Pina Carmirelli - violinist

Virtuoso trusted with 17th century masterpiece

Pina Carmirelli quickly established herself as
one of Italy's most talented violinists

Pina Carmirelli, who became one of Italy’s most gifted violinists of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1914 in Varzi, a town in the province of Pavia in Lombardy about 90km (45 miles) south of Milan.

Carmirelli enjoyed a brilliant career as a soloist and as a member of various chamber groups, the most notable of which was the Boccherini Quintet, which she co-founded with her husband, cellist Arturo Bonucci, in order to revive interest in the music of the 18th century cellist, Luigi Boccherini.

She was held in such high regard that the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, where she taught for many years, allowed her use of one of the prized possessions of their Museum, a 1690 violin that was one of a set of five instruments the great luthier Antonio Stradivari built for Ferdinando de’ Medici, the Grand Prince of Tuscany.

Carmirelli played the precious instrument, known as the 'Tuscan, Medici' in numerous recitals and concert performances between 1962 and 1977, as well as in some recordings, notably those with the Boccherini Quintet.

As a child, Pina Carmirelli is thought to have been inspired to follow a career in music by her grandfather, the conductor and composer Carlo Podesta. She began studying music and performing as a concert pianist at a very young age. 

She also had a music-loving uncle in Cremona, which - thanks to the Stradivari, Amati and Guarneri families and others - is steeped in the traditions of violin-making. Carmirelli visited the historic city throughout her childhood and it became something of a spiritual home. 

Later, as a student of Teresina Tua and Michelangelo Abbado, she graduated from the Conservatorio di Musica “Giuseppe Verdi” in Milan in violin in 1930, and in composition five years later.

Carmirelli with the Boccherini Quintet soon after it
was formed. Arturo Bonucci is on the right, seated

She was awarded the Stradivari Prize in 1937 and the Paganini Prize in 1940, which cemented her status as one of the most gifted young violinists in Italy. 

Carmirelli’s distinguished career was notable for her deep affinity for Classical and early Romantic music. Along with her husband, who was 20 years her senior, she formed the Boccherini Quintet in 1950, followed by the Carmirelli Quartet in 1954, also featuring Bonucci.

She also became first violin of I Musici, the chamber orchestra from Rome, formed in 1952, which became well known for their interpretations of Baroque and other works, particularly those of Antonio Vivaldi and Tomaso Albinoni.

The orchestra consisted of 12 musicians, most of whom were students of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia. They were so successful that their recordings of Vivaldi’s most famous work, his collection of violin concerti known as The Four Seasons, sold more than 25 million copies.

Bonucci, who she met in 1938 and soon married, was a decorated pilot as well as a musician, but also a committed opponent of the Fascist regime, a stance shared by Carmirelli. 

In later years, Carmirelli played often at
the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont

They collaborated in the revival of Luigi Boccherini’s music after Carmirelli, on tour in Paris, discovered by chance in the library of the Paris Conservatory a complete collection of Boccherini’s works for strings, which had been long forgotten. Carmirelli persuaded the Italian consulate to buy them on her behalf before she and Arturo painstakingly worked through 147 string quintets for two cellos and over 84 string quartets, forming their Boccherini Quintet in order to do them justice in front of an audience.

While Carmirelli’s career was rooted in Italy, she also performed extensively abroad, including in the United States. Her American engagements included chamber tours, guest appearances with orchestras, and collaborations that helped introduce European chamber traditions to US audiences.

For example, she became a regular at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, which she visited for the first time in 1964, not long after the death of Arturo, for whom she was still in mourning. She admitted that the sense of community at the festival allowed her to set aside some of her sadness and feel part of a family again, sharing her knowledge and experience with countless musicians in the years that followed.

Carmirelli, who had by then enjoyed a 50-year association with the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, died in 1993 in a town today known as Capena, in northern Lazio, some 35km (21 miles) north of Rome. She had reached the age of 79.

Varzi, the Lombardy village that was Pina Carmirelli's
birthplace, has a well-preserved medieval centre

Travel tip:

Varzi, where Pina Carmirelli was born, designated by the Associazione I Borghi più belli d’Italia as one of Italy’s most beautiful villages, is the gateway to the Upper Oltrepò region, an unspoiled area of the Apennines located at the southern tip of Lombardy, close to the borders with Piedmont to the west, Emilia-Romagna to the east and Liguria to the south. It is characterised by medieval architecture largely unchanged for centuries. Historical attractions include the 13th century Malaspina Castle and Witches’ Tower, the 18th century Palazzo Tamburelli, the 16th century Chiesa di San Germano and the Oratories of the Bianchi and the Rossi, built in the 17th century in different architectural styles, one late Renaissance, the other Baroque. Remnants of the medieval walls are visible in the towers of Porta Soprana and Porta Sottana. Varzi is famed for its Salame di Varzi DOP, which supposedly owes its flavour to being cured by the breezes from the Ligurian Sea. A crucial stop along the Via del Sale trade route, which connects the Po Valley with the Ligurian coast, Varzi enjoyed great prosperity from the 13th century onwards under the Malaspina family, who built many of the buildings that distinguish the village today.

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The inner courtyard of the Conservatorio di Santa
Cecilia, where Carmirelli taught for many years

Travel tip:

The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, one of the oldest musical institutions in the world, was established in 1565. It was founded in Rome by Pope Sixtus V at the Church of Santa Maria ad Martires, better known as the Pantheon. Over the centuries, many famous composers and musicians have been members, among them in recent times the opera singers Beniamino Gigli and Cecilia Bartoli. Since 2005 the Academy’s headquarters have been at the Parco della Musica in Rome, which was designed by the architect Renzo Piano, in Viale Pietro de Coubertin in the Flaminio district, close to the location of the 1960 Summer Olympic Games. Previously, the Accademia was based at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia, which dates back to 1875. Entrances can still be seen in Via dei Greci and Via Vittoria, not far from the Spanish Steps in central Rome.  The museum housing the 1690 Tuscan, Medici violin and the other instruments that comprised the Medici Quintet is located in the Parco della Musica complex. In the exhibition gallery some 130 instruments are on display and about 50 luthiery tools in an open-air laboratory where the museum luthiers work.

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More reading:

Why Luigi Boccherini spent his last years in Madrid

Niccolò Paganini, the violinist whose extraordinary talent aroused bizarre suspicions

The 17th century luthier whose instruments are still seen as the best in the world

Also on this day:

1752: The death of composer and pianist Muzio Clemente

1881: The birth of heiress and muse Luisa Casati

1921: The birth of sculptor and trophy-maker Silvio Gazzaniga

1928: The birth of controversial politician Salvatore Lima

1980: The death of car designer Giovanni Michelotti

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22 January

Giuseppe Musolino - brigand

Vengeful killer who became an unlikely folk hero

Giuseppe Musolino, the Calabrian bandit whose fight for justice after a wrongful conviction turned him into a folk hero despite the multiple murders he committed in a quest for vengeance, died on this day in 1956 in a psychiatric hospital in Reggio Calabria.  He was 79 years old when he passed away, having been just 22 when he was sentenced to 21 years in prison for an attempted murder he swore he did not commit, with the evidence against him no better than circumstantial.  He escaped after just three months and embarked upon a killing spree in which he may have murdered as many as nine individuals and attempted the murder of several others, all of whom had played a part in what he saw as a corrupt trial.  The revenge killings took place during his two years and nine months on the run, during which Calabrians had taken to him as a symbolic figure. Read more…

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The Battle of Anzio

Key moment in World War II brought heavy casualties

British and American troops landed on the beach at Anzio, a coastal town south of Rome in the region of Lazio, in the early hours of the morning on this day in 1944.  The Allies were planning to dislodge German troops blocking the route to Rome and to liberate the capital city quickly, but the Battle of Anzio was to last for many months and cause the deaths of thousands of soldiers on both sides.  Operation Shingle, the name for the complex amphibious landing, had been the idea of the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, as he lay in bed recovering from pneumonia in December 1943. His concept was to land two divisions of men at Anzio, and nearby Nettuno, bypassing the German forces entrenched across the Gustav Line in central Italy, to enable the Allies to take Rome.  But the operation was opposed by German troops, as well as forces from the newly-created Italian Social Republic. Read more...

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Papal Swiss Guard

Colourful uniforms camouflage highly trained security professionals

The Pope’s Swiss Guard was founded on this day in Vatican City in 1506.  A contingent of guards from Switzerland has continued to guard the Pope from that day to present times and it is one of the oldest military units still in existence.  The Swiss had been producing mercenary soldiers for hundreds of years with a reputation for loyalty and good discipline.  In the 15th century they were known for their good battle tactics and were employed by many European armies.  Pope Julius II ordered the first Swiss troops to guard the Vatican and they arrived in Rome on 22 January, 1506, the official date now given for the foundation of the Papal Swiss Guard.  The Pope later gave them the title ‘Defenders of the Church’s freedom’.  Recruits to the Pope’s Swiss Guard unit have to be Catholic men of Swiss nationality who have completed military training and can produce evidence of their good conduct. Read more…

Carlo Orelli – soldier

The last trench infantryman

Carlo Orelli, the last surviving Italian soldier to have served at the start of Italy's involvement in the First World War, died on this day in 2005 at the age of 110.  Orelli had signed up for active duty at the age of 21 and joined the Austro-Hungarian front after Italy joined the war on the side of Britain, France and Russia in May 1915.  He took part in combat operations near Trieste, experiencing the brutality of trench warfare and seeing many of his friends die violent deaths, but after receiving injuries to his leg and ear he spent the rest of the war in hospital.  Orelli was born in Perugia in 1894, but his family moved to Rome, where he was to spend most of the rest of his life living in the Garbatella district.  He came from a military background and had a grandfather who had helped to defend Perugia against Austrian mercenaries in 1849.  Read more…

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Frankie Yale - gang boss

Mobster who employed a young Al Capone

The gang boss who gave Al Capone one of his first jobs was born on this day in 1893 in Longobucco in Calabria.  Francesco Ioele, who would later become known as Frankie Yale, moved to the United States in around 1900, his family settling into the lower Manhattan area of New York City.  Growing up, Ioele was befriended by another southern Italian immigrant, John Torrio, who introduced him to the Five Points Gang, which was one of the most dominant street gangs in New York in the early part of the 20th century.  In time, Ioele graduated from petty street crime and violent gang fights to racketeering, changing his name to Yale to make him sound more American and taking control of the ice delivery trade in Brooklyn.  With the profits Yale opened a waterfront bar on Coney Island, which was called the Harvard Inn. It was there that he took on a young Capone as a bouncer. Read more…

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Antonio Todde - supercentenarian

Sardinian shepherd holds record as oldest Italian man in history

Antonio Todde, who was the oldest living man in the world before he died at the age of 112 years 346 days in 2002 and remains the oldest Italian man in history, was born on this day in 1889 in Tiana, a mountain village in Sardinia.  There are 19 other Italians who have attained a higher age, but all are women. Maria Giuseppa Robucci, from Apulia, died in 2019 at the age of 116 years 90 days. Emma Morano, from Piedmont, who died in 2017 aged 117 years 137 days, remains the oldest Italian of all time.  Todde was the world’s most senior male centenarian from the death of the American John Painter on March 1, 2001 until his own death 10 months later.  He was born to a poor shepherd family in Tiana, about 140km (87 miles) north of Cagliari in the Gennargentu mountains, about 55km (34 miles) southwest of the provincial capital, Nuoro.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: King of the Mountains: The Remarkable Story of Giuseppe Musolino, Italy's Most Famous Outlaw, by Dan Possumato

In 1897, a young Calabrian peasant named Giuseppe Musolino was sentenced to 21 years of hard labour for a crime he did not commit. However, defying all odds, he orchestrated a daring escape and embarked on a relentless pursuit of those responsible for his wrongful conviction, exacting a chilling and deadly retribution.  Evading capture for nearly three years, he cunningly outmanoeuvred a vast manhunt consisting of hundreds of local and regional police, the Carabinieri, and even an Italian Army regiment. As Possumato details in King of the Mountains, Musolino's exploits transformed him into a beloved Robin Hood figure among the inhabitants of the mezzogiorno, the impoverished southern region of Italy. However, to the authorities, he was a cold-blooded murderer who had to be stopped.  Eventually apprehended, the Ministry of Justice relocated his trial 600 miles to the north, from Reggio di Calabria to Lucca, due to its belief that no jury in the south would convict him. The trial captured the attention of newspapers around the world. When Giuseppe Musolino passed away in 1956, half a century after his capture, TIME magazine aptly remarked: "Few adventurers, past or present, have become so legendary in so short a time." 

Dan Possumato is a retired US Army administrative officer and a former special investigator for the Department of State. Dan's grandfather, Giovanni Musolino, was a first cousin of Giuseppe Musolino. Dan currently lives in Maine with his wife, Ellen.

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21 January

Gennaro Contaldo – chef

TV cook is passionate about Amalfi’s speciality dishes

Celebrity chef Gennaro Contaldo was born on this day in 1949 in Minori in Campania.  Contaldo has made many appearances on British television alongside chefs such as the late Antonio Carluccio, Jamie Oliver and James Martin and he has also brought out several cook books.  It is well documented that he is the man responsible for inspiring Jamie Oliver’s interest in Italian food.  Contaldo grew up in the small seaside town of Minori near Amalfi and is a passionate advocate of the style of cooking in the area, cucina amalfitana.  From an early age he was interested in dishes cooked with local produce, going out to collect wild herbs for his mother, and he began helping out in local restaurants at the age of eight.  Contaldo moved to Britain in the late 1960s and travelled around the country working in village restaurants. Read more…

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Giuseppe Savoldi - footballer

The world’s first £1 million player

Giuseppe Savoldi, whose transfer from Bologna to Napoli in 1975 made him the first footballer in the world to be bought for £1 million, was born on this day in 1947 in Gorlago, a municipality a short distance from the city of Bergamo in Lombardy.  A prolific striker, Savoldi’s big-money deal came four years ahead of the much heralded £1 million transfer of another striker, Trevor Francis, from Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest, which made him the first player in Britain to move for a seven-figure sum.  Napoli, who saw Savoldi as the last component in what they hoped would be a title-winning team, paid 1.4 billion lire in cash, plus two players, Sergio Clerici and Romario Rampanti, to secure his signature. The two players were valued at 600 million lire in total, which valued Savoldi at 2 billion lire, the equivalent at the time of about £1.2 million. Read more…

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Antonio Janigro - conductor and cellist

Musician who found ‘accidental’ fame in Yugoslavia

The conductor and cellist Antonio Janigro, who spent more than two decades as an orchestra leader in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, was born on this day in 1918 in Milan.  An accomplished cello soloist in Italy, his adventure in Yugoslavia happened by accident, in a way.  He was on holiday there in 1939 when the Second World War began, leaving him stranded with no prospect of returning home.  Happily, Zagreb Conservatory offered Janigro a job as professor of cello and chamber music. This turned out to be a providential turn of fate and he was to remain in Yugoslavia for much of his life.  He founded the school of modern cello playing in Yugoslavia, formed the exemplary chamber orchestra I Solisti di Zagreb with Dragutin Hrdjok in 1954 and for 10 years led the Radio Zagreb symphony orchestra. Raised in a house on the Via Guido d’Arezzo in Milan, Janigro was born in a musical family. Read more…

Pietro Rava - World Cup winner

Defender was the last survivor from Azzurri of 1938

Pietro Rava, who was the last survivor of Italy's 1938 World Cup-winning football team when he died in December 2006, was born on this day in 1916 at Cassine in Piedmont.  A powerful defender who could play at full back or in a central position, Rava won 30 caps for the national team between 1935 and 1946, finishing on the losing side only once and being made captain in 1940.  He was also a member of the Italy team that won the gold medal in the football competition at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.  At club level, he spent most of his career with Juventus, forming a formidable defensive partnership with Alfredo Foni, alongside whom he also lined up in the national side.  Rava won a Championship medal in 1949-50, his final season at Juventus, although by then he had fallen out of favour with Jesse Carver, the Turin club's English coach, and made only six appearances, moving to Novara the following year.  Read more…

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Camillo Golgi – neuroscientist

Nobel prize winner whose name lives on in medical science

Camillo Golgi, who is recognised as the greatest neuroscientist and biologist of his time, died on this day in 1926 in Pavia.  He was well known for his research into the central nervous system and discovering a staining technique for studying tissue, sometimes called Golgi’s method, or Golgi’s staining.  In 1906, Golgi and a Spanish biologist, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system.  Golgi was born in 1843 in Corteno, a village in the province of Brescia in Lombardy. The village was later renamed Corteno Golgi in his honour.  In 1860 Golgi went to the University of Pavia to study medicine. After graduating in 1865 he worked in a hospital for the Italian army and as part of a team investigating a cholera epidemic in the area around Pavia. Read more…

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Book of the Day: Gennaro's Cucina: Hearty Money-Saving Meals from an Italian Kitchen, by Gennaro Contaldo

‘Cucina povera’ is the food that traditionally fed the poor of Italy yet remains the basis of most Italian dishes we love to eat today. It’s a simple philosophy – delicious, hearty meals using accessible and affordable ingredients.  Along with the majority of post-war Italian families, the young Gennaro Contaldo’s was raised on a diet harvested on a limited budget. Restricted choice of scarce ingredients meant they learnt the value of what they had, how to cook dishes lovingly and use imaginative methods of preservation to make simple dishes go far: including salting, drying and curing.  With tips and ideas of what to do with leftovers, Gennaro helps home cooks squeeze maximum use from the ‘cucina povera’ ethos, turning humble ingredients into nourishing feasts without sacrificing taste. From Sicilian chickpea fritters to lentil soups and bread salads – to more elaborate filled vegetables, delicious ‘poor-man’s’ ricotta dumplings and simple sweet biscotti, Gennaro's Cucina will transform the way you shop, cook and eat.

Gennaro Contaldo was born in Minori on the Amalfi coast, where he first started helping in local restaurant kitchens at the age of eight. He came to Britain in the late 1960s and spent his first years travelling around the country, working in local village restaurants and studying wild food. He then moved to London where he worked as a chef in a number of restaurants before opening the award-winning 'Passione'.

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20 January

Federico Fellini – film director

The cinematic legacy of Rimini’s most famous son

Federico Fellini, one of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th century, was born on this day in Rimini in 1920.  He had a career lasting almost 50 years and his films were nominated for 12 Academy Awards. He won four Oscars, each for Best Foreign Language Film, with La strada, Nights of Cabiria, 8½ and Amarcord.  Fellini initially went to Rome to study Law at university but ended up working as a journalist instead.  His assignments for a magazine gave him the opportunity to meet people involved in show business and he eventually got work as a script writer for films and radio.  Fellini worked as both a screenwriter and assistant director on Roberto Rossellini films as well as producing and directing for other filmmakers. He began work on his first solo film, The White Sheik, in 1951. It received mixed reviews but in 1953 his film, I vitelloni, pleased both the public and the critics.  Read more…

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Ennio Porrino - composer

Premature death robbed Italian music of great talent

The composer Ennio Porrino, best known for his symphonic poem, Sardegna, and his opera, I Shardana, was born on this day in 1910 in Cagliari.  Porrino was critically acclaimed, his operas earning comparisons with the great Giacomo Puccini, although to some his reputation has been tarnished by his association with Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime. He was only 49 when he died in Rome.  His 1941 opera, Gli Orazi, has been interpreted as a ‘hymn to fascism’ by some critics, while his piece, The March of the Volunteer, was used by Mussolini’s short-lived Italian Social Republic as its anthem.  Little is known of Porrino’s early years. It is thought that his family moved to Rome when he was a small child and most accounts of his life begin with his studies at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, which he attended from the age of 17. Read more…

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Franca Sozzani – magazine editor

Risk taker who turned Vogue Italia into a major voice

Franca Sozzani, the journalist who was editor-in-chief of the Italian edition of Vogue magazine for 28 years, was born on this day in 1950 in Mantua.  Under her stewardship, Vogue Italia was transformed from what she saw as little more than a characterless clothing catalogue for the Milan fashion giants to one of the edgiest publications the style shelves of the newsstands had ever seen.  Sozzani used high-end fashion and the catwalk stars to make bold and sometimes outrageous statements on the world issues she cared about, creating shockwaves through the industry but often selling so many copies that editions sometimes sold out even on second or third reprints.  It meant that advertisers who backed off in horror in the early days of her tenure clamoured to buy space again, particularly when the magazine began to attract a following even outside Italy.  Read more…

Marco Simoncelli - motorcycle world champion

Young rider whose career ended in tragedy

The motorcycle racer Marco Simoncelli, who is part of an illustrious roll call of Italian world champions headed by Giacomo Agostini and Valentino Rossi, was born on this day in 1987 in Cattolica on the Adriatic coast.  Simoncelli, who was European 125cc champion in 2002 in only his second year of senior competition, became 250cc world champion in 2008 when he won six races riding for Gilera.  He had dreams of emulating Rossi, winner of the 250cc world title in 1999, in going on to be a force in the premier MotoGP category, in which the latter has been world champion seven times, just one fewer than Agostini's record eight titles.  But after stepping up to MotoGP in 2010, Simoncelli suffered a fatal crash at the Malaysian Grand Prix in October the following year, killed at the age of just 24.  On only the second lap of the Sepang circuit, he lost control of his Honda at a corner.  Read more…

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Rafael Bombelli – mathematician

First person to explain algebra in simple language

Rafael Bombelli, the mathematician regarded as the inventor of complex numbers, was baptised and was also probably born on this day in 1526 near Bologna.  He wrote a book about algebra in simple language that could be understood by everyone, giving a comprehensive account of what was known about the subject at the time. The first three volumes, published in 1572, were the first European texts to explain how to perform computations with negative numbers.  Rafael Bombelli was the eldest son of Antonio Mazzoli, a wool merchant, who had changed his name to Bombelli to disassociate himself from the reputation of his family. His grandfather had taken part in a failed attempt to seize Bologna on behalf of the Bentivoglio family but had been caught and executed. Antonio Mazzoli was able to return to Bologna only after changing his name to Bombelli. Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Films of Federico Fellini (Cambridge Film Classics), by Peter Bondanella

The Films of Federico Fellini examines the career of one of Italy's most renowned filmmakers through close analysis of five masterpieces that span his career: La strada, La dolce vita, 8 1/2, Amarcord and Interview. Providing an overview of Fellini's early career as a cartoonist and scriptwriter for neorealist directors such as Roberto Rossellini, this study traces the development of Fellini's unique and personal cinematic vision as it transcends Italian neorealism. Rejecting an overtly ideological approach to Fellini's cinema, Bondanella emphasizes the director's interest in fantasy, the irrational and individualism.

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