17 February

Giovanni Pacini – opera composer

Works of overshadowed musician have enjoyed recent revival

Composer Giovanni Pacini, who wrote operas in the early part of the 19th century to suit the voices of the great singers of the period, was born on this day in 1796 in Catania in Sicily.  By the mid 1830s, Pacini had withdrawn from operatic activity after he found his operas eclipsed by those of Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini. After he returned with his opera, Saffo, in 1840, which generally hailed as his masterpiece, he found himself overshadowed by Giuseppe Verdi. Read more...

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Raffaele ‘Raf’ Vallone – actor

Movie star who had four careers

Raffaele Vallone, the stage and screen actor who was born on this day in 1916, was remarkable for having embarked on three different career paths before he made his acting debut. A former apprentice professional footballer, he quit to join his father’s legal practice before changing course again and becoming a journalist. Then, after interviewing the film director Giuseppe De Santis, he was offered a part in a neo-realist movie that became a box-office hit and found his true vocation. Read more...

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Giordano Bruno - 'martyr of science'

Dominican friar condemned as a heretic

Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar and philosopher who challenged orthodox Christian beliefs in the 16th century, died on this day in 1600 when he was burned at the stake as a heretic. Among the beliefs that contradicted Catholic wisdom was his contention that God did not exist in some personal form with human traits, that everything in the universe was made of tiny particles (atoms), that Earth revolved around the sun, rather than the other way round and that our sun was only one of an infinite number of suns in an endless universe, each surrounded by planets. Read more…

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Arcangelo Corelli – musician

Baroque composer had a major influence on the development of music

Violinist and composer Arcangelo Corelli was born on this day in 1653 at Fusignano, a small town near Ravenna.  He is remembered for his influence on the development of violin style and for his use of the genres of sonata and concerto. Both Bach and Handel are said to have studied his work and been influenced by him. Correlli’s 12 Concerti Grossi established the concerto grosso as a popular medium of composition. Corelli was also a brilliant teacher and among his many students was the young Antonio Vivaldi. Read more…

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Giovanni Pacini – opera composer

Works of overshadowed musician have enjoyed recent revival

Giovanni Pacini found himself overshadowed
first by Bellini and Donizetti, then Verdi

Composer Giovanni Pacini, who wrote operas in the early part of the 19th century to suit the voices of the great singers of the period, was born on this day in 1796 in Catania in Sicily.

Pacini began his formal music studies at the age of 12, when he was sent by his father, the opera singer Luigi Pacini, to study voice in Bologna with castrato singer and composer, Luigi Marchesi.

He soon switched his focus to composing and wrote an opera, La sposa fedele - The Faithful Bride. It was premiered in Venice in 1818 and, for its revival the following year, Pacini provided a new aria, to be sung specifically by the soprano Giuditta Pasta.

By the mid 1820s he had become a leading opera composer, having produced many successful serious and comic works.

Pacini’s 1824 work Alessandro nelle Indie - Alexander in the Indies - was a successful serious opera based on Andrea Leone Tottola’s updating of a text by librettist Pietro Metastasio.

But by the mid 1830s, Pacini had withdrawn from operatic activity after he found his operas eclipsed by those of Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini.

The title page of Pacini's opera,
Saffo, regarded as his best

He settled in Tuscany, where his father had been born, and he founded and directed a music school and theatre in Viareggio.

He also took on the post of maestro di cappella at the Palazzo Ducale in Lucca, where he began to compose liturgical music and he started to write articles on music and music criticism.

Pacini returned to composing with his opera, Saffo, in 1840, which differed stylistically from his earlier work and is generally hailed as his masterpiece. It was performed extensively in Italy, Europe and other parts of the world.

But he then found himself overshadowed by another opera composer, this time Giuseppe Verdi, who often addressed contemporary political issues in his work. Pacini instead began writing instrumental music.

He was the only significant composer of his time to write an autobiography, Le mie memorie artistiche - My Artistic Memoirs. Published in 1865, it has been read avidly by scholars as it gives a fascinating insight into Pacini’s career and life, during which he produced more than 70 operas.

Pacini died in 1867 in Pescia in Tuscany.

Since the 1980s there have been revivals and recordings of his works. His 1825 opera, L’ultimo giorno di Pompei - The Last Day of Pompei - was performed at the Festival delle Valle d’Itria in Martina Franca in 1996 and was then transferred to the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania. A live recording of the Martina Franca performance was released in 1997 and re-released in 2012.

The Grand Hotel Royal in Viareggio is an example of
the town's Liberty-style architecture

Travel tip:

Viareggio, where Pacini opened a music school and theatre, is a popular seaside resort in Tuscany with excellent sandy beaches and some beautiful examples of Liberty-style architecture, such as the Grand Hotel Royal. There is a monument to the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in Piazza Paolina because his body was washed up on the beach at Viareggio after he drowned during a storm in the Gulf of La Spezia.

Find a hotel in Viareggio with TripAdvisor

One of the streets in the centre of Pescia, the small
town in Tuscany where Giovanni Pacini died in 1867

Travel tip:

Pescia, where Giovanni Pacini died, is in the northern part of Tuscany, close to the beautiful towns of Lucca, Pistoia and Montecatini Terme. It is known as the ‘city of flowers’ because of its large wholesale flower market. In the church of San Francesco there are 13th century frescoes depicting the life of St Francis of Assisi, which are believed to be an accurate representation of the Saint because the artist, Bonaventura Berlinghieri, actually knew him.


More reading:

Giuditta Pasta - the first soprano to sing Bellini's Norma

The short but successful career of Vincenzo Bellini

La Traviata - the world's favourite opera

Also on this day:

1600: Philosopher Giordano Bruno burned at the stake

1653: The birth of Baroque composer Arcangelo Corelli

1916: The birth of movie actor Raf Vallone

(Saffo first page from the Central National Library of Florence; Grand Hotel Royal by Sailko; Pescia street by Davide Papalini; via Wikimedia Commons)


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16 February

Achille Castiglioni 

Leading figure in post-war Italian style

The designer Achille Castiglioni, whose innovative ideas for lighting, furniture and items for the home put him at the forefront of Italy’s post-war design boom, was born on this day in 1918 in Milan. Many of his designs, including the Arco floor lamp for which he is most famous, are still in production today, even 17 years after his death. The Arco lamp, which he designed in 1962 in conjunction with his brother, Pier Giacomo, combined a heavy base in Carrara marble, a curved telescopic stainless steel arm and a polished aluminium reflector. Read more...

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Edda Dell’Orso – vocalist

Soprano was wordless voice of Morricone soundtracks

The singer Edda Dell’Orso, best known for the extraordinary range of wordless vocals that have featured in many of composer Ennio Morricone’s brilliant film soundtracks from the 1960s onwards, was born on this day in 1935 in Genoa. Her collaboration with Morricone began when he was contracted in 1964 to provide the musical score for the ‘spaghetti western’ A Fistful of Dollars but was offered only a small budget, which meant his access to a full orchestra was limited. Forced to improvise, he used the human voice as an instrument to create sounds. Read more…

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Giambattista Bodoni - type designer

Celebrity printer whose name lives on in type

Typographer, printer and publisher Giambattista Bodoni was born on this day in 1740 in Saluzzo in the region of Piedmont. At the height of his career he became internationally famous and was complimented by the Pope and paid a pension by Napoleon. Bodoni, whose father and grandfather were both printers, designed a modern typeface that was named after him and is still in use today. Read more…

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Valentino Rossi - motorcycle world champion

Rider from Urbino among his sport's all-time greats

Valentino Rossi, the motorcycle racer whose seven 500cc or MotoGP world titles have established him as one of the sport's all-time greats, was born on this day in 1979 in Urbino. Only his fellow Italian, Giacomo Agostini, the eight-times world champion, has more 500cc or MotoGP titles than Rossi, whose total of 89 race victories in the premier classification is the most by any rider.  Across all engine sizes, he has been a world champion nine times, behind only Agostini (15) and Spain's Ángel Nieto, who specialised in 50cc and 125cc classes.  Read more...

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Achille Castiglioni - designer

Leading figure in post-war Italian style

Achille Castiglioni regarded
furniture-making as art

The designer Achille Castiglioni, whose innovative ideas for lighting, furniture and items for the home put him at the forefront of Italy’s post-war design boom, was born on this day in 1918 in Milan.

Many of his designs, including the Arco floor lamp for which he is most famous, are still in production today, even 17 years after his death.

The Arco lamp, which he designed in 1962 in conjunction with his brother, Pier Giacomo, combined a heavy base in Carrara marble, a curved telescopic stainless steel arm and a polished aluminium reflector.

Designed so that the reflector could be suspended above a table or a chair, the Arco was conceived as an overhead lighting solution for apartments that removed the need for holes in the ceiling and wiring, yet as an object of simple chic beauty it came to be seen as a symbol of sophistication and good taste.

The Arco lamp, anchored in a block of marble, is
perhaps Castiglioni's most famous creation

The Arco was commissioned by the Italian lighting company Flos, which still produces numerous other lamps designed by Castiglioni.

Achille’s father was the sculptor Giannino Castiglioni. His brothers Livio and Pier Giacomo, both older, were architects.

He initially studied classics at the Liceo classico Giuseppe Parini in Milan, but switched to study the arts at the Liceo artistico di Brera. In 1937 he enrolled in the faculty of architecture of the Politecnico di Milano.

As was common for young Italians of his generation, the Second World War interrupted Achille’s progress. He joined up, became an officer in the artillery, and was stationed on the Greek front and later in Sicily, returning to Milan just before the Allied invasion of 1943. In March 1944 he was able to graduate.

The Mezzadro chair incorporated a tractor seat
mounted on a metal and wood base

He joined the studio his brothers ran with Luigi Caccia Dominioni, another young Italian architect and designer. They designed interiors and created products, among them the Fimi-Phonola 547 radio, an extraordinary piece in metal and moulded bakelite that fulfilled the need to be inexpensive but was uniquely stylish.

After the war, Italy entered a kind of mini-Renaissance, inspired with the sense of a new beginning. Designers gave free rein to their imagination, often placing art above functionality in the design process. Castiglioni managed to marry the two.

When Livio left in 1952, Achille and Pier Giacomo continued to work together on innovative, sleekly modern designs for everyday objects and appliances. One creation, a vacuum cleaner in red plastic with a leather strap that the user could carry on his or her back, made for the REM company, can now be found in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, along with more than a dozen other Castiglioni designs.

Lighting was always Achille Castiglioni's speciality, enabling him to indulge his fascination with symbolism and theatricality. From the 1960s to the ‘80s, seen as Milan’s heyday as the city of design - he applied the same creative strategy to a wide range of projects, as diverse as hi-fi equipment and hospital beds.

Castiglioni's unique bakelite radio, the
Fimi-Phonola 547

He embraced the concept of using ‘found objects’ to create unusual but functional furniture, such as his Sella - saddle - stool, which featured a bicycle seat atop a pole with a rounded base designed as a telephone stool. Another seating solution, the Mezzadro, incorporated a tractor seat.

In his later years, after Pier Giacomo's death, Achille remained active in the studio in Piazza Castello but also went back to college, this time to lecture in design, first at the Polytechnic of Turin and later as a professor at the Polytechnic of Milan.

Castiglioni, who was one of the founding members of Association for Industrial Design (Associazione per il Disegno Industriale), established in 1956, died in 2002 at the age of 84. He was survived by his wife, Irma, and three children.

Castiglioni's studio, now a museum, is close to Milan's
magnificent Castello Sforzesco

Travel tip:

Castiglioni’s studio in the Piazza Castello in Milan has been turned into a museum, looked after by his youngest daughter, Giovanna. It is also the headquarters of the Fondazione Achille Castiglioni, established in 2011 to celebrate his work but also to promote innovative and stylish design. Piazza Castello is the semi-circular space surrounding the Castello Sforzesco, Milan’s impressive 15th century castle, which can be found about a 20-minute walk from the Duomo in a northwesterly direction. The Fondazione, at Piazza Castello 27, is open to the public via guided visits only, which take about an hour and cost €10. For more information, visit http://fondazioneachillecastiglioni.it/en/visits/

Search for accommodation in Milan with Booking.com

The main building of the Politecnico di Milano in
Piazza Leonardo da Vince in the Città Studi

Travel tip:

The Politecnico di Milano was founded in November 1863 by Francesco Brioschi, secretary of the Ministry of Education and rector of the University of Pavia. It is the oldest university in Milan. Originally, only civil and industrial engineering were taught. Architecture was introduced in 1865 in cooperation with the Brera Academy. There were only 30 students admitted in the first year; today, there are 42,000. Its central offices and headquarters are on Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, located in the historical campus of Città Studi in Milan, about 3.5km (2 miles) northeast of the city centre.


More reading:

How Marco Zanuso's ideas put Italy at the forefront of contemporary design

The Rome designer who became England's Royal jeweller

Flaminio Bertoni: car design as sculpture

Also on this day:

1740: The birth of Giambattista Bodoni - printer and type designer

1907: The death of poet Giosuè Carducci 

1935: The birth of Morricone's wordless vocalist Edda dell'Orso

1970: The birth of footballer Angelo Peruzzi

1979: The birth of multiple world motorcycling champion Valentino Rossi

(Picture credits: Mezzadro chair by Sailko; Watch by austincalhoon; Castello Sforzesco by Gpaolo; Politecnico by Luigi Brambilla; all via Wikimedia Commons)

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