Piergiorgio Welby - euthanasia campaigner

Muscular dystrophy sufferer who fought for right to die

Piergiorgio Welby was kept alive by an artificial breathing
mechanism for the last nine years of his life

The poet, painter and muscular dystrophy sufferer Piergiorgio Welby, whose wish to be given help to die after nine years being kept alive artificially sparked a huge legal, political and religious debate, was born on this day in 1945 in Rome.

Welby, the son of an AS Roma footballer with Scottish ancestry, developed MS when he was 17 years old.

Throughout the 1960s and 70s his lifestyle helped keep the disease under control. He lived as an artist and writer, following the hippie movement but also hunting and fishing. His use of recreational drugs dulled the symptoms of the disease and he was able to travel extensively in Europe.

During this period he met his future wife, Wilhelmine - later known as Mina - who was from Bolzano province in Trentino-Alto Adige but encountered Welby in Rome.

Welby decided in the 1980s to wean himself off drugs by embarking on methadone therapy, but the disease then progressed rapidly and he was soon paralysed from the waist down.  In 1997, he suffered severe respiratory problems and from that point onwards was dependent on a breathing tube.  As well as mechanical ventilation, he depended on artificial feeding.

It was at this point he began to write and talk - he had a voice synthesizer - about euthanasia and joined the Italian Radical Party, the political organisation closest to his views.  In time, though, he lost even the ability to control a computer mouse.

Euthanasia was and remains illegal in Italy, largely due to the strict opposition of the Catholic Church, and though a patient has a right to refuse treatment, a doctor is still required to make every attempt to keep the patient alive.

Up to 1,000 people attended Piergiorgio Welby's secular
funeral in Piazza Don Bosco in the Tuscolano district

In September 2006, Welby sparked the political debate that was eventually to bring matters to a head by dictating an open letter to the Italian president, Giorgio Napolitano, which was shown on national television and reported extensively in the national press.

“I love life, Mr. President,” Welby wrote. “Life is the woman who loves you, the wind through your hair, the sun on your face, an evening stroll with a friend.

“Life is also a woman who leaves you, a rainy day, a friend who deceives you. I am neither melancholic nor manic-depressive. I find the idea of dying horrible. But what is left to me is no longer a life.”

Napolitano expressed his sympathy with Welby’s plight and invited politicians to debate the issue.

There were heated exchanges in the Italian parliament and political TV shows, around the political, ethical, religious and medical aspects of the case.

The Radical Party founder Marco Pannella said he was willing to turn off Welby’s life-support equipment himself as an "act of civil disobedience".

The outspoken Radical Party founder Marco
Pannella was a supporter of Welby's cause

Most Catholic politicians stood by the official position of the Catholic Church. Health Minister Livia Turco said that a parliamentary debate should focus more on improving palliative care rather than on euthanasia.

Welby’s right to refuse treatment under the Italian constitution and the code of conduct of Italian doctors was confirmed by a court ruling, but the doctor’s obligation to try to revive a patient in distress remained in place.

Eventually, an anaesthetist, Mario Riccio contacted the Radical Party and said he was prepared to switch off Welby’s life support, seeing no legal impediments. On December 20 he visited him in hospital in the presence of his wife Mina and daughter Carla and some supporters, including Marco Pannella, administered sedation and disconnected all the devices keeping him alive. He was pronounced dead 40 minutes later, at 11.40pm.

Welby’s death was announced the following morning by Pannella and a press conference followed later.

Luca Volonté, a Christian Democrat, called for Riccio to be arrested and charged with murder and had strong support in public opinion polls, but the the following March both the Ethical Committee of the Italian Medical Association and investigating magistrates declared Dr Riccio’s conduct to be lawful.

Controversially, the Catholic Church refused to allow Welby a religious funeral, declaring that his repeated public affirmations of his desire to end his own life were against Catholic doctrine.

Nonetheless, up to 1,000 people attended a secular funeral on December 24, 2006 in Piazza Don Bosco in the Tuscolano quarter of Rome, in front of the church that the family had chosen for the religious ceremony.

The town of San Candido is close to the Austrian border

Travel tip:

Mina Welby’s home town of San Candido, also known as Innichen, is in northern Italy, close to the border with Austria. It’s part of the Tre Cime Natural Park, in the Dolomites. Among the main sights in the historical centre is the Romanesque-style Innichen Abbey, with a frescoed dome, and the DoloMythos Museum, exploring local natural history. The area has a strong military history, being home to the Druso and Cantatore barracks, the latter housing the 6th Alpine Regiment of the Italian Army.  A short distance outside San Candido is a sanctuary where the bodies of more than 200 soldiers killed in the First World War were buried.

The Aqua Marcia aqueduct passes through the Tuscolano
quarter of Rome, along with several others

Travel tip:

Tuscolano is the 8th quartiere of Rome and is named after the Via Tuscolana that runs through it. It is one of the biggest districts of Rome, starting just outside the old city walls, near the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, and stretches all the way to the Via del Quadraro in the east. Its northern border is the Via Casilina and its southern border is the Via Appia Nuova. The Via del Mandrione is lined by huge walls that supported five of the ancient Roman aqueducts - the Aqua Marcia, Aqua Tepula, Aqua Iulia, Aqua Claudia and the Anio Novus.


More reading:

Giorgio Napolitano - Italy's 11th President

Marco Pannella, the campaigner who helped shape modern Italy

Augusto Odone, inventor of 'Lorenzo's Oil'

Also on this day:

The Feast of Santo Stefano

1912: The birth of artist Renato Gattuso

1956: The birth of writer and journalist Beppe Severgnini


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Marco Mengoni - singer-songwriter

X-Factor victory was launchpad to stardom

Marco Mengoni won Italy's
The X-Factor in 2009

The singer-songwriter Marco Mengoni, who rose to fame after winning the Italian version of the TV talent show The X-Factor, was born on this day in 1988 in Ronciglione in northern Lazio.

Mengoni triumphed in the 2009 edition - the third series of X-Factor on the public service channel Rai Due before it was bought up by subscription channel Sky Italia - during which he unveiled what would be his debut single, Dove si vola, which he sang for the first time at the semi-final stage.

The single, an example of the sophisticated pop-rock style that would become Mengoni’s trademark,  reached number one in the Italian downloads chart while a seven-track extended play album of the same name sold 70,000 copies, peaking at nine in the Italian albums chart.

Mengoni’s performances on The X-Factor had received favourable comments from both Mina and Adriano Celentano, the all-time bestselling artists in Italian popular music history.

Marco Mengoni in a presentation video for his hit single
L'essenziale, his Sanremo winner and Eurovision entry

The prize for winning The X-Factor was a recording contract with a value of €300,000 and automatic selection for the 2010, Sanremo Music Festival 2010, in which he finished third with Credimi ancora. The single was included in Mengoni’s second EP, Re matto, which topped the Italian singles chart.

His first full-length solo album, Solo 2.0, went straight to number one in the Italian albums chart when it was released in September 2011.  Whereas he had previously sung mostly compositions written by others, the tracks on Solo 2.0 were almost all co-written by Mengoni.

After spending much of 2012 touring, Mengoni entered Sanremo again in 2013 and this time won, with L’essenziale, which he wrote in collaboration with Roberto Casalino and Francesco De Benedettis.

Mengoni at a press conference ahead of
his performance at the 2013 Eurovision

L’essenziale was the lead single from Mengoni's second studio album, #prontoacorrere, It debuted at number one on the FIMI Singles Chart and downloads exceeded 120,000. It was the top selling track of the year by an Italian artist.

The song was also selected as Italy’s entry for the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo, Sweden.  Mengoni finished seventh - well behind the winner, Denmark’s Emmelie de Forest (Only Teardrops) - but the song caught the imagine of viewers and gained him many new fans outside Italy.

Since then, Mengoni has released three more studio albums - Parole in circolo and Le cose che non ho in 2015 and, this autumn, Atlantico - plus a live album, Marco Mengoni Live, a 2016 double album that included five previously unreleased studio tracks.

Atlantico has been top of the Italian album chart for four weeks, giving Mengoni a Christmas number one.

Mengoni grew up in Ronciglione, which is about 60km (37 miles) north of Rome, near Lago di Vico. At the age of 14, while a design student at secondary school, he took singing lessons. He soon tasted the experience of singing before an audience after his teacher invited him to join a vocal quintet which performed in piano bars and clubs.

The cover of Mengoni's Le cose che no ho,
his third studio album

He embarked on a solo singing career at 16, assembling a group of backing musicians to perform in small clubs, mixing covers with his own songs. At 19 he moved to Rome to study languages at university. His big break in The X-Factor came a year later.

Among Mengoni’s other achievements, he was the first Italian artist to win Best European Act at the MTV Europe Music Awards - in 2010 and 2015 - and the first Italian artist to perform at the Billboard Film & TV Music Conference in Los Angeles, in 2013.

Today, Mengoni lives in Milan.  In 2019, he embarks on a 16-date European tour, between April and May, beginning with shows in Germany, Switzerland and France, following by 12 appearances in Italy.  On May 25 and 26 he is scheduled to perform at the Arena di Verona, the Roman amphitheatre that has become one of Italy’s most prestigious concert venues.

The quaint medieval area of Ronciglione,
Mengoni's home town in Lazio

Travel tip:

Ronciglione, known locally as Ronció, is a town about 20km (12 miles ) from Viterbo located in the Cimini mountains, on the southeast slope of the former volcano crater now housing Lake Vico.  The main sights include a well-preserved medieval centre, a castle originally built in the middle ages, with characteristic angle rounded towers, and a Baroque cathedral designed by Pietro da Cortona, rebuilt by Carlo Rainaldi between 1671 and 1695. The bell tower is from 1734. The cathedral houses a Tryptych of Christ by the Viterbese painter Gabriele di Francesco.  Ronciglione is known for its carnival and the Palio of the Manna, which features riderless horses competing for each of nine contrade (parishes).

The Arena di Verona is now a major venue for both
opera performances and music concerts

Travel tip:

The Arena di Verona in Piazza Bra is a wonderful surviving example of a first-century Roman amphitheatre, which has now become a famous location for large-scale, outdoor productions of opera each summer.  The arena was built in in AD 30 on a site which was then beyond the city walls. It could host more than 30,000 spectators in ancient times, double the capacity permitted today. It was thanks to the enthusiasm of the tenor Giovanni Zenatello and the impresario Ottone Rovato in the early part of the 20th century that operatic performances became the arena’s staple. They put on a staging of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida in August 1913, to mark the birth of Verdi 100 years before in 1813. Musical luminaries such as Puccini and Mascagni were in attendance and since then summer seasons of opera have been mounted continually at the arena, apart from during the war years.


More reading:

Why Adriano Celentano is Italy's all-time biggest-selling star

Mina - the Italian icon who defied convention

The enduring talent of Eros Ramazzotti

Also on this day:

Natale - Christmas Day

800: Charlemagne crowned Holy Roman Emperor

1874: The birth of soprano Lina Cavalieri


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Domenico Sarro – composer

Court choirmaster wrote several important operas

Domenico Sarro, as depicted
by Nicolò Maria Rossi

Opera composer Domenico Sarro was born on this day in 1679 in Trani, a seaport north of Bari in Apulia.

He was given the middle name, Natale, which is the Italian word for Christmas.

Sarro is famous for being the composer of Achille in Sciro, the opera chosen for the opening night of the new Teatro San Carlo in Naples in 1737.

He studied music from the age of six at Sant’Onofrio, a church near Porta Capuana, one of the ancient city gates of Naples, which at the time was the location of the city’s music conservatory. His first opera, L’opera d’amore, was performed in Naples in 1702.

He was appointed assistant choirmaster to the Neapolitan court in 1702 and by 1706 was having his religious music performed in churches in Naples. He wrote several of what were then referred to as three-act musical dramas, which were performed in theatres and private palaces throughout the city.

Sarro’s opera, Didone abbandonata, was premiered on February 1, 1724 at the Teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples. It was the first setting of a major libretto by the writer Pietro Metastasio, who would become the most celebrated librettist of the 18th century. The intermezzo, Dorina e Nibbio or L’impresario delle canarie, has been performed extensively by orchestras since then, right up to the present day. It has also been imitated by composers such as Tomaso Albinoni, Francesco Gasparini, Leonardo Leo and Martini il Tedesco.

The title page of Sarro's opera
Didone Abbandonata

Sarro’s 1726 opera, Valdemaro, is considered important because it demonstrates Sarro’s interest in the upper voice, as in this opera the melodic lines are dominant in the upper voices.

Sarro, sometimes called Sarri, also wrote many vocal cantatas, which have been admired by music experts for their charm and inventiveness.

The only known portrait of Domenico Sarro is part of a painting called The Viceroy at the Festa of the Quattro Altari by Nicolò Maria Rossi. Sarro is one of the many composers depicted by the artist as part of the Neapolitan Court.

Domenico Sarro died in Naples in 1744, aged 65.

Trani's 12th century duomo - the Cattedrale di San Nicola
Pellegrino - stands on a platform on the sea

Travel tip:

The port of Trani, where Domenico Sarro was born, is about 40km (25 miles) to the northwest of Bari. It was a flourishing port as early as the 11th century because of its location on the Adriatic Sea. In 1063 Trani issued a maritime law code, believed now to be the oldest in western Europe. Trani has lost its old walls and bastions but still has a 13th century fort,  which has been restored as a museum and performance venue. The 12th century Cathedral on a raised site over the sea is dedicated to St Nicholas the pilgrim, a Greek who died there in 1094 while on the way to Rome.

Search tripadvisor for a hotel in Trani

The church of San Pietro a Majella, looking
along Via dei Tribunali

Travel tip:

Sarro studied at the Music Conservatory when it was in Sant’Onofrio in Naples. Today, the Music Conservatory is in the complex of San Pietro a Majella, close to Via dei Tribunali, one of the main thoroughfares in the heart of the centro storico in Naples. It is the last of a string of establishments that were once music conservatories in Naples, dating back to when the Spanish ruled the city in the 16th century. One of the earliest, I Poveri di Gesù Cristo, was founded in 1589 by Marcello Fossataro, a Franciscan monk. It was next to the Church of Santa Maria a Colonna on Via dei Tribunale, but in 1743 it was converted into a church seminary.

More reading:

Tomaso Albinoni, the Venetian most famous for his haunting Adagio in G Minor

How Pietro Metastasio progressed from street entertainer to great librettist

Francesco Gasparini, the musical director who gave Vivaldi a job

Also on this day:

Vigilia di Natale - Christmas Eve

1836: The birth of food canning pioneer Francesco Cirio

1897: The birth of Lazzaro Ponticelli, the longest surviving veteran of World War One


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Carla Bruni - former First Lady of France

Ex-model and singer who married Nicolas Sarkozy

Carla Bruni had been one of the
world's leading models

Carla Bruni, the model and singer who became the wife of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, was born on this day in 1967 in Turin.

She and Sarkozy were married in February 2008, just three months after they met at a dinner party. Sarkozy, who was in office from May 2007 until May 2012, had recently divorced his second wife.

Previously, Bruni had spent 10 years as a model, treading the catwalk for some of the biggest designers and fashion houses in Europe and establishing herself as one of the top 20 earners in the modelling world.

After retiring from the modelling world, she enjoyed considerable success as a songwriter and then a singer. Music remains a passion, her most recent album released only last year. To date, her record sales stand at more than five million.

Born Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi, she is legally the daughter of Italian concert pianist Marisa Borini and industrialist and classical composer Alberto Bruni Tedeschi. 

Carla Bruni met Nicolas Sarkozy just
three months before they were married

However, she revealed in a magazine interview soon after she and Sarkozy were married at the presidential residence the Élysée Palace in Paris, that her her biological father is the Italian-born Brazilian businessman Maurizio Remmert, who was a classical guitarist when he met Marisa Borini at a concert in Turin. They embarked on an affair that lasted six years.

Even without her two successful careers, Bruni would have been a wealthy woman. Through her legal father, she is heiress to the fortune created by the Italian cable manufacturing company CEAT, founded in the 1920s by his father, Virginio Bruni Tedeschi, which subsequently moved into tyre production and is now based in India.

Carla Bruni has lived in France from the age of seven, the family having left Italy in 1975 over fears they would be a target for kidnap by the Red Brigades, the left-wing terrorist group who kidnapped many wealthy or politically important individuals in the 1970s and 80s.

She was educated initially at a boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland, before returning to Paris to study art and architecture at the Sorbonne, although in the event she left school at the age of 19 to become a model.

Bruni signed with a prestigious agency in 1987, and after being selected for an advertising campaign for jeans manufactured by the American company Guess?, soon began to attract attention.

Sarkozy had been married twice
before he met Carla Bruni

Over the next few years she worked for designers and fashion houses including Christian Dior, Givenchy, Paco Rabanne, Yves Saint-Laurent, Chanel and Versace.

At her peak, with her image appearing on billboards and magazine covers constantly, she was earning up to $7.5 million (€5.44 million) a year, which put her among the 20 highest-paid fashion models in the world.

Bruni enjoyed a jet-set lifestyle and dated some of the world's most famous men, including veteran rockers Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton.

The love of music instilled in her as a child never left her, however, and in 1997, at the age of 30, she retired from modelling to focus on her music. She had always played the guitar and started singing lessons. She sent her lyrics to the French singer Julien Clerc in 1999, which he used as the basis for six tracks on his 2000 album Si j'étais elle.

Her own first album, Quelqu'un m'a dit (Someone Told Me) was released in 2003 and was a surprise hit, selling more than a million copies.  It spent 34 weeks in the top 10 of the French albums chart.  Several songs featured in movies or television commercials.

The cover of Carla Bruni's latest album

She has since released four more albums and written songs for other artists, including the rock guitarist Louis Bertignac.  In her second album, No Promises, she set to music poems by William Butler Yeats, Emily Dickinson, W. H. Auden and Dorothy Parker among others.

Although Sarkozy represents the centre-right Republican party, Bruni’s own political leanings were to the left before they were married, although her status as First Lady gave her no powers and generally she has was careful to avoid being drawn into political debate.

She has used her profile to support a number of charities, particularly those concerned with protecting mothers and children and fighting HIV. In 2009, launched the Fondation Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, to promote access to culture and knowledge.

Bruni has been more outspoken on matters related to her charitable work. She has been critical of the Catholic Church for continuing to oppose the use of condoms - a proven way of limiting the spread of AIDS - even though the church spends millions of dollars on caring for HIV/AIDS patients.

She and Sarkozy are the parents of a girl, Giulia, who was born in 2011. Bruni has a son, Aurélien, from a previous relationship with philosophy professor Raphaël Enthoven.

The castle at Moncalieri used to be the home of Italy's
King Victor Emmanuel II in the late 19th century

Travel tip:

Bruni’s father, Alberto Bruni Tedeschi, came from Moncalieri, a town of almost 58,000 inhabitants about 8km (5 miles) south of the centre of Turin and part of the greater metropolitan area. It is notable for a 12th century castle, enlarged in the 15th century, which was for a time a favoured residence of Maria Clotilde and King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy and now is listed among the World Heritage Site Residences of the Royal House of Savoy.  Since 1919 it has housed a school for training carabinieri officers.

Turin's colossal Mole Antonelliana is a
familiar landmark on the city's skyline

Travel tip:

The city of Turin, the traditional seat of the Savoy dynasty, is an elegant city with several royal palaces, a 15th-century cathedral that houses the Shroud of Turin and a city centre with 12 miles of arcaded streets, dotted with historic cafés an fine restaurants, many to be found around the Via Po, Turin’s famous promenade linking Piazza Vittorio Veneto with Piazza Castello, or nearby Piazza San Carlo, one of the city’s main squares. In the 19th century, the city’s cafès were popular with writers, artists, philosophers, musicians and politicians. One of the city’s major landmarks is the Mole Antonelliana, at 167.5 m (550 ft) the tallest unreinforced brick building in the world.  Originally built as a synagogue, the building is now home to a film industry museum, the Museo Nazionale del Cinema. Mole is an Italian word for a building of monumental proportions.



More reading:

The meteoric rise of Gianni Versace

Santo Versace - the business brain behind the empire

The Red Brigades and the kidnapping of Aldo Moro

Also on this day:

1896: The birth of writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

1916: The birth of film director Dino Risi

1956: The birth of racing driver Michele Alboreto


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Giovanni Bottesini - double bass virtuoso

Musician was also a composer and conductor

Giovanni Bottesini took up the double
bass so he could attend Milan Conservatory

The composer, conductor and double bassist Giovanni Bottesini was born on this day in 1821 in Crema, now a city in Lombardy although then part of the Austrian Empire.

He became such a brilliant and innovative performer on his chosen instrument that he became known as “the Paganini of the double bass” - a reference to the great violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini, whose career was ending just as his was beginning.

Bottesini was one of the first bassists to adopt the French-style bow grip, previously used solely by violinists, violists and cellists.

He was also a respected conductor, often called upon to direct performances at the leading theatres in Europe and elsewhere, and a prolific composer, particularly in the last couple of decades of his life.

A close friend of Giuseppe Verdi, he wrote a dozen operas himself, music for chamber and full orchestras, and a considerable catalogue of pieces for double bass, for accompaniment by piano or full orchestra, or duets.

When conducting opera, Bottesini would often bring his double bass on stage to play fantasies based on the evening's opera, of his own composition, during the intermission. His fantasies on Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Vincenzo Bellini’s I puritani and Beatrice di Tenda are outstanding pieces still played today by accomplished bassists.

Bottesini with the Testore bass that
served him well through his career

It was almost by accident that the double bass became Bottesini’s speciality.  Taught the basics of music by his father, Pietro, a clarinetist who played at Crema’s Teatro Sociale and the cathedral chapel, he began training for the violin from the age of five, working with a priest, Carlo Cogliati.

During his childhood, Giovanni is thought  to have played the kettle-drums in the orchestra of the Teatro Sociale as well as in theatre orchestras in Bergamo and Brescia. He also sang as boy soprano in the cathedral choir in Parma.

His father was keen for him to study at the Milan Conservatory, but the family were not wealthy and the only possibility of a place was to be granted a scholarship. As it happens, the only two positions available were for double bass and bassoon. Choosing the former, he had to learn to play the double bass to a respectable standard within days, yet did so and after an audition was granted a place.

In fact, he became so good so rapidly that only four years after starting his studies - much faster than with most students - Bottesini won a prize of 300 francs for solo playing. It was enough for him to buy an instrument made by the 18th century luthier Carlo Antonio Testore, and to launch his career.

He travelled abroad, spending time in the United States and in Cuba - then still part of Spain’s empire in South America - where he was the principal double-bass in the Italian opera at Havana, of which he later became director. His first opera, Cristoforo Colombo, was produced there in 1847.

Giuseppe Verdi recommended Bottesini
as director of Parma Conservatory

In 1849 he travelled for the first time to England, where he would become a frequent visitor.

As a conductor, Bottesini worked at the Théâtre des Italiens in Paris from 1855 to 1857. Between 1861 and 1862 he conducted in Palermo, and in 1863 went to Barcelona. In 1871 he conducted a season of Italian opera at the Lyceum theatre in London and he was chosen by Verdi to conduct the first performance of Aida, which took place in Cairo on December 27, 1871.

Bottesini's bass, which was noted for the purity of the sound he was able to produce with it, was built by Testore in 1716. The instrument was owned previously by several unknown bass players before Bottesini paid 900 lire for it in 1838. It is now owned by a private collector in Japan.

In 1888, Bottesini was appointed director of Parma Conservatory on Verdi's recommendation. The following year, he died in Parma at the age of 67.

The Duomo at Crema, a short distance from
the street in which Bottesini grew up

Travel tip:

Crema, a small city that sits on the banks of the Serio river about 50km (31 miles) east of Milan, has an attractive historic centre built around the Piazza del Duomo.  Apart from the cathedral itself, built in Lombard Gothic style in the 14th century with a tall bell tower completed in 1604, the Palazzo Pretorio and the Palazzo Comunale can also be found off the square. The Teatro Sociale, the only surviving part of which stands in Piazza Guglielmo Marconi, a short distance from the Duomo, was destroyed in a fire in 1937. Bottesini grew up in a house in Via Carrera, within a short walk of both the theatre and the cathedral. The city’s other attractions include the circular 16th century Basilica of Santa Maria della Croce.

The Conservatorio Arrigo Boito in
Parma, where Bottesini was director

Travel tip:

Parma, where Bottesini spent his last months, is an historic city in the Emilia-Romagna region, famous for its Prosciutto di Parma ham and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, the true ‘parmesan’. In 1545 the city was given as a duchy to the illegitimate son of Pope Paul III, whose descendants ruled Parma till 1731. The composer, Verdi, was born near Parma at Bussetto and the city has a prestigious opera house, the Teatro Regio. The Conservatory, named in honour of Arrigo Boito, who wrote the libretti for many of Verdi’s operas, is on Strada Conservatorio.

Search TripAdvisor for hotels in Parma

More reading:

The Venetian who became the best double bass player in Europe

The jealous streak of composer Giovanni Paisello

The short but brilliant career of Vincenzo Bellini

Also on this day:

1858: The birth of the brilliant composer Giacomo Puccini

1908: The birth of sculptor Giacomo Manzù

1963: The birth of footballer Giuseppe Bergomi


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Moira Orfei - circus owner and actress

‘Queen of the Big Top’ became cultural icon

Moira Orfei rarely strayed from her trademark look, with
heavy make-up and a turban-style hairdo 

Moira Orfei, an entertainer regarded as the Queen of the Italian circus and an actress who starred in more than 40 films, was born on this day in 1931 in Codroipo, a town in Friuli-Venezia Giulia about 25km (16 miles) southwest of Udine.

She had a trademark look that became so recognisable that advertising posters for the Moira Orfei Circus, which she founded in 1961 with her new husband, the circus acrobat and animal trainer Walter Nones, carried simply her face and the name 'Moira'.

As a young woman, she was a strikingly glamorous Hollywood-style beauty but in later years she took to wearing heavy make-up, dark eye-liner and bright lipstick, topped off with her bouffant hair gathered up in a way that resembled a turban.  Her camped-up appearance made her an unlikely icon for Italy’s gay community.

Born Miranda Orfei, she spent her whole life in the circus. Her father, Riccardo, was a bareback horse rider and sometime clown; her mother, part of the Arata circus dynasty, gave birth to her in the family’s living trailer.  Growing up, she performed as a horse rider, acrobat and trapeze artist.

Posters for Circo Moira Orfei always
featured her face and first name

Her film career began the year before she was married, with minor roles in a couple of action movies based loosely on historical themes. Dino De Laurentiis, the producer of one of them, suggested she changed her name from Miranda to Moira, after which the director Mario Costa gave her a bigger part in a swashbuckling adventure movie, Queen of the Pirates.

The so-called sword-and-sandal genre, very popular in Italy at the time, remained her speciality until she was given parts in a couple of comedies written for the great Italian comic actor, Totò.

Thereafter, although the adventure epic remained her staple, her acting talent was recognised in several movies that fell into the commedia all’Italiana genre.

She was in a cast headed by Marcello Mastroianni and Virna Lisi in Mario Monicelli’s Casanova ‘70 (in which her cousin, Liana Orfei, appeared as a lion tamer), played alongside Virna Lisi again in Pietro Germi’s Signore e Signori, with Nino Manfredi and Ugo Tognazzi in Dino Risi’s Straziami ma di baci saziami (Torture Me But Kill Me with Kisses), and with Vittorio Gassman in the Dino Risi classic Profumo di donna (Scent of a Woman).

Meanwhile, Circo Moira Orfei went from strength to strength. With Nones presenting obedient lions or tigers, she presented the circus’s performing elephants.

As a young actress, Orfei was a star of
many sword-and-sandal adventure movies

Her animal acts gained silver and gold awards at the International Circus Festival of Monte Carlo in 1987, 1989 and 2004 and she became known in the circus world as Moira of the Elephants.

In 1969, she and Nones launched Circo sul Ghiaccio - Circus on Ice - a monumental production which combined a circus ring and a skating rink. A highly elaborate show featured frequent set and costume changes and an international cast of circus and stars.

Circus on Ice toured in a huge big top, the largest seen in Italy. Moving from place to place involved 10 tractors, 34 articulated buses, two special trains and more than 100 caravans.

Orfei retired from performing in the late 1990s, although she continued to supervise every detail of the business.  She suffered some setbacks, including a serious car crash in 2000 that left her with a broken leg and five broken ribs, and a stroke in 2006, which happened during a show in Reggio Calabria and required her to take more than a year off in recuperation.

Subsequently, her active participation in shows was limited, although she would usually parade round the ring at the start, welcoming the audience. Her son and daughter, Stefano and Lara, followed in the family tradition and became part of the show, he becoming one of Europe's foremost animal trainers, she a talented equestrian.

Moira Orfei died in Brescia in 2015 a month ahead of what would have been her 84th birthday, passing away in her sleep in her trailer, having continued to follow the itinerant life of the circus to the end. Her funeral was held in San Donà di Piave - 40km (25 miles) from Venice and about 60km (37 miles) southwest of Codroipo.

A crowd put at around 5,000 watched the funeral cortege, with a hearse drawn by four white Lipizzaners - the breed closely associated with the Spanish Riding School of Vienna - carrying her coffin to the tune of a marching band playing circus music.

The Villa Manin in Codroipo, once home of Ludovico
Manin, the last Doge of the Venetian Republic

Travel tip:

Codroipo, which used to be part of the Venetian Republic, is best known for the Villa Manin, once the family home of Ludovico Manin, the last Doge of the Venitian Republic, who governed from 1789 until 1797, when Napoleon Bonaparte forced him to abdicate. It was at the villa in 1797 that the Treaty of Campoformio was signed, marking Napoleon's victory, the fall of the First Coalition (of European states opposed to Napoleon), and the cession of Friuli to Austria.

A typically elegant street in the town of San Donà di Piave

Travel tip:

Elegant San Donà di Piave is one of the historical main towns of the eastern Veneto, although it needed substantial reconstruction in the early 1920s after being heavily damaged during the First World War, when the drawn out Battle of Solstizio took place on the banks of the Piave river. The municipality of San Donà had been established in 1797 as the administrative centre of one of the 15 cantons of the Treviso district. It was part of the Lombard-Venetian Kingdom from 1815 and during the Austrian domination it kept its position of county seat of the district. In the first part of the 19th century, the centre of the city underwent some development, with the building of palaces, commercial buildings and a new cathedral, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Find a hotel in San Donà di Piave with TripAdvisor

More reading:

How Dino Risi helped launch the career of Sophia Loren

Why Mario Monicelli was one of the greats of Italian film

The former pasta salesman who helped put Italian cinema on the map

Also on this day:

69AD: Vespasian becomes emperor of Rome

1401: The birth of Renaissance artist Masaccio

1872: The birth of priest and composer Lorenzo Perosi


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San Leonardo da Porto Maurizio

Franciscan monk canonized in 1867

Leonardo survived a life-threatening
illness to devote his life to preaching

San Leonardo da Porto Maurizio, whose feast day is celebrated on November 27 each year, was born Paolo Gerolamo Casanova on this day in 1676 in Porto Maurizio, which is now part of the port city of Imperia in Liguria.

Leonardo recovered from a serious illness developed soon after he became a priest and devoted the remaining 43 years of his life to preaching retreats and parish missions throughout Italy.

He was one of the main propagators of the Catholic rite of Via Crucis - the Way of the Cross - and established Stations of the Cross - reconstructions in paintings or sculpture of Christ’s journey to the cross - at more than 500 locations. He also set up numerous ritiri - houses of recollection.

Leonardo was a charismatic preacher who found favour with Popes Clement XII and Benedict XIV, who helped him spread his missions, which began in Tuscany, into central and southern Italy, inspiring religious fervour among the population.

The son of a ship’s captain from Porto Maurizio, the young Paolo was sent to Rome at the age of 13 to live with a wealthy uncle and study at the Jesuit Roman College.

He studied the humanities, rhetoric and philosophy at the Gregorian University and intended to follow a career in medicine. However, while studying he met some Observant Franciscans who lived at the Convent of San Bonaventura al Palatino - known also as the Riformella - and decided to join them.

Leonardo was a charismatic personality whose preaching
persuaded many Italians to devote their lives to faith

His uncle was not happy, but his father approved and, at 21, Paolo entered the novitiate at Ponticelli Sabino in the Sabine Hills, north of Rome, taking the name of Fra Leonardo - Brother Leonard.

Leonardo completed his studies at San Bonaventura and, after his ordination, he remained there as a professor. It was at that stage that he fell ill, with what has been described as a bleeding ulcer. He was sent back to his home town on the basis that the Ligurian climate might give him a better chance of recovery. Eventually, after being cared for at a monastery of the Franciscan Observants, he was restored to health, although it took four years.

He began to preach in Porto Maurizio and the vicinity before being sent to the monastery of San Miniato near Florence, called Monte alle Croci, shortly after Cosimo III de' Medici had handed it over to the members of the Riformella.

His missions to the people in Tuscany produced startling results, with a large number of conversions, and it was as a means of keeping alive the religious fervour he had awakened that he promoted the Stations of the Cross.

The Convent of San Bonaventura al Palatino, where Leonardo
died, had been a constant in his life

In 1710 he founded the Convento dell’Icontro - the first of his ritiri - on a peak in the mountains about 7km (4 miles) outside Florence, where he and his assistants could retire from time to time after missions, and devote themselves to spiritual renewal.

By 1720, he was taking his celebrated missions into Central and Southern Italy, after which Clement XII and later Benedict XIV asked him to work in Rome.

Benedict XIV, in fact, gave him several difficult diplomatic assignments, in volatile Genoa and Corsica - then part of the Republic of Genoa - Lucca and Spoleto. In all cases, citizens expecting a rich cardinal as the papal emissary were taken aback that a humble, shoeless friar should be the man sent to help resolve their differences.

Leonardo was also at times employed as spiritual director by Maria Clementina Sobieska of Poland, the wife of James Stuart, the Old Pretender.

Amid rumours of his failing health, in November 1751 Benedict XIV recalled Leonardo from Bologna, where he was preaching, to return to Rome. He arrived at the monastery of San Bonaventura al Palatino on the evening of November 26 and died a few hours later.

His remains lie under the high altar there. Pope Pius VI beatified him in 1796 and Pope Pius IX canonised him in 1867. Nowadays, he is the patron saint of those who preach parish missions.

In 1873, one of the first Catholic churches in the United States to be built by Italian immigrants, in Boston, Massachusetts, was named in his honour.

Mist filling the valleys around Collevecchio, one of many
beautiful towns in the Sabine Hills in Lazio

Travel tip:

The Sabine Hills around the city of Rieti, about 80km (50 miles) north of Rome, remains generally an unspoiled rural area, with characteristic rolling hills covered by olive groves and fruit orchards and dotted with medieval hilltop villages and castles.  Among the most beautiful of those medieval villages, all of which have impressive defensive walls, ornately decorated renaissance palaces and churches and picturesque piazzas are Toffia, Fara Sabina, Farfa, Bocchignano and Montopoli.  The area is famous for its extra virgin olive oil, the first in Italy to receive the DOP denomination (Protected Designation of Origin).

The shoreline of Porto Maurizio in Liguria, where Leonardo
was born Paolo Casanova in 1676

Travel tip:

Porto Maurizio, where San Leonardo was born, lost its identity somewhat in 1923 when Mussolini created the city of Imperia by combining Porto Maurizio and Oneglia, towns on the Riviera Poniente separated by the Impero river, with several surrounding villages.  Imperia’s economy is mainly based on tourism and the food industry, as a producer of olive oil and pasta. Porto Maurizio was originally a Roman settlement, Portus Maurici. Napoleon Bonaparte stopped for a night in Porto Maurizio during the Napoleonic Wars.  The town has a classical cathedral, dedicated to San Maurizio, which was built by Gaetano Cantoni and completed in the early 19th century. The Convent of Santa Chiara was first established in 1365.


More reading:

Pope Clement XII and the competition that resulted in the Trevi Fountain

Bendict XIV - the intellectual pope

Luigi Guido Grandi - monk and mathematician

Also on this day:

1856: The death of Sicilian patriot Francesco Bentivegna

1947: The birth of singer Gigliola Cinquetti

1948: The birth of Giuliana Sgrena, war reporter


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