Jacopo Peri – composer and singer

Court musician produced the first work to be called an opera

The music and words from the
prologue of Peri's Euridice

The singer and composer Jacopo Peri, also known as Il Zazzerino, was born on this day in 1561 in Rome.

He is often referred to as the ‘inventor of opera’ as he wrote the first work to be called an opera, Dafne, in around 1597.

He followed this with Euridice in 1600, which has survived to the present day although it is rarely performed. It is sometimes staged as an historical curiosity because it is the first opera for which the complete music still exists.

Peri was born in Rome to a noble family but went to Florence to study and then worked in churches in the city as an organist and a singer.

He started to work for the Medici court as a tenor singer and keyboard player and then later as a composer, producing incidental music for plays.

Peri’s work is regarded as bridging the gap between the Renaissance period and the Baroque period and he is remembered for his contribution to the development of dramatic vocal style in early Baroque opera.

Peri began working with Jacopo Corsi, a leading patron of music in Florence, and they decided to try to recreate Greek tragedy in musical form. They brought in a poet, Ottavio Rinuccini, to write a text and produced Dafne as a result. It was performed privately at Corsi’s home in Florence and then several more times over the next few years. This is now believed to be the first opera.

The tomb of Jacopo Peri in the Church of Santa Maria
Novella in Florence

They then collaborated on Euridice, which was performed in 1600 at Palazzo Pitti on the occasion of Maria dè Medici’s marriage to Henry IV of France. Peri is believed to have sung the role of Orpheus himself on this occasion.

This more public staging of Peri’s work awakened wider interest in opera as a new form of music.

Peri went on to produce other operas and pieces of music for court entertainments. Few of his compositions are still performed today but it is thought he had a big influence on the composers that came later, such as Claudio Monteverdi.

Peri died in Florence in 1633 and was buried in the Church of Santa Maria Novella in the city.

Travel tip:

Palazzo Pitti, where Euridice was first performed in 1600, was originally built for the banker Luca Pitti in 1457 in the centre of Florence, to try to outshine the Medici family. They later bought it from his bankrupt heirs and made it their main residence in 1550. Today visitors can look round the richly decorated rooms and see treasures from the Medici collections.

The Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence
was built in the 13th century

Travel tip:

The Gothic Church of Santa Maria Novella, where Peri is buried, was built in the 13th century by the Dominicans. The railway station of the same name was built in the 1930s opposite the church to replace the original 19th century station. Peri’s gravestone in the nave of the church credits him with inventing opera.

More reading:

How Monteverdi developed opera as a popular genre

How Cosimo II de Medici maintained family tradition for patronage of the arts

(Pic of José Antonio Bielsa Arbiol (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Home

Andrea Palladio - world's favourite architect

Humble stonecutter became his profession's biggest name

Andrea Palladio, whose designs have been
copied the world over

Andrea Palladio, the humble stonecutter who became the most influential architect in the history of his profession, died on this day in 1580, aged 71.

The cause of his death is not clear but some accounts say he collapsed while inspecting the construction of the Tempietto Barbaro, a church in Maser, a town in the Veneto not far from Treviso.

He was initially buried in a family vault in the church of Santa Corona in Vicenza, the city in which he spent most of his life, but later re-interred at the civic cemetery, where a chapel was built in his honour.

Examples of Palladio's work can be found all over the region where he lived and in Venice, where he was commissioned to build, among other architectural masterpieces, the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, the focal point of the view across the lagoon from St Mark's Square through the Piazzetta.

He built a substantial number of villas for wealthy clients across the Veneto region, some of them lining the Brenta Canal that links the lagoon of Venice with Padua. Others such as the Villa Capra, otherwise known as La Rotonda, famous for its symmetrically square design with four six-columned porticoes, can be found in open countryside near Vicenza.

Vicenza itself features many of Palladio's designs, including the fabulous Teatro Olimpico, in which perspective was used to create the optical illusion of city streets receding from the stage.  He was working on the theatre at the time of his death, after which the project was finished by his son, Silla, one of five children, and Palladio's assistant, Vincenzo Scamozzi.

The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, one of Venice's most
familiar views, was among Palladio's triumphs

Palladio was born Andrea Di Pietro della Gondola, the son of a miller, in Padua in November 1508. He found work as a stonecutter the workshop of a sculptor before moving to Vicenza when he was 16, joining a guild of stonemasons and bricklayers.

It was while working for the poet and scholar Gian Giorgio Trissino, that his career began to gather pace.  Trissino not only gave him the name Palladio, after the Greek goddess of wisdom, Pallas Athene, but encouraged and helped him to study classical architecture in Rome. He was fascinated with the work of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, architect and engineer of the 1st century BC. It was while in Rome that he came across the Pantheon, with its huge hemispheric dome inspired by Vitruvius, which was to influence many of his designs.

Trissino also introduced Palladio to a number of wealthy and influential families, including the Barbaro brothers, through whom he ultimately became chief architect of the Republic of Venice, having already occupied the equivalent position in Vicenza.

Palladio received his first commissions in the 1530s and thereafter was in constant demand, his style inspiring other architects outside Italy, at first in Europe and later around the world.  One factor in the spread of his fame was his publication in 1570 of his treatise, I Quattro Libri dell'Archittetura (The Four Books of Architecture), which set out rules others could follow.

The style of his designs became so popular that in Britain, for example, there was an explosion of town halls, assembly rooms, country houses, churches, inns and farmhouses that owed the essence of their design to Palladio's interpretation of classical Roman architecture.

The pattern was replicated elsewhere.  The White House, the residence occupied by the most powerful man in the world, the President of the United States, has many echoes of Palladio.

The unmistakably Palladian Church of the Redeemer -
Il Redentore - commands the Giudecca Canal

Travel tip:

The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, situated on the island of the same name across the lagoon and directly opposite the Doge's Palace and the Riva degli Schiavoni, is one of Venice's most recognisable sights.  Along the Giudecca island, opposite the Fondamenta Zattere that flanks the Giudecca Canal on the Dorsoduoro side, is the Church of the Redeemer, better known as Il Redentore, of which the facade is another Palladian masterpiece.

Travel tip:

The city of Vicenza is almost a living museum of Palladio's works, featuring 23 buildings designed by the architect that have been included on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites.  In addition to the Villa Capra, which lies outside the centre, and the Teatro Olimpico, there is the Basilicata Palladiana on Vicenza's central Piazza dei Signori, the Palazzo Thiene and the Palazzo Barbaran da Porto, which houses the Museo Palladio.  There is a statue of Palladio in the Piazza dei Signori.

More reading:

Teatro Olimpico - how Scamozzi realised Palladio's vision

Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola - contemporary of Palladio who helped spread Renaissance style

(Photo of Il Redentore by Satdeep Gill CC BY-SA 4.0)

Home

Gianni Rivera - footballer and politician

Milan legend served in the Italian Parliament and as MEP

Gianni Rivera, idol of AC Milan fans
for almost two decades

Gianni Rivera, a footballer regarded as one of Italy's all-time greats, was born on this day in 1943 in Alessandria, a city in Piedmont some 90km east of Turin and a similar distance south-west of Milan.

Rivera played for 19 years for AC Milan, winning an array of trophies that included the Italian championship three times, the Italian Cup four times, two European Cup-Winners' Cups and two European Cups.

He won 63 caps for the Italian national team, playing in four World Cups, including the 1970 tournament in Mexico, when Italy reached the final.

Later in life, he entered politics, sitting in the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament from 1987 to 2001 and serving as a Member of the European Parliament from 2005 to 2009.

Rivera had a tough upbringing in Alessandria, which suffered heavy bombing during the later stages of the Second World War, with hundreds of residents killed.  His family were not wealthy but Rivera found distraction playing football with his friends in the street and it was obvious at an early age that he had talent.

His father, a railway mechanic, arranged for him to have a trial with the local football club when he was 13 and he was quickly taken on as a youth team player.   The club, US Alessandria, competes in the semi-professional Lega Pro nowadays but was a much grander concern as Rivera was growing up and when he made his senior debut in 1959, aged just 15 years and 288 days, it was in a top-flight Serie A match against Internazionale.

He was the second youngest player in Serie A history.  By the age of 17, Rivera had been sold to AC Milan for 90 million lire.

Small and slight, Rivera had to win over his critics, some of whom decried him as a 'luxury' player in that he was never one for the physical side of football.  Gianni Brera, one of Italy's foremost football writers, dubbed him abatino - literally 'little abbot' - and did not intend it as a compliment.

Rivera (right) with his international team-mate
and rival in club football, Sandro Mazzola

Yet Rivera's intelligence and imagination, first as a winger and in time as a classical 'number 10', playing just behind the forwards, enabled him to score and create goals in abundance.

Rivera helped Milan win the 1962 scudetto - the Serie A title - when he was only 18 and when the rossoneri became the first Italian club to win the European Cup a year later, beating Benfica 2-1 at Wembley, it was Rivera who set up both Milan's goals for José Altafini.

In his international career, Rivera was a member of the Italy team that won the European Championships on home soil in 1968 and scored the winning goal in an epic semi-final against West Germany in the 1970 World Cup in Mexico as the Italians triumphed 4-3.

This was the tournament in which Ferruccio Valcareggi, Italy's coach, could not decide between Rivera and the similarly gifted Sandro Mazzola as his playmaker and ended up reaching a bizarre compromise that he termed the staffetta - 'relay' - in which Rivera, captain of AC Milan, and Mazzola, captain of their fierce city rivals Internazionale, would play one half each, with Rivera often coming on at half-time.

It worked effectively in the quarter-finals, when Italy overwhelmed the hosts Mexico 4-1 with three goals in the second half, and against the Germans, when Rivera's influence in extra time was decisive, although Valcareggi abandoned the policy in the final, with Rivera kept on the bench until the final six minutes, by which time the brilliant Brazilians were well on their way to a 4-1 win.

Rivera played his last match for Milan in 1979, retiring after 658 club appearances, having scored 164 goals.  As with many outstanding club servants in Italian football, he was given what was assumed would be a job for life with the rossoneri, who made him a vice-president.

Gianni Rivera in his days as
a politician 

All that changed, however, when Silvio Berlusconi bought the club in 1986. Rivera and the future Italian Prime Minister were diametrically opposed politically.  The former player made outspoken comments about the controversial Berlusconi's involvement, as a politician of the right, in what was traditionally regarded as the club of Milan's working class, after which he was stripped of his status as vice-president and had his right to match tickets withdrawn.  Not surprisingly, Rivera resigned.

It was soon afterwards that he stood for election to the Italian Parliament, initially winning election as a centrist but moving to the centre-left.  As a member of the Italian Renewal movement set up by former Prime Minister Lamberto Dini, he served in the Olive Tree coalition led by Romano Prodi that defeated Berlusconi in 1996.  For a while, Rivera was under-secretary of state for defence.

After his stint as an MEP, Rivera returned to football in 2013, appointed by the Italian Federation as President of the Technical Sector, overseeing the training and qualification of coaches.

The Cittadella di Alessandria, viewed from the air

Travel tip:

Alessandria is notable among other things for the Cittadella di Alessandria, a star-shaped hexagonal fortress built in the 18th century when the city was part of the Kingdom of Sardinia.  Situated just outside the city across the Tanaro River and surrounded by a wide moat linked to the river, it covers more than 180 acres and is one of the best preserved fortifications of its type.  It remained a military establishment until as recently as 2007 and now holds a permanent exhibition of about 1500 uniforms, weapons and memorabilia.

Travel tip:

Milan is the most populous metropolitan area in Italy and the fifth largest in Europe with an urban population of around 5.5 million.  It is the wealthiest city in Italy with the third largest economy in Europe after London and Paris.  Its many notable tourist attractions include the magnificent Gothic cathedral, the Sforza Castle and Leonardo da Vinci's mural painting of The Last Supper, in the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria della Grazie.

More reading:

Altafini's history-making moment

Paolo Rossi's World Cup hat-trick

Fourth World Cup for the azzurri

Home

Cesare Borgia – condottiero

Renaissance prince turned his back on the Church

Altobello Melone's portrait of Cesare Borgia

Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, became the first person in history to resign as a Cardinal on this day in 1498 in Rome.

Cesare was originally intended for the Church and had been made a Cardinal at the age of 18 after his father’s election to the Papacy. After the assassination of his brother, Giovanni, who was captain general of the Pope’s military forces, Cesare made an abrupt career change and was put in charge of the Papal States.

His fight to gain power was later the inspiration for Machiavelli’s book The Prince.

Cesare was made Duke of Valentinois by King Louis XII of France and after Louis invaded Italy in 1499, Cesare accompanied him when he entered Milan.

He reinforced his alliance with France by marrying Charlotte d’Albret, the sister of John III of Navarre.

Pope Alexander encouraged Cesare to carve out a state of his own in northern Italy and deposed all his vicars in the Romagna and Marche regions.

Cesare was made condottiero - military leader - in command of the papal army and sent to capture Imola and Forli.

He returned to Rome in triumph and received the title Papal Gonfalonier from his father.

Niccolò Machiavelli

He subsequently took over Pesaro, Faenza and Rimini and laid siege to Piombino, later commanding French troops in the sieges of Naples and Capua, causing the collapse of Aragonese power in southern Italy.

Cesare was planning the conquest of Tuscany when he received news of his father’s death in 1503.

Machiavelli later wrote that had Cesare been able to win the support of Pope Julius II his success would have continued, but the new Pope went back on his promises.

Cesare was betrayed in Naples and imprisoned and his land was retaken by the Papacy.

He was transferred to Spain where his imprisonment continued in various castles. Eventually he escaped and tried to recapture his lands but he was ambushed by his enemies and received a fatal wound from a spear.

Cesare was originally buried inside the Church of Santa Maria in Viana in northern Spain but his bones were later expelled and buried under the street outside. He was dug up twice by historians and then reburied. After years of petitions being turned down because he had resigned as a Cardinal, he was finally moved back inside the church in 2007,  some 500 years after his death.

Travel tip:

Cesare Borgia was born in Rome and studied law at an educational institution, the Studium Urbis, which has now become the Sapienza University of Rome. It was founded in 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII as a centre for ecclesiastical studies and expanded in the 15th century to include schools of Law, Medicine, Philosophy and Theology.  It moved from being the papal university to the university of the city of Rome in 1870.  The main campus is situated just north of Termini Station.

Piazza Aurelio Saffi in Forlì.

Travel tip:

At the height of his power, Cesare Borgia controlled the Papal States, now part of the region of Emilia-Romagna in Italy. Faenza, Forlì and Rimini are among the historic cities he conquered. The area is one of the wealthiest in Italy, containing Romanesque and Renaissance cities.  It is a centre of production in the food and automobile industries, home to top-end car manufacturers such as Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati.

Home

Vincenzo Coronelli – globe maker

Friar whose globes of the world were in big demand

A portrait of Vincenzo Coronelli that
appeared in his atlas, Atlante Veneto

Vincenzo Coronelli, a Franciscan friar who was also a celebrated cartographer and globe maker, was born on this day in 1650 in Venice.

He became famous for making finely-crafted globes of the world for the Duke of Parma and Louis XIV of France.

This started a demand for globes from other aristocratic clients to adorn their libraries and some of Coronelli’s creations are still in existence today in private collections.

Coronelli was the fifth child of a Venetian tailor and was accepted as a novice by the Franciscans when he was 15. He was later sent to a college in Rome where he studied theology and astronomy.

He began working as a geographer and was commissioned to produce a set of globes for Ranuccio II Farnese, Duke of Parma. Each finely crafted globe was five feet in diameter.

One of the pair of beautiful globes Coronelli
made for Louis XIV of France

After one of Louis XIV’s advisers saw the globes, Coronelli was invited to Paris to make a pair of globes for the French King.

The large globes displayed the latest information obtained by French explorers in north America. They are now in the François-Mitterand national library in Paris.

Other original globes made by Coronelli can be seen in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice and the Angelo Mai Civic Library in Bergamo.

Coronelli died at the age of 68 in Venice having created hundreds of maps and globes during his lifetime.

Travel tip:

The Civic Library (Biblioteca Civica) Angelo Mai where Coronelli’s globes are displayed in the elegant entrance hall, is located in Piazza Vecchia at the centre of Bergamo’s upper town. The library was founded in 1768 and houses more than 700,000 books, original manuscripts and scrolls.

The Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai stands on the beautiful
Piazza Vecchia at the centre of historic Bergamo

Travel tip:

The Biblioteca Marciana on the left side of the Piazzetta leading into St Mark’s Square in Venice is one of the oldest public manuscript depositories in Italy and houses one of the greatest collections of classical texts in the world as well as a pair of Coronelli’s 110-centimetre diameter globes.

(Photo of globe by Myrabella CC BY-SA 3.0)

Home

Gianfranco Ferré - fashion designer

Sought to create clothes for real women 

Gianfranco Ferré

Gianfranco Ferré, who became one of the biggest names in Italian fashion during the 1980s and 1990s, was born on this day in 1944 in Legnano, a town in Lombardy north-west of Milan, between the city and Lake Maggiore, where in adult life he made his home.

Ferré was regarded as groundbreaking in fashion design in the same way as Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent in that his clothes were created with real people rather than catwalk models in mind, yet without compromise in terms of aesthetic appeal.

At the peak of his popularity, his clients included Sharon Stone, Elizabeth Taylor, the Queen of Jordan, Paloma Picasso, Sophia Loren and the late Diana, Princess of Wales. 

Ferré first trained to be an architect, placing emphasis on the structure of his garments in which strong seams were often a prominent feature. He was once dubbed the Frank Lloyd Wright of fashion, which was taken to be a reference to the powerful horizontals in his designs.  His staff addressed him as "the architect".

He was also well known for inevitably including variations of white dress shirts in his collections, adorned with theatrical cuffs or multiple collars.  At one point, Ferré blouses were an essential in the wardrobe of high-flying career women.

Ferré won the Italian fashion industry's 'Oscar' - the Occhio D'Oro Award - six times and became the first designer from outside France to be made artistic director of Christian Dior in Paris, for whom he worked between 1989 and 1997.

From high school in Legnano, Ferré moved to the Politecnico di Milano University, where he graduated with a degree in architecture.  His first job was in the design studio of a furniture company but amused himself by designing accessories for a girl friend that were noticed by the owners of a boutique in Portofino, who asked him to design for them.

The Basilica of San Magno in Legnano, where the funeral
of Gianfranco Ferré took place in 2007

After a period working for a rainwear company, he founded his own company, Baila, in 1974, and four years later in 1978 founded his own fashion house in the Brera district of Milan with his friend and business partner, Franco Mattioli.  He launched his first collection of pret-a-portér (ready-to-wear) clothing for women, which was followed the same year by a more sporty line, Oaks by Ferré. His first man's collection was released in 1982 and added a perfume range in 1984.

On leaving Dior, he returned to full-time to working on the Ferré clothing and accessory lines, which by now had substantial export sales in the United States.  But he and Mattioli fell out over the direction of the company and in 2000 they sold 90 per cent of Gianfranco Ferré SpA, although Ferré stayed on as creative director. 

Ferré died in 2007 at the age of 62, a few days after being admitted to hospital in Milan, having suffered a massive brain hemorrhage.  A big, bear-like figure, nonetheless always beautifully dressed in one of his trademark three-piece suits, he had always struggled to control his weight and had had at least one stroke previously. 

He was buried in his home town of Legnano after a funeral attended by giants of the fashion world, including Giorgio Armani, Valentino Garavani and Donatella Versace.

Travel tip:

Legnano is famous for being the only town, apart from Rome, to which reference is made in the Italian national anthem, thanks to the historic Battle of Legnano, in which the Lombard League inflicted a heavy defeat on the forces of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in 1176.  Almost 700 years later, Garibaldi referred to the battle as an inspiration in the struggle for unification of Italy.  The 16th century Basilica of San Magno, where Gianfranco Ferré's funeral took place, is the town's most important building.

Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore

Travel tip:

Lake Maggiore is the largest lake in Italy at some 34 miles (64km) long, its most northerly extremity extending into Switzerland.  While the upper end is of alpine character, the lake in general enjoys a mild climate all year round and is famous for the greenery of its surrounding terrain and for its gardens, many growing rare and exotic plants, in particular those located on the Borromean Islands and Isola Bella.

(Photo of Basilica of San Magno by Heimdall CC BY-SA 2.5)
(Photo of Isola Bella by MbDortmund GFDL 1.2)

Home

Pope Pius VII

Compromise candidate elected by conclave-in-exile in Venice

Pope Pius VII, a portrait by Jacques-Louis David,
which can be seen in the Louvre in Paris

Pope Pius VII was born Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti on this day in 1742 in Cesena in Emilia-Romagna.

He was elected Pope in a conclave that was forced to meet on the island of San Giorgio in Venice in 1799 because Rome was occupied by the French.  He was crowned with a papier mâché version of the Papal tiara in 1800 because the French had seized the original.

It was the last conclave to be held outside Rome.

Chiaramonti was a monk of the order of Saint Benedict as well as being a distinguished theologian. He was granted the title, Servant of God, by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007.

Chiaramonti had joined the order of Saint Benedict at the age of 14. He was later ordained as a priest and went on to teach at Benedictine colleges in Parma and Rome.

After one of his relatives was elected Pope Pius VI, Chiaramonti had a series of promotions that resulted in him becoming a Cardinal.

The island of San Giorgio in the Venice lagoon, where
the papal conclave of 1799 took place

When the French revolutionary army invaded Italy in 1797, Cardinal Chiaramonti advised people to submit to the newly-created Cisalpine Republic, set up to rule in northern Italy by the French.

Following the death of Pope Pius VI while he was in French captivity, Chiaramonti became the compromise candidate for the papacy after others in the running were unacceptable to the Austrian cardinals.  He was elected in March 1800, taking the name of Pius VII to honour his predecessor.

He opposed the slave trade and condemned freemasons. He had the Arch of Constantine restored in Rome and enriched the collection in the Vatican library with manuscripts and books, although much of his papacy was spent trying to remain on good terms with France and prevent further conflict.  He was himself imprisoned for a while in 1809.

In July 1823 he fractured his hip in a fall in the papal apartments and became bedridden. He died the following month and is now buried in Saint Peter’s Basilica.

The reading room at the Biblioteca Malatestiana in Cesena

Travel tip:

Cesena, the birthplace of Pope Pius VII, is a city in Emilia-Romagna, south of Ravenna and west of Rimini. One of the main sights in the town is the 15th century Biblioteca Malatestiana, which houses many valuable manuscripts and was the first public library in Europe. It is now a listed UNESCO World Heritage site.

Travel tip:

After being briefly interred in the Vatican grottoes, Pope Pius VII was buried inside a tomb in St Peter’s Basilica and had a monument created for him by the Danish sculptor, Bertel Thorvaldsen.

(Photo of Biblioteca Malatestiana by Sailko CC BY-SA 3.0)

Home