Venice but was considered not good enough academically and never graduated. Read more…

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Giuseppe ‘del Gesu’ Guarneri – violin maker

Luthier’s surviving instruments are now worth millions

Bartolomeo Giuseppe ‘del Gesu’ Guarneri, who is regarded as the greatest of the Guarneri family of violin makers, was born on this day in 1698 in Cremona in Lombardy.   He was the son of Giuseppe Giovanni Battista Guarneri and the grandson of Andrea Guarneri, who were both respected violin makers in the city. He learned the craft of violin making in his father’s shop, who in turn had learned from his father, Andrea, who had worked alongside Stradivari in the workshop of Niccolò Amati.  Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri became known as Giuseppe ‘del Gesu’ Guarneri because of the religious symbols on the labels he used on the instruments he produced late in his career.  Although Giuseppe ‘del Gesu’ was younger than the celebrated violin maker Antonio Stradivari, he became his rival because of the respect and reverence accorded to the violins he produced.  Read more…

Lino Capolicchio - actor

Acclaimed for role in Vittorio De Sica classic

The actor and director Lino Capolicchio, who starred in Vittorio De Sica’s Oscar-winning film The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, was born on this day in 1943 in Merano, an alpine town in the Trentino-Alto Adige region.  Capolicchio appeared in more than 70 films and TV dramas, and dubbed the voice of Bo Hazzard in the Italian adaptation of the American action-comedy The Dukes of Hazzard.  As a director, he won awards for Pugili, a drama-documentary film set in the world of boxing based on his own storylines, but it is for The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, for which he won a David di Donatello award for best actor, that he is best remembered.  The movie is about a wealthy Jewish family in Ferrara in the 1930s, whose adult children, Micòl and Alberto, enjoy blissful summers entertaining friends with tennis and parties in the garden of the family’s sumptuous villa. Read more… 

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Giuseppe Meazza - Italy's first superstar

Inter striker who gave his name to the San Siro stadium

Italian football's first superstar, the prolific goalscorer Giuseppe Meazza, died on this day in 1969, two days before what would have been his 69th birthday.  Most biographical accounts say Meazza was staying at his holiday villa in Rapallo, on the coast of Liguria, when he passed away but John Foot, the historian, says he died in Monza, near his home city of Milan.  Meazza, who was equally effective playing as a conventional centre-forward or as a number 10, spent much of his career with Internazionale, the Milan club for whom he scored a staggering 243 league goals in 365 appearances.  A year after his death, the civic authorities in Milan announced that the stadium shared by the two clubs in the San Siro district would be renamed Stadio Giuseppe Meazza in his honour.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Black Corsair, by Emilio Salgari. Translated by Nico Lorenzutti

How far would you go for revenge?  The Caribbean, 17th century. An Italian nobleman turns pirate to avenge the murder of his brothers. His foe: an old Flemish army officer named Van Guld, now the Governor of Maracaibo. The Black Corsair is relentless, vowing never to rest until he has killed the traitor and all those that bear his name. To help him in his quest, the Corsair enlists the greatest pirates of his time: L'Ollonais, Michael the Basque, and a young Welshman named Henry Morgan… 

Emilio Salgari was born in Verona to a family of modest merchants. When his dream to captain his own vessel and explore the world was shattered by poor marks at a naval institute in Venice, he turned his passion for exploration and discovery to writing. He wrote more than 200 adventure stories and novels, many of which are considered classics. Nico Lorenzutti is a writer, translator and editor. 

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Carla Fracci - a memory

Photographer recalls magical meeting with star in Naples

On the anniversary of the birth of the celebrated ballerina Carla Fracci in Milan on this day in 1936, today we publish a memory that the award-winning Italian photographer Augusto De Luca has shared with us of meeting the dancer and photographing her in his home city of Naples.

How I shot Carla Fracci

By Augusto De Luca

Several years have passed, but the memory of that meeting, the memory of that magical moment, will remain with me forever.

It was the early nineties, to be precise 1991, and the book Napoli Donna had recently been released in bookshops, with my portraits of 37 important Neapolitan women, accompanied by interviews with the journalist Giuliana Gargiulo. 

Carla Fracci poses for De Luca. The ballerina was
enthusiastic about his project from the start.

Having had notable success with the book, Giuliana and I decided to make another, this time about Milanese women.

We then prepared a list of illustrious names and first on the list was Carla Fracci. 

As chance would have it, after less than a month, the beautiful dancer together with her husband Beppe Menegatti came to Naples to visit Giuliana, and I first met her at a dinner in her house. I suggested that she could participate in the project and she was immediately enthusiastic about it. 

However, Fracci was only to stay in Naples for a few days, so I had to find a location immediately and, above all, decide how to photograph her. So I began to do some research.

Reading her biography, I saw from her date of birth that her zodiac sign was Leo, a sign that fitted her like a glove. I had always considered her a very strong woman – a true warrior, both temperamentally and professionally. 

The end result: De Luca's intriguing portrait of Carla
Fracci, framed by the majestic lion of her star sign

I then remembered that at the house of my friend Valeria Carità, in an antique palazzo in Monte di Dio, I had seen a large stone lion. I quickly organised everything and the next day Fracci and I went to that magnificent house. 

Carla was beautiful, delicate and ethereal like Chinese porcelain, and wore the beautiful lace dress that you see in the photo. 

After a few tests and a few shots, I realised that I had found the right photo. I could finally relax. We spent some time chatting and then I accompanied her back. 

For various reasons, the book was never published. Nonetheless, I saw her again in Milan when she came to one of my photographic exhibitions at the Diaframma gallery in via Brera. 

I gave her the portrait and she immediately said to me: “Bella! And the lion is my zodiac sign.” I knew that I had hit the mark.

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Photographer and subject: Augusto
De Luca with Carla Fracci

Augusto De Luca, born in Naples in 1955, is a photographer and former musician, who once played guitar in ‘garage’ bands in Naples.  A graduate in Law, he became a professional photographer in the mid 1970s and has photographed many famous people during his career, as well as capturing the beauty of many great cities in Italy and beyond.  

He is known internationally, having exhibited in many Italian and foreign galleries. His photographs appear in public and private collections such as those of the International Polaroid Collection (USA), the National Library of Paris, the Municipal Photographic Archive of Rome, the National Gallery of Aesthetic Arts of China (Beijing), the Museum of Photography of Charleroi (Belgium). He has also published 10 books of his work.

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20 August

Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel – poet and revolutionary

Noblewoman who sacrificed her life for the principle of liberty

A writer and leader of the movement that established the Parthenopean Republic in Naples, Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel was hanged on this day in 1799 in a public square near the port.  A noblewoman, she would have expected her execution to be carried out by beheading, but had given up her title of marchioness when she became involved with the Jacobins, founded by supporters of the French Revolution, who were working to overthrow the monarchy.  Pimentel had asked to be beheaded anyway, but the restored Bourbon monarchy showed her no mercy, reputedly because she had written pamphlets denouncing Queen Maria Carolina as a lesbian. On the day of her execution, Pimentel was reputed to have stepped calmly up to the gallows, quoting Virgil by saying: ‘Perhaps one day this will be worth remembering.’ She was 47 years of age.  Read more…

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Carla Fracci – ballerina

Brilliant Romantic dancer brought ballet to the people

Destined to become one of the greatest ballerinas of the 20th century, Carolina ‘Carla’ Fracci was born on this day in 1936 in Milan.  Carla became a leading dancer of the La Scala Theatre Ballet in her home town and then worked with the Royal Ballet in London, Stuttgart Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, becoming known for her interpretations of leading characters in Romantic ballets such as Giselle, Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet.  Sent to live with relatives in the countryside during World War Two, she returned to Milan after the conflict ended and her mother took her and her sister to sit the La Scala Theatre ballet school entrance exam.  At first she was bored, but after performing alongside Margot Fonteyn in The Sleeping Beauty when she was 12, Carla changed her mind and started working hard to make up for lost time.  Read more…

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Stelvio Cipriani – composer

Musician wrote some of Italy’s most famous film soundtracks

Stelvio Cipriani, an award-winning composer of film scores, was born on this day in 1937 in Rome.  One of his most famous soundtracks was for the 1973 film, La polizia sta a guardare (also released as The Great Kidnapping). The main theme was used again by Cipriani in 1977 for the film, Tentacoli, and also featured in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof in 2007.  Although Cipriani did not come from a musical background, he was fascinated with the organ at his church when he was a child.  His priest gave him music lessons and then Cipriani went to study piano and harmony at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome at the age of 14.  His first job was playing in a band on a cruise ship and then he became the accompanist for the popular Italian singer, Rita Pavone.  Stelvio wrote his first movie soundtrack for the 1966 spaghetti western, The Bounty Killer.  Read more…

Pope Pius X

Good hearted pontiff was made a saint

Pope Pius X, who chose to live in poverty and devote his life to the Blessed Virgin Mary, died on this day in 1914 in the Apostolic Palace in Rome.  His body was exhumed from its tomb nearly 30 years later and was found to be miraculously incorrupt and Pius X was made a saint in 1954.  Pius X was born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto in 1835 in Riese in the province of Treviso.  He was the second son of the ten children born to the village postman and his seamstress wife. Although the family were poor, they valued education and, as a young boy, Sarto walked six kilometres (3.7 miles) to attend school every day.  In 1850 he was given a scholarship to attend the seminary in Padua, where he completed classical, philosophical and theological studies with distinction.  After being ordained a priest, he continued to study while carrying out the duties of a parish pastor.  Read more…

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Jacopo Peri – composer and singer

Court musician produced the first work to be called an opera

The singer and composer Jacopo Peri, also known as Il Zazzerino, was born on this day in 1561 in Rome.  He is often referred to as the ‘inventor of opera’ as he wrote the first work to be called an opera, Dafne, in around 1597.  He followed this with Euridice in 1600, which has survived to the present day although it is rarely performed. It is sometimes staged as an historical curiosity because it is the first opera for which the complete music still exists.  Peri was born in Rome to a noble family but went to Florence to study and then worked in churches in the city as an organist and a singer.  He started to work for the Medici court as a tenor singer and keyboard player and then later as a composer, producing incidental music for plays.  Peri’s work is regarded as bridging the gap between the Renaissance period and the Baroque period.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: In the Shadow of Vesuvius: A Cultural History of Naples, by Jordan Lancaster

Naples is an Italian city like no other. Drama and darkness are often associated with Naples, which rests beneath active Mount Vesuvius and is the home of the Camorra - its version of the mafia. But beyond this, Naples reveals itself to be one of the most historically and culturally vibrant cities in Europe.  From its origins in Homer's Odyssey and its founding nearly 3,000 years ago, Naples has long attracted travellers, artists and foreign rulers - from the visitors of the Grand Tour to Goethe, Nelson, Dickens and Neruda.  The stunning beauty of its natural setting coupled with the charms of its colourful past and lively present - from the ruins of Pompeii to the glittering performances of the San Carlo opera house - continue to seduce all those who explore Naples today.  In the Shadow of Vesuvius is a sparkling portrait of the city - the definitive companion for anyone seeking to delve beneath its surface.

Jordan Lancaster has a PhD in Italian Studies from the University of Toronto. She taught Italian language and literature at universities in Canada and the United States before moving to Naples where she was a post doctoral fellow at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici. Dr Lancaster now works as a translator/interpreter in the City of London.

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