Salvador Luria – microbiologist

Award winning scientist who advanced medical research

Salvador Luria, pictured at his desk at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology at around the time of his Nobel Prize

Nobel prize winner Salvador Luria was born on this day as Salvatore Edoardo Luria in 1912 in Turin.

The microbiologist became famous for showing that bacterial resistance to viruses is genetically inherited and he was awarded a Nobel prize in 1969.

He studied in the medical school of the University of Turin and from 1936 to 1937 Luria served in the Italian army as a medical officer. He took classes in radiology at the University of Rome and began to formulate methods of testing genetic theory.

When Mussolini’s regime banned Jews from academic research fellowships, Luria moved to Paris but was forced to move again when the Nazis invaded France in 1940. Fearing for his life, he fled the capital on a bicycle, eventually reaching Marseille, where he received an immigration visa to the United States.

In America he met other scientists with whom he collaborated on experiments.  In 1943 Luria carried out an experiment with the scientist Max Delbruck that demonstrated that mutant bacteria can still bestow viral resistance without the virus being present.

Luria pictured with his American wife, Zella, at Cold
Spring Harbour, on the north shore of Long Island

He became chair of Microbiology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received a number of awards and recognitions in addition to the Nobel prize.

Throughout his career, Luria was an outspoken political advocate. He protested against nuclear weapon testing, was an opponent of the Vietnam War and a supporter of organized labour.

Luria, an American citizen since 1947, died in Lexington, Massachusetts after a heart attack in 1991.

Travel tip:

Turin, the birth place of Luria, is the capital city of the region of Piedmont in the north of Italy. It is an important business centre, particularly for the car industry, and has a rich history linked with the Savoy Kings of Italy. Piazza Castello, with the royal palace, royal library and Palazzo Madama, which used to house the Italian senate, is at the heart of royal Turin.

The imposing main entrance to the Sapienza University
of Rome, built in the neoclassical style popular in the 1930s

Travel tip:

The University of Rome, where Luria studied, was founded in 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII.  Now known as the Sapienza University of Rome, it is one of the largest in Europe. The main campus, which was designed by Marcello Piacentini, is near Rome’s Termini railway station.

More reading:

Ernesto Teodoro Moneta - soldier who became a Nobel Peace Prize winner 

Dario Fo - critic of corruption who won Nobel Prize for Literature



(Photo of Rome University by Gongora CC BY-SA 4.0)

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Giovanni Gabrieli – composer

Venetian musician inspired spread of the Baroque style

The tomb of Giovanni Gabrieli in the Church of
Santo Stefano in the San Marco district of Venice

Giovanni Gabrieli, composer and organist, died on this day in 1612 in Venice.

He had been a major influence behind the transition from Renaissance music to the Baroque style in Europe.

Born in Venice between 1554 and 1557, Giovanni grew up studying with his uncle, the composer Andrea Gabrieli, for whom he always had great respect.

He also went to Munich to study with the musicians at the court of Duke Albert V, which had a lasting influence on his composing style.

After his return to Venice he became principal organist at St Mark’s Basilica in 1585. Following the death of his uncle, he took the post of principal composer at St Mark’s as well and spent a lot of time editing his uncle’s music for publication, which would otherwise have been lost.

Listen to Gabrieli's Canzon XVI for 12 parts

He took the additional post of organist at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, which was second only to St Mark’s in prestige at the time.

The English writer Thomas Coryat wrote about musical performances there in his travel memoirs.

The Scuola Grande di San Rocco (left) adjoins the
Church of San Rocco in Venice in the San Polo district

Composers from all over Europe came to Venice to study after the publication of Giovanni’s Sacred Symphonies (Sacrae Symphoniae) in 1597.

Using the acoustics of St Mark’s to full advantage, he wrote music for separated choirs, but specified which instruments were to be used and which choirs were to use soloists as well as full choir, in order to distinguish between the musical style of each. This was a new approach to orchestration.

Giovanni made his pupils study Madrigals as well as the Venetian style of music and they took back the early Baroque style to their own countries, which profoundly affected the course of music history.

In Germany, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach was founded on the early Baroque tradition, which had its roots in Venice.

Giovanni Gabrieli died as a result of complications with a kidney stone in 1612 and he is buried in the Church of Santo Stefano in Campo Santo Stefano in Venice.

Easy to see why the Basilica of St Mark is sometimes
known as the Chiesa d'Oro - the Church of Gold

Travel tip:

St Mark’s Basilica is the Cathedral Church of Venice and one of the best examples of Italo-Byzantine architecture in existence. Because of its opulent design and gold ground mosaics it became a symbol of Venetian wealth and power and has been nicknamed Chiesa d’Oro (Church of Gold). The spacious interior with its multiple choir lofts inspired the development of the Venetian polychoral style used by the Gabrielis, uncle and nephew, and Claudio Monteverdi.

Travel tip:

The Scuola Grande di San Rocco was established in 1478 by a group of wealthy Venetians next to the Church of San Rocco as a charitable institution to give money to the sick and needy and their families. Tintoretto decorated the walls and ceilings of the Scuola with a remarkable cycle of paintings in 1564. The Scuola is a few minutes walk from the San Tomà vaporetto stop on the Grand Canal.

(Photo of the tomb by Giovanni Dall'Orto)
(Photo of Scuola di San Rocco by MarkusMark  CC BY-SA)

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Pope Alexander VI

Scheming pontiff married off his children to secure power

Pope Alexander VI: a portrait by Cristofano
 dell' Altissimo, property of the Uffizzi Gallery

Rodrigo Borgia became one of the most controversial popes in history when he took the title of Alexander VI on this day in 1492 in Rome.

He is known to have fathered several illegitimate children with his mistresses and his reign became notorious for corruption and nepotism.

Born in Valencia in Spain, Borgia came to Italy to study law at the University of Bologna. He was ordained a Deacon and then made Cardinal-Deacon after the election of his uncle as Pope Callixtus III. He was then ordained to the priesthood and made Cardinal-Bishop of Albano.

By the time he had served five popes he had acquired considerable influence and wealth and it was rumoured that he was able to buy the largest number of votes to secure the papacy for himself.

He had made himself the first archbishop of Valencia and when he was elected as Pope Alexander VI, following the death of Innocent VIII, his son, Cesare Borgia, inherited the post.

Borgia had many mistresses, but during his long relationship with Vanozza dei Cattanei he had four children that he acknowledged as his own, Cesare, Giovanni, Lucrezia and Goffredo. He had several other children with different mothers.

Altobello Melone's portrait of Cesare Borgia, which
 can be found in Bergamo's Accademia Carrara

He made many military alliances to secure his position and married his children off to the offspring of important families to strengthen his power base.

Lucrezia is known to have had three marriages arranged by her father but rumours that she was involved in poisoning men who had become Borgia’s enemies have never been substantiated.

When France and Spain were at war, Borgia offered to help the French on condition that Sicily was given to his son, Cesare. Then he offered to help Spain in exchange for Siena, Pisa and Bologna.

Cesare brought the north of Italy under control, conquering the duchies of Romagna, Umbria and Emilia, earning the admiration of Niccolò Machiavelli, who used Cesare as a model for his classic work on politics, The Prince.

As a patron of the arts, Borgia had Castel Sant’Angelo strengthened and restored and embellished the Vatican palaces. He also commissioned Michelangelo to draw up plans for the rebuilding of St Peter’s Basilica.

Borgia fell ill with fever in 1503 and died five days later after confessing his sins. He was 72 years old.

After a short stay in the crypts of  St Peter’s, Borgia’s body was moved to the church of Santa Maria in Monserrato degli Spagnoli.

Castel Sant' Angelo in Rome, which Rodrigo Borgia
strengthened and restored

Travel tip:

Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome was originally built as a mausoleum for the Emperor Hadrian and his family. It was later used by popes as both a fortress and a castle and is now a museum. Pope Alexander VI had bastions built at each corner of the base, added battlements and warehouses for arms and developed a papal apartment inside. The castle was featured by Puccini as the setting for the third act of his opera, Tosca, which ends with the heroine leaping to her death from the castle’s ramparts.

Travel tip:

The Church of Santa Maria in Monserrato degli Spagnoli, where Pope Alexander VI is buried, is the Spanish national church in Rome, dedicated to the Virgin of Montserrat. It is north of Palazzo Farnese in Via de Monserrato in the Campo dei Fiori area of Rome.

More reading:

Lucrezia Borgia - more sinned against than sinning?

How the Borgias inspired Machiavelli's political philosophy

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Carlo Rambaldi - master of special effects

Former commercial artist who created E.T.

Carlo Rambaldi, pictured in 2010

Carlo Rambaldi, the brilliant special effects artist who created Steven Spielberg's ugly-but-adorable Extra-Terrestrial known as E.T. and Ridley Scott's malevolent Alien, died on this day in 2012 in Lamezia Terme, the city in Calabria where he settled in later life.  He was a month away from his 87th birthday.

Unlike modern special effects, which consist of computer generated images, Rambaldi's creatures were typically made of steel, polyurethane and rubber and were animated by mechanically or electronically powered rods and cables.

Yet his creations were so lifelike that the Italian director of one of his early films was facing two years in prison for animal cruelty until Rambaldi brought his props to the court room to prove that the 'animals' on screen were actually models.

It was during this time that Rambaldi, a former commercial artist who had graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, not far from his home town of Vigarano Mainarda in Emilia-Romagna, pioneered the use animatronics (puppets operated mechanically by rods or cables) and mechatronics, which combined mechanical and electronic engineering.

He mostly found employment on low-budget horror films, but would occasionally be invited to bring his expertise to something a little less grisly and it was Rambaldi's work on the Italian director Dario Argento's stylish 1975 thriller Profondo Rosso (Deep Red) that caught the eye of Dino De Laurentiis, the US-based Italian producer who was looking for a special effects artist for a remake of King Kong.

Rambaldi's creation, the Extra-Terrestrial E.T.

Rambaldi moved to America, where he created Spielberg's benign musical aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) followed by the parasitic Alien of Scott's 1979 blockbuster before delivering his greatest triumph with E.T., which beguiled audiences with its wizened skin and cat-like eyes and was capable of 150 separate moves, even down to furrowing the brow and wrinkling the nose.

Rambaldi confessed that even he cried a little when he watched the finished movie, in which E.T., marooned on earth after the spaceship in which he arrives leaves without him, befriends a lonely boy called Elliott, who in turn helps him contact his home planet.  Spielberg based E.T. on an imaginary friend he created for himself as a boy when his parents divorced.

In 1983, E.T. surpassed Star Wars as the highest-grossing film of all-time. By the end of its run it had grossed $359 million in North America and $619 million worldwide.

E.T. won Rambaldi his third Oscar for special effects following King Kong and Alien.

The last film for which he produced the special effects was Primal Rage, released in 1988 and directed by his son, Vittorio.  He distrusted the digital technology on which so many directors now rely, claiming that emotions he was able to convey in E.T. could not be reproduced by any computer programme.

On their return to Italy, Rambaldi and his wife Bruna settled in Lamezia Terme. They had another son, Alex, and a daughter, Daniela.

The Castello Estense in Ferrara

Travel tip:

Vigarano Mainarda is a small town situated about 9km (6 miles) from Ferrara, the beautiful city in Emilia-Romagna that has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site for its cultural importance.  Formerly the seat of the powerful Este family, who ruled the city from 1240 to 1597, it shares with Lucca the distinction of having the best preserved Renaissance walls in Italy.  At the centre of the city is the impressive brick built Castello Estense, which dates back to 1385 and underwent extensive restoration in 1999.

Travel tip:

Lamezia Terme as a municipality has existed only since 1968, when the former communities of Nicastro, Sambiase and Sant'Eufemia Lamezia were merged.  There are Byzantine, Roman and Greek remains, including the ruins of a castle thought to have been built by Greek colonists and developed by the Normans.  There is also a well preserved watchtower, the Bastion of the Knights of Malta, built in about 1550 by the Spanish viceroy of Naples, Pedro de Toledo.

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Leaning Tower of Pisa

Poor foundations created tourist attraction by accident

The Leaning Tower has been declared
stable for the first time in its history 

Work began on the construction of a freestanding bell tower for the Cathedral in Pisa on this day in 1173.

The tower’s famous tilt began during the building process. It is believed to have been caused by the laying of inadequate foundations on ground that was too soft on one side to support the weight of the structure.

The tilt became worse over the years and restoration work had to be carried out at the end of the 20th century amid fears the tower would collapse.

At its most extreme the tower leaned at an angle of 5.5 degrees but since the restoration work undergone between 1990 and 2001 the tower leans at about 3.99 degrees.

The identity of the architect responsible for the design of the tower is not clear but the problem with the structure began after work had progressed to the second floor in 1178.

It is thought the tower would have toppled had construction not been halted for almost a century while Pisa, a Tuscan seaport, fought battles with Genoa, Lucca and Florence. This allowed time for the soil beneath the tower to settle.

When construction resumed in 1272, the upper floors were built with one side taller than the other to compensate for the tilt. The seventh floor was completed in 1319 and the bell chamber added in 1372.

In 1987, the 60-metre high tower was included in the Piazza del Duomo Unesco World Heritage site along with the neighbouring cathedral and baptistery.

The tower was closed to the public in 1990 while work was carried out to straighten it. The tower was effectively returned to its position in 1838.

It was reopened to the public in 2001 when it was declared that it would be stable for another 300 years.  In 2008, engineers announced that the tower had stopped moving for the first time in its history.

The Leaning Tower -- in Italian the Torre Pendente di Pisa -- has made Pisa famous and is a popular tourist attraction.

Pisa's Duomo, with the bell tower in the background

Travel tip:

The tower is one of the four buildings that make up the cathedral complex in the Campo dei Miracoli (Field of Miracles) in Pisa. The Duomo was the first to be constructed, followed by the Baptistery. While work on the tower was being carried out, a cemetery (Campo Santo) was added.

Travel tip:

During the summer the tower is open to visitors from 08.30 to 22.00. Tickets to climb the tower are limited and booking in advance is recommended if you want to avoid queueing. For more details, visit www.towerofpisa.org/tickets.

(Photo of Leaning Tower by medajancik CC BY-SA 3.0)

More reading:

The collapse of the campanile in St Mark's Square

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Dino De Laurentiis – film producer

Campanian pasta seller helped make Italian cinema famous 

Dino De Laurentiis, pictured in about 1950

The producer of hundreds of hit films, Agostino ‘Dino’ De Laurentiis was born on this day in 1919 at Torre Annunziata, near Naples in Campania.

He made Italian cinema famous internationally, producing Federico Fellini’s Oscar- winning La Strada in 1954 in Rome.

After moving to the US he enjoyed further success with the film Serpico in 1973.

De Laurentiis was the son of a pasta manufacturer for whom he worked as a salesman during his teens.

While selling pasta in Rome in the 1930s he decided on impulse to enrol at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in the city as an actor.

He quickly realised he had more talent for producing and after gaining experience in the different sectors of the industry made his first film, L’Amore Canta - 'Love Song' - in 1941 when he was just 22.

After serving in the army during the second world war, De Laurentiis became an executive producer at one of Rome’s emerging film companies, Lux.

Among the films he produced for Lux was Riso Amaro - 'Bitter Rice' - starring Silvana Mangano, whom he later married and had four children with. The film was a box-office success both at home and abroad.

An early publicity poster for the De
 Laurentiis production La Strada

Proud of his Campanian origins, De Laurentiis made Napoli Milionaria, - 'Naples Millionaire' - a comedy presenting a slice of life in Naples during and after the war.

In 1950 De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti formed their own film company and produced Fellini’s La Strada which won the Oscar for best foreign language feature in 1957.

The soundtrack was written by Nino Rota, who scored many of Fellini's films and is also known for the music that accompanied the first two Godfather films.

He moved to the US in the 1970s where he made Serpico starring Al Pacino and Conan the Barbarian, which helped launch the career of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Although De Laurentiis became an American citizen, he returned to Italy frequently, shooting scenes in Florence for Hannibal in 2001 starring Anthony Hopkins.

De Laurentiis and Silvana Mangano divorced shortly before her death in 1989 and he married Martha Schumacher in 1990, with whom he had another two daughters.

De Laurentiis died in 2010 at the age of 91 at his residence in Beverly Hills.

The harbour at Torre Annunziata, just outside Naples

Travel tip:

Torre Annunziata, where De Laurentiis was born, is a city near Naples in Campania. Close to Mount Vesuvius, it was destroyed in the eruption of 79 AD and was rebuilt over the ruins. Its name derives from a watch tower - torre - built to warn people of imminent Saracen raids and a chapel consecrated to the Annunziata (Virgin Mary). It became a centre for pasta production in the early 19th century. The Villa Poppaea, also known as Villa Oplontis, believed to be owned by Nero, was discovered about ten metres below ground level just outside the town and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Travel tip:

The Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Experimental Film Centre) was established in 1935 in Rome to promote the art and technique of film making. It is located near Cinecittà, the hub of the Italian film industry, to the south of the city. Cinecittà was bombed during the Second World War but rebuilt and used again in the 1950s for large productions, such as Ben-Hur. A range of productions, from television drama to music videos, are filmed there now and it has its own dedicated Metro stop.

More reading:

Federico Fellini - the cinematic legacy of Rimini's favourite son

Carlo Ponti - the man who married Sophia Loren twice

Sergio Leone - distinctive style of 'spaghetti western' producer

(Photo of movie poster by Pabloglezcruz CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Alfredo Catalani - composer

Music from Loreley and La Wally lives on 

Alfredo Catalani, composer of the opera La Wally

Opera composer Alfredo Catalani died on this day in 1893 in Milan at the age of just 39.

He is best remembered for his operas, Loreley, written in 1890, and La Wally, written in 1892, which are still to this day passionately admired by music experts.

Catalani was born in Lucca in Tuscany in 1854 and went to train at the Milan Conservatoire.

His work is said to show traces of Wagner and his style sometimes resembled that of Massenet and Puccini but his early operas were not successful.

Loreley premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin in 1890. Later it was performed at Covent Garden in London in 1907 and in Chicago in 1919.

La Wally was first performed at Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1892 to great acclaim.  The opera is best known for its aria, ‘Well then, I’ll go far away’ (Ebben? Ne andro lontana), sung when Wally decides to leave her home forever.

American soprano Wilhelmenia Fernandez sang this aria in the 1981 film, Diva, in which a young Parisian is obsessed with an American soprano.

Hariclea Darclée, the Romanian soprano
who starred in the premiere of La Wally

In the opera, the heroine throws herself into an avalanche at the end, a scene which is difficult to stage in the theatre and therefore the opera is not performed regularly, but Wally’s principal aria is still sung frequently.

Catalani died before he reached the age of 40 of tuberculosis and was interred in the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan.  The composer Amilcare Ponchielli and the conductor Arturo Toscanini also lie there.

Toscanini greatly admired Catalani’s music and named one of his daughters Wally.

He recorded the prelude to Act IV of La Wally and the Dance of the Water Nymphs from Loreley in Carnegie Hall in 1952 with the NBC symphony orchestra for RCA Victor.

The walls of Lucca are intact all around the Tuscan city

Travel tip:

Lucca, the birthplace of Alfredo Catalani, is a city in Tuscany, famous for its Renaissance walls, which have remained intact over the centuries. A promenade now runs along the top of the walls, providing a popular place to walk round the city, enjoying the views.

Travel tip:

Milan’s Teatro alla Scala was officially inaugurated in 1778. Known to Italians simply as La Scala, the theatre has become the leading opera house in the world and many famous artists have appeared there. The theatre was designed by neoclassical architect Giuseppe Piermarini. The theatre has hosted the premieres of operas by Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini and Catalani.

(Photo of Lucca walls by JoJan CC BY-SA 3.0)

More reading:

Opening night at La Scala

The Genius of Puccini



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