4 March

Antonio Vivaldi – Baroque composer

The success and the sadness in the life of musical priest 

Violinist, teacher, composer and cleric Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born on this day in Venice in 1678. Widely recognised as one of the greatest Baroque composers, he had an enormous influence on music throughout Europe during his own lifetime. His best-known work is a series of beautiful violin concertos called The Four Seasons. Ordained as a priest at the age of 25, he also composed many sacred choral works and more than 40 operas. At the height of his career, Vivaldi received commissions from European nobility and royalty. He moved to Vienna after an invitation to be court composer but after the death of Charles VI he was left with no income or royal protection and died in poverty. Read more…

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Birth of the Italian Constitution

Celebrations in Turin for historic Statute

The Albertine Statute - Statuto Albertino - which later became the Constitution of the Kingdom of Italy, was approved by Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, on this day in 1848 in Turin. The Constitution was to last 100 years, until its abolition in 1948 when the Constitution of the new Italian republic came into effect. Based on the French Charter of 1830, it ensured that all citizens were equal before the law and gave them limited rights of assembly and the right to a free press.  However, it gave voting rights to less than three per cent of the population.  The Statute established the three classic branches of government: the executive, which meant the king, the legislative, divided between the royally appointed Senate and an elected Chamber of Deputies, and a judiciary, also appointed by the king. Read more...

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Lucio Dalla - musician

Cantautore inspired by the great Caruso

The singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla - cantautore in Italian - was born on this day in 1943 in Bologna. Dalla is most famous for composing the song, Caruso, which has been covered by many other artists since, including Luciano Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli and Julio Iglesias. The version of Caruso sung by Pavarotti sold more than nine million copies and Dalla was invited to sing Caruso in a duet with Pavarotti in a 'Pavarotti and Friends' concert in Modena in 1992. According to writer Raffaele Lauro, in his book Caruso the Song - Lucio Dalla e Sorrento, Dalla booked the very suite at the Excelsior Vittoria that Caruso had occupied during the final weeks of his life in 1921 and composed the song while staying there, inspired by his love for Sorrento, his respect for the great tenor and his fondness for classic Neapolitan songs. Read more...

3 March

Charles Ponzi - fraudster

Name forever linked with investment scam


The swindler Charles Ponzi, whose notorious fraudulent investment scheme in 1920s America led his name to be immortalised in the lexicon of financial crimes, was born Carlo Ponzi in the town of Lugo di Romagna on this day in 1882.  Ponzi served several prison sentences in the United States, the heaviest of which was handed down after he tried to sustain an unrealistically generous investment scheme by paying dividends promised to investors who thought they were buying and selling international postal reply coupons with money received from other investors. Read more...

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Teatro Olimpico – Vicenza

Renaissance theatre still stages plays and concerts

The Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, originally designed by Andrea Palladio, was inaugurated on this day in 1585 with a performance of Oedipus the King by Sophocles, for which the original scenery, which was meant to represent the streets of Thebes, has miraculously survived to this day. One of three Renaissance theatres remaining in existence and since 1994 listed by Unesco as a World Heritage Site, it was the last piece of architecture designed by Andrea Palladio. It was completed after his death by the architect Vincenzo Scamozzi, who is credited with fulfilling Palladio's wish to use perspective in the design, creating the impression that the streets visible through the archways stretched into the distance. Read more…

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Nicola Porpora – composer and teacher

Tutor of celebrated opera singers died in poverty

Nicola Porpora, who composed more than 60 operas and was a brilliant singing teacher in Italy, died on this day in 1768 in Naples. Among his many pupils were poet and librettist Pietro Metastasio, composers Johann Adolph Hasse and Joseph Haydn and the celebrated castrati, Farinelli (Carlo Broschi) and Caffarelli (Gaetano Majorano). He then went to London as chief composer to the Opera of the Nobility, a company that had been formed in opposition to Royal composer George Frideric Handel’s opera company.   He spent time in Vienna, where he taught the young Haydn to compose.  Yet the composer’s last years were spent living in poverty in Naples. Read more…

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Sebastiano Venier – Doge of Venice

Victorious naval commander briefly ruled La Serenissima

Sebastiano Venier, who successfully commanded the Venetian contingent at the Battle of Lepanto, died on this day in 1578 in Venice. He had been Doge of Venice for less than a year when fire badly damaged the Doge’s Palace. He died soon afterwards, supposedly as a result of the distress it had caused him. Venier, who worked as a lawyer and was married to Cecilia Contarini, was listed as procurator of St Mark’s in 1570, but by December of the same year, he was capitano generale da mar, the Admiral of the Venetian fleet, in the new war against the Ottoman Turks. As the commander of the Venetian contingent at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, he helped the Christian League decisively defeat the Turks. Read more...

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Charles Ponzi - fraudster

Name forever linked with investment scam

Charles Ponzi set up in business in Boston
having twice previously been in jail

The swindler Charles Ponzi, whose notorious fraudulent investment scheme in 1920s America led his name to be immortalised in the lexicon of financial crimes, was born Carlo Ponzi in the town of Lugo di Romagna on this day in 1882.

Ponzi, who emigrated to the United States in 1903 but arrived there almost penniless, had been in prison twice - once for theft and a second time for smuggling Italian immigrants illegally into the US from Canada - when he came up with his scheme.

Always on the lookout for ways to make a fast buck, Ponzi identified a way to make profits through exploiting the worldwide market in international postal reply coupons.  This was not his scheme, simply the starting point.

These coupons, which allowed a correspondent in one country to pay for the cost of return postage from another country, were sold at a universal cover price but variations in exchange rates meant that a coupon bought in one country might be worth more in another.  Coupons bought in Italy, for example, could be exchanged for stamps in the US that could then be sold for several times more than the dollar-equivalent cost of the coupon in Italy.

The difference was big enough, Ponzi reckoned, to generate as much as 400 per cent profit. He planned to use his profits to fund an investment scheme by which he could offer returns much higher than any available at the mainstream banks and yet make a handsome margin for himself.

Ponzi's natural charm and snappy dress
was very persuasive in attracting clients

It seemed a guaranteed winner. Although his efforts to borrow money to get the venture started did not work out, Ponzi approached some of his wealthier friends in Boston, Massachusetts, where he had married a local Italian girl, Rose Maria Gnecco, and was working as a translator. He promised to double their money within 90 days, or deliver 50 per cent profit in 45 days, and duly did so.

His next step was to set up his own company and attract investment from the wider public. His Securities Exchange Company attracted $1,800 in the first month. Ponzi delivered his clients vast returns as promised. Word quickly spread.

The more investors he was able to satisfy, the longer the queue to join in. By July 1920, only six months after his launch, Ponzi was accepting investments totalling almost $1 million every day.

He spent lavishly, buying a mansion in Lexington and the most expensive car available. He booked a stateroom on an ocean liner to bring his mother to America from her home in Parma.

Unbeknown to his clients, however, Ponzi’s plan to reinvest their money in international reply coupons had been massively flawed at the outset. To generate the profits he needed would have required him to import millions of coupons. In fact, there were only 27,000 in existence.

Ponzi signs a cheque for a delighted investor in his
Boston office in the spring of 1920

Instead, when clients’ investments matured, Ponzi was paying them with money he received from new investors. There was no external profit at all.  Logically, it was foolhardy to continue. Yet with his total of clients growing every day, he always had a surplus of cash and so long as that was the case he could continue in business. In any event, many of his clients simply reinvested their returns.

The problem for Ponzi was schemes that look too good to be true tend to attract the attention of the disbelieving. In this case, it was the Boston Post newspaper, who began to carry articles posing questions about his success.

After one such article, he sued for $500,000 libel damages and won, yet the seeds of doubt had been planted. More investigations followed, investors began to panic and soon Ponzi was paying out more than he was taking in.

The cover of a recent reprint of Ponzi's
 autobiography, written in the 1940s

His final mistake was to hire a former Post journalist, William McMasters, as his publicity agent. McMasters came across documents that showed Ponzi had kept going by effectively ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’. He sold his story to the Post for $5,000.

More panic followed and then an investigation by the Massachusetts Bank Commissioner. It was the beginning of the end for Ponzi. His bankers stopped honouring his cheques and three of his clients filed a petition in court to declare him bankrupt. In November 1920 he was sentenced to five years in jail. His investors had collectively lost around $20 million.

After further prison terms, in between which, while on bail pending an appeal, he attempted to set up a property scam in Florida, he was deported to Italy in 1934. Divorced in 1937 - his wife stayed behind in Boston - he tried various business schemes without success and eventually settled in Brazil, where he died in 1949, although he did first write his autobiography.

Despite Carlo Ponzi’s inevitable demise, countless others down the years have tried to make money using the same methods. The most high-profile example this century involved the financier and investment advisor Bernie Madoff, who was sentenced to 150 years’ jail in 2009 after running a Ponzi Scheme through his Wall Street brokerage that was ultimately outed as the largest financial fraud in US history, worth $64.8 billion.

The Rocca Estense in Lugo di Romagna now serves as
the town's municipal offices

Travel tip:

Lugo di Romagna is a town of 32,000 people about 30km (19 miles) west of Ravenna and 18km (8 miles) north of Faenza in Emilia-Romagna. Its most famous monument, the Rocca Estense (Este Castle), was partially rebuilt during the French occupation in 1500. The interior houses portraits of famous lughesi and a lunette attributed to Mino da Fiesole. It has been Lugo’s town hall since 1797. Also of note is the 19th century covered market hall known as Il Paviglione and the restored 18th century Teatro Rossini. Apart from Ponzi, famous lughesi include the First World War fighter pilot Francesco Baracca and a former world motorcycling champion, Mario Lega.

The Teatro Regio in Parma, while not so well known as La
Scala in Milan, is considered one of Italy's top opera houses

Travel tip:

Parma, where Ponzi claimed to have grown up after his family moved there from Lugo, 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 Giuseppe Verdi was born near Parma at Bussetto and the city has a prestigious opera house, the Teatro Regio.

More reading:

Michele Sindona - the fraudster with links to the Vatican

The mysterious death of Roberto Calvi

Joe Petrosino - the immigrant who became a New York crime fighter

Also on this day:

1578: The death of Venetian doge Sebastiano Venier

1585: The inauguration of Palladio's Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza

1768: The death of composer Nicola Porpora

Selected books:

Ponzi: The Incredible True Story of the King of Financial Cons, by Donald Dunn

The Rise of Mr Ponzi, by Charles Ponzi

(Picture credits: Rocca Estense by Lalupa; Teatro Regio by Stefano Sansavini; via Wikimedia Commons)


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2 March

Vittorio Pozzo - double World Cup winner

Manager led Azzurri to victory in 1934 and 1938

Vittorio Pozzo, the most successful manager in the history of Italy's national football team, was born on this day in 1886 in Turin. Under his guidance, the Azzurri won the FIFA World Cups of 1934 and 1938 as well as the Olympic football tournament in 1936. No other coach in football history has won the World Cup twice, although Pozzo’s reputation was tarnished somewhat by the ruthless exploitation of Italy's success on the football field for propaganda purposes by the Fascists. Pozzo upset many opponents of Mussolini at the 1938 World Cup in France when he insisted his players bowed to protocol by giving the so-called 'Roman' salute - the extended right-arm salute adopted by the Fascists - during the playing of the Italian anthem. Read more…

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Pietro Novelli – painter and architect

Sicilian great who was killed in Palermo riot

Pietro Novelli, recognised as the most important artist in 17th century Sicily, was born on this day in 1603 in Monreale, about 10km (6 miles) from Palermo. A prolific painter, his work can be seen in many churches and galleries in Palermo, but also outside the city, for example at Piana degli Albanesi, about 30km (19 miles) from Palermo, where he painted a fresco cycle in the cathedral of San Demetrio Megalomartire and another fresco, entitled Annunciation, in the church of Santissima Annunziata.  At his peak, wealthy and aristocratic members of Sicilian society, as well as monasteries and churches, competed to be in possession of a Novelli work, but he lived to be only 44 years old, was killed during the riots against the viceroys in Palermo in 1647. Read more…

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Pope Pius XII

Pope elected on 63rd birthday to lead the church during the war

Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli was elected Pope and took the name of Pius XII on this day in 1939, his 63rd birthday.  A pre-war critic of the Nazis, Pius XII expressed dismay at the invasion of Poland by Germany later that year.  But the Vatican remained officially neutral during the Second World War and Pius XII was later criticised by some people for his perceived silence over the fate of the Jews. Pope Pius, whose family had a history of links with the papacy, was born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli on March 2, 1876 in Rome. Read more...

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1 March

Pietro Canonica - sculptor

Artist in demand from European royalty

The sculptor Pietro Canonica, who was also a proficient painter and an accomplished musician but who found himself most in demand to create busts, statues and portraits for the royal courts of Europe, was born on this day in 1869 in Moncalieri in Piedmont.  Canonica’s ability to create realism in his work, bringing marble sculptures almost to life, resulted in an endless stream of commissions, taking him from Buckingham Palace in London to the courts of Paris, Vienna, Brussels and St Petersburg.  His mastery of Naturalism and Realism were exemplified nowhere to stunning effect as in his 1909 work L'abisso - The Abyss - which depicts Paolo and Francesca, the ill-fated lovers from Dante’s Inferno. Read more...

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Cesare Danova - movie actor

Acclaim came late for Bergamo-born star

The actor Cesare Danova, who appeared in more than 300 films and TV shows over the course of a 45-year career, was born Cesare Deitinger on this day in 1926 in the Lombardy city of Bergamo.  The son of an Austrian father, he adopted Danova as his professional name after meeting the film producer, Dino De Laurentiis, who cast him in his 1947 movie The Captain's Daughter, playing alongside Amedeo Nazzari and Vittorio Gassman. Danova went on to star opposite Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Cleopatra (1963), with Elvis Presley and Ann-Margaret in Viva Las Vegas (1964), alongside Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets (1973) and as part of a star-studded cast in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). Read more…

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Luigi Vanvitelli – architect

Neapolitan genius drew up a grand design for his royal client

The most famous Italian architect of the 18th century, Luigi Vanvitelli, died on this day in 1773 in Caserta in Campania.  Vanvitelli’s huge Royal Palace designed for the Bourbon kings of Naples in Caserta is considered one of the greatest triumphs of the Baroque style of architecture in Italy.  Trained in Rome by Niccolo Salvi, with whom he worked on lengthening the façade of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Palazzo Chigi-Odelscalchi and on the construction of the Trevi Fountain, Vanvitelli was commissioned by Charles III, King of Naples, to build a summer palace for the royal family in Caserta and modelled his design on the Palace of Versailles in France. Read more…

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Gastone Nencini – cycling champion

Lion of Mugello won both Tour de France and Giro d’Italia

Gastone Nencini, sometimes described as Italy’s forgotten cycling champion, and certainly one of its least heralded, was born on this day in 1930 in Barberino di Mugello, a town in the Tuscan Apennines, about 38km (24 miles) north of Florence.  Nencini won the 1957 Giro d’Italia and the 1960 Tour de France, putting him in the company of only seven Italians to have won the greatest of cycling’s endurance tests. He followed Ottavio Bottechia, Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi and preceded Felice Gimondi, Marco Pantani and the most recent winner, 2014 champion Vincenzo Nibali. His courage and resilience earned him the nickname The Lion of Mugello. Read more...


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Pietro Canonica - sculptor

Artist in demand from European royalty

Pietro Canonica was well known for creating busts, statues
and portraits for the monarchy and nobility across Europe

The sculptor Pietro Canonica, who was also a proficient painter and an accomplished musician but who found himself most in demand to create busts, statues and portraits for the royal courts of Europe, was born on this day in 1869 in Moncalieri in Piedmont.

Canonica’s ability to create realism in his work, bringing marble sculptures almost to life, resulted in an endless stream of commissions, taking him from Buckingham Palace in London to the courts of Paris, Vienna, Brussels and St Petersburg.

He was highly skilled in equestrian statuary and after the First World War was commissioned to create many monuments to the fallen, which can be seen in squares around Italy to this day.

Canonica’s mastery of Naturalism and Realism were the qualities that set him apart, exemplified nowhere with such stunning effect as in his 1909 work L'abisso - The Abyss - which depicts Paolo and Francesca, the ill-fated lovers from Dante’s Inferno, locked in their eternal punishment, clinging desperately to one another with fear in their eyes, her fingers digging into his back as the vortex in which they are trapped drags them towards their fate.

A master of Realism, Canonica produced some
extraordinary works, such as L'abisso (The Abyss)

His depictions of female figures, in particular, were notably lifelike.

Canonica’s precocious talent saw him begin an apprenticeship at the age of 10 and be admitted to the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti di Turin the following year.  His depictions of Naturalism and Realism were unusual for the time.

He was regularly commissioned for funerary works in the early part of his career as noble and aristocratic families sought grave markers that exuded emotion and tenderness.

He moved in 1922 to Rome, and participated in important national and international exhibitions in Milan, Rome, Venice, Paris, London, Berlin, Dresden, Monaco, Brussels and St. Petersburg. He created portraits and commemorative works with a passion his clients appreciated.

He took commissions, too, from as far afield as Turkey, Egypt, Iraq and Bolivia in South America.

Canonica became professor of sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia in 1910 and later at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma. He was one of the first to be granted membership of the Royal Academy of Italy in 1929.

His religious subjects were among his most successful works, reflecting his characteristic sensitivity and sense of sorrow. His Testa di Cristo (Head of Christ), which he exhibited in Naples in 1922, shows Christ with a raised shoulder, lowered eyelids and slightly open mouth as subtle indications of his suffering.

Pietro Canonica's bust of the Italian
king, Victor Emmauel III

Deeply saddened by the destruction of his work in Russia by the Bolsheviks in 1918, Canonica found his reputation devalued somewhat by the collapse of the monarchy and the defeat of Fascism, having been associated with both.

However, in 1950, the Italian president Luigi Einaudi nominated him life senator for his outstanding artistic achievements.

Much of his work nowadays is preserved in the Museo Pietro Canonica in the Villa Borghese in Rome, in a building known as the Fortezzuola, which was given to him by the Rome city authorities to restore after a fire had curtailed its use as administrative offices in 1919.

Originally used for the breeding of ostriches, peacocks and ducks for the Borghese family to hunt, it is notable for the medieval style castellated walls designed by the architect Antonio Asprucci.  Canonica, who converted the stables to accommodate his work, was told he could live there so long as his collections were ultimately donated to the city.

In addition to sculpting skills, Canonica was also a talented musician, composing several operas and other works.

As well as in the Museo Pietro Canonica, examples of Canonica’s sculpture and statuary around the world include his bust of King Edward VII at Buckingham Palace, his Monument to the Republic in Taksim Square in Istanbul, Turkey, where he also sculpted several statues of the revoltuionary statesman Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, monuments to Popes Benedict XV and Pius XI in the Vatican and to King Faysal I of Iraq on horseback in Baghdad.

He died in 1959 in Rome at the age of 90.

The Castello at Moncalieri, a former residence of
Victor Emmanuel II, is now a Carabinieri college

Travel tip:

Moncalieri, where Canonica was born, is a town with a population of almost 58,000 people. About 8km (5 miles) south of Turin, within the city’s metropolitan area, it is notable for its castle, built in the 12th century and enlarged in the 15th century, which became a favourite residence of King Victor Emmanuel II and subsequently his daughter, Maria Clotilde, and is listed among the World Heritage Site Residences of the Royal House of Savoy. The castle now houses a prestigious training college for the Carabinieri, Italy’s quasi-military police force.

The Tempio Esculapio by Antonio Asprucci is a feature
of the Villa Borghese Gardens in the centre of Rome

Travel tip:

The Villa Borghese Gardens is among Rome’s largest public parks. The gardens date back to 1605, when Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V and patron of the sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini, began converting a former vineyard.  The park also includes the Galleria Borghese, built in 1613 for Cardinal Borghese to display his magnificent art collection. The gallery now houses masterpieces by Caravaggio, Titian and Lotto as well as sculptures by Bernini and Canova. To visit the gallery it is necessary to reserve tickets. For details visit www.galleriaborghese.it

More reading: 

La Pietà - Michelangelo's masterpiece

Luigi Einaudi, the politician and winemaker who was Italy's second president

Pietro Bracci, sculptor of the Trevi Fountain

Also on this day:

1773: The death of architect Luigi Vanvitelli, designer of the Royal Palace at Caserta

1926: The birth of movie actor Cesare Danova

1930: The birth of cycling champion Gastone Nencini

(Picture credits: Moncalieri Castle by Gianni Careddu; Tempio Esculapio by Jean-Christophe Benoist; via Wikimedid Commons)

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28 February

Mario Andretti – racing driver

American champion was born and grew up in Italy

Mario Andretti, who won the 1978 Formula One World Championship driving as an American, was born on this day in 1940 in Montona, about 35km (22 miles) south of Trieste in what was then Istria in the Kingdom of Italy.  Andretti is the only driver in motor racing history to have won an Indianapolis 500, a Daytona 500 and an F1 world title, and one of only two to have won races in F1, Indy Car, NASCAR and the World Sportscar Championship. The last American to win an F1 Grand Prix, he clinched the 1978 F1 title at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Read more…

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Karl Zuegg - jam and juice maker

Businessman turned family farm into international company

Karl Zuegg, the businessman who turned his family's fruit-farming expertise into one of Italy's major producers of jams and juices, was born on this day in 1915 in Lana, a town in what is now the autonomous province of Bolzano in Trento-Alto Adige. His grandparents, Maria and Ernst August Zuech - they changed their name to Zuegg in 1903 - had been cultivating fruit on their farm since 1860, when Lana was part of South Tyrol in what was then Austria-Hungary.  Zuegg and the company's other major brand names, Skipper and Fruttaviva, are among the most recognisable in the fruit products market in Italy. Read more…

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Dino Zoff – footballer

Long career of a record-breaking goalkeeper

Dino Zoff, the oldest footballer to be part of a World Cup winning team, was born on this day in 1942 in Mariano del Friuli in Friuli-Venezia Giulia.  Zoff was captain of the Italian national team in the final of the World Cup in Spain in 1982 at the age of 40 years, four months and 13 days. He also won the award for best goalkeeper of the tournament, in which he kept two clean sheets and made a number of important saves. In club football, Zoff spent 11 years with Juventus, whom he joined in 1972, winning the Serie A championship six times, the Coppa Italia twice and the UEFA Cup once. Read more...

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