19 November

Johnny Dundee – world champion boxer

Sicilian changed his name to sound non-Italian

The boxer Johnny Dundee, who was a child when his family emigrated to the United States, was born in Sciacca, a town on the southwest coast of Sicily, on this day in 1893.  Dundee, regarded by many boxing historians as the first of the great Italian-American fighters, had more than 330 fights in a 22-year career in the ring.  At the peak of his career, in the 1920s, Dundee won both the world featherweight and world junior-lightweight titles.  Dundee’s real name is thought to have been Giuseppe Curreri, although some boxing records have his second name as Carrora.  The large numbers of Italian immigrants arriving in New York at around the turn of the 20th century, few of whom spoke any English, sometimes overwhelmed officers at the city’s processing station on Ellis Island and mistakes in recording details were common.  There are variations, too, in accounts of how old Giuseppe was when his family uprooted him from his childhood home, with some saying he was just five but others suggesting he was nine.  What seems not in dispute is that his family joined other Italian families in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Read more…

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Luigi Beccali - Olympic athlete

Milanese runner brought home Italy's first track gold

Luigi Beccali, the first Italian to win an Olympic gold medal in track and field events, was born on this day in 1907 in Milan.  Although Italy had won gold medals in fencing and gymnastics in previous Games, Beccali's victory in the 1,500 metres at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles was the first time an Italian had won gold in a running event.  His victory came out of the blue since the field included several runners with top credentials, including New Zealand’s Jack Lovelock and America's Glenn Cunningham.  Beccali had a reputation as a determined competitor but his results were relatively modest next to those of the favourites.  However, in May of 1932 he had posted a mile time of four minutes 11.5 seconds in Milan which was only four tenths of a second slower than Cunningham's time in winning the 1932 National Collegiate Athletics Association championships.  The three heats at Los Angeles were won by Lovelock, Beccali, and Cunningham, who posted the best time of 3:55.8 in winning the first heat.  In the final, Beccali timed his run superbly, working his way through the field to take the lead from Canada's Phil Edwards, who had started to pull away over the last lap, with 100m remaining. Read more…

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Giuseppe Volpi - businessman and politician

Founder of the Venice film festival

Businessman and politician Count Giuseppe Volpi of Misurata was born on this day in 1877 in Venice.  Volpi was responsible for bringing electricity to Venice and the north east of Italy in 1903 and had an influence on the development of Porto Marghera, the industrial complex across the lagoon from Venice.  But, in 1932, as president of the Venice Biennale, Volpi arranged the first Venice Film Festival. It took place between 6 and 21 August on the terrace of the Hotel Excelsior at the Venice Lido.  The first film to be shown at the festival was Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.  The festival was considered a success and was held again in 1934 from 1 to 20 August, when it involved a competition for the first time.  In 1935 the Film Festival became a yearly event in Venice and the Coppa Volpi (Volpi Cup), an award for actors, was introduced for the first time.  Count Volpi received a personal letter from Walt Disney in 1939 thanking him, as president of the Biennale, for the prize awarded to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the film festival. This letter is now in the historical archives of the Biennale.  Read more…

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Pino Rauti – politician and journalist

Writer chronicled the story of Fascism in Italy

Pino Rauti, leader of the neo-fascist Social Idea Movement, was born Giuseppe Umberto Rauti on this day in 1926 in Cardinale in Calabria.  Rauti was to become a leading figure on the far right of Italian politics from 1948 until his death in 2012.  As a young man he had volunteered for the Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana of Benito Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic and he then went on to join the Spanish Foreign Legion.  After his return to Italy, Rauti joined the post-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI). He became associated with Julius Evola, a leading fascist philosopher, and became editor of his journal, Imperium.  Rauti joined the staff of the Rome-based daily Il Tempo in 1953 and later became the Italian correspondent for the Aginter Press, a fake press agency set up in Portugal in 1966 to combat communism.  In 1954 he established his own group within MSI, the Ordine Nuovo, but he became disillusioned with MSI and his group separated from the party two years later.  Rauti’s name was linked with a number of terror attacks, including the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan, which caused 17 deaths. Read more…


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18 November

Gio Ponti - architect and designer

Visionary who shaped more than 100 buildings

Giovanni ‘Gio’ Ponti, one of the most influential architects and designers of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1891 in Milan.  During a career that spanned six decades, Ponti completed more than 100 architectural projects in Italy and abroad and also designed hundreds of pieces of furniture, decorative objects and household items.  As an architect, he made a significant impact on the appearance of his home city. The Pirelli Tower, which for 35 years was Italy’s tallest skyscraper, is the building for which Ponti is most famous, but it is only one of 46 in Milan.  He also designed the Montecatini buildings, the Torre Littoria (now known as the Torre Branca) in Parco Sempione, the San Luca Evangelista church in Via Andrea Maria Ampère, and Monument to the Fallen in Piazza Sant’Ambrogio.  Ponti’s work was by no means confined to Milan, however.  Elsewhere in Italy, he designed the Mathematics Institute at the University of Rome, the Carmelo Monastery in Sanremo, the Villa Donegani in Bordighera, the Gran Madre di Dio Concattedrale in Taranto and the Hotel Parco dei Principi in Sorrento.  Read more…

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Alfonso Ferrero La Marmora - military leader

General who became prime minister of Italy

Alfonso Ferrero La Marmora, a general and statesman who became the sixth prime minister of Italy, was born on this day in 1804 in Turin.  A graduate of the Turin Military Academy, La Marmora went on to play an important part in the Risorgimento, the movement to create a united Italy.  One of his older brothers was Alessandro Ferrero La Marmora, who founded the Italian army’s famous Bersaglieri corps, which entered French-occupied Rome in 1870 through a breach in the wall at Porta Pia and completed the unification of Italy.  Alfonso La Marmora went into the army in 1823 and first distinguished himself in the Italian wars of independence against Austria.  In 1848, La Marmora rescued the Sardinian king, Charles Albert, from Milanese revolutionaries who had resented the king’s armistice with the Austrians. Afterwards he was promoted to general and briefly served as minister of war.  La Marmora suppressed an insurrection at Genoa in 1849 and commanded the Sardinian forces in the Crimean War in 1855.  Later, while serving as minister of war again, he reorganised the Italian army.  He then served as premier of Piedmont, governor of Milan and as the king’s lieutenant in Naples.  Read more…

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Eleonora Gonzaga – Holy Roman Empress

Pious princess who promoted the arts and education

Eleonora Gonzaga, Princess of Mantua, Nevers and Rethel, was born on this day in 1630 in Mantua.  She grew up to marry the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand III, and established a reputation as one of the most educated and virtuous women of her time.  Eleonora became fascinated by religious poetry, founded a literary academy and was a patron of musical theatre.  As Holy Roman Empress she developed the cultural and spiritual life at the Imperial Court in Vienna, continuing the work of her great aunt, also called Eleonora, who had introduced opera to Vienna in the early part of the 17th century.  Vienna subsequently became recognised as the music capital of Europe.  Eleonora was the second child of Charles Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers, who was heir to the Duchy of Mantua, and Maria Gonzaga, who was heiress to the Duchy of Montferrat.  She was given a good education, became fluent in French, Spanish and Italian and learnt about literature, music and art.  Having become interested in poetry, she composed religious and philosophical poems herself.  A marriage was arranged for her with the Holy Roman Emperor, who imposed the condition that the Duchy of Mantua had to remain loyal to the Empire.  Read more…

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St Peter’s Basilica consecrated

Artists helped design magnificent church

The stunning Renaissance Basilica of St Peter in Rome was completed and consecrated on this day in 1626.  Believed to be the largest church in the world, Basilica Papale di San Pietro in Vaticano was built to replace the original fourth century Basilica that had been constructed on what was believed to be the burial site of St Peter.  Bramante, Michelangelo and Bernini were among the many artistic geniuses who contributed to the design of the church, which is considered to be a masterpiece of Renaissance architecture.  Located within Vatican City, the Basilica is approached along Via della Conciliazione and through the vast space of St Peter’s Square.  The magnificent central dome of the Basilica dominates the skyline of Rome and the balcony above the entrance, where the Pope makes appearances, is instantly recognisable because of the many times it has been shown on television.  It is believed that St Peter, one of the disciples of Jesus, was executed in Rome on 13 October, 64 AD during the reign of the Emperor Nero. He was buried close to the place of his martyrdom.  The old St Peter’s Basilica was constructed over the burial site 300 years later.  Read more…


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17 November

NEW - Premiere of Verdi’s first opera

Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio performed at La Scala

Giuseppe Verdi’s first opera to be performed made its debut at Teatro alla Scala in Milan on this day in 1839.  Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio, which Verdi had written over a period of four years, is an opera in two acts. It is thought to have been based on an existing libretto by Antonio Piazza, reworked as a new libretto by Temistocle Solera, an Italian novelist.  Piazza’s libretto had been given to Verdi by Pietro Massini, director of the Società Filarmonica, a choral group to whom he had been introduced by Vincenzo Lavigna, the maestro concertatore at La Scala, of whom Verdi was a private pupil.  It was given the title of Rocester and Verdi was keen to see it produced in Parma, at the opera theatre nearest to his home town of Busseto, where he held the post of maestro di musica of the municipal orchestra.  However, Parma said they had no interest in staging new works and instead an approach was made to Milan. Whether Rocester actually became the basis for Oberto is subject to some disagreement among academics.  Verdi is said to have been invited to meet the La Scala impresario, Bartolomeo Merelli, who had been given good reports of Oberto’s musical quality and offered to put it on during the 1839 season. Read more…

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Bronzino – master of Mannerism

Florentine became Medici court painter

The Mannerist painter Agnolo di Cosimo – better known as Il Bronzino or simply Bronzino – was born on this day in 1503, just outside Florence.  Bronzino is now recognised as the outstanding artist of what has become known as the second wave of Mannerism in the mid-16th century.  His style bears strong influences of Jacopo Pontormo, who was an important figure in the first wave and of  whom Bronzino was a pupil as a young man in Florence.  The Mannerist movement began in around 1520, probably in Florence but possibly in Rome. In the evolution of art it followed the High Renaissance period.  Typical of Mannerist painters is their use of elongated forms and a style influenced by the attention to detail allied to restrained realism that was characteristic of the Renaissance masters Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.  Bronzino became best known for his portraits, which were detailed and stylishly sophisticated, in which the subjects were superbly realistic but also tended to wear stoical, rather haughty expressions.  He also paid particular attention to fabric and clothing, his works often notable for his recreation of textures. Read more…

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Umberto I assassination bid

First attempt to kill the king is foiled

An unsuccessful attempt was made on the life of King Umberto I of Italy on this day in 1878 in Naples.  Umberto was making a tour of the kingdom accompanied by his wife, Queen Margherita, and the Prime Minister, Benedetto Cairoli.  While saluting the crowds in Naples from his carriage, Umberto was attacked by a young man, Giovanni Passannante, who was employed as a cook at the time, but was later described as an anarchist. Passanante jumped on the carriage and attempted to stab the King. Umberto warded off the blow with his sabre but the Prime Minister, who came to his aid, was wounded in the thigh.  This was the first of three attempts on the life of Umberto I, who despite being nicknamed il Buono (the good), lost popularity with his subjects as his reign progressed.  He had won the respect of people because of the way he conducted himself during his military career and as a result of his marriage to Margherita of Savoy and the subsequent birth of their son, who was to become King Victor Emmanuel III.  But Umberto became increasingly unpopular because of his imperialist policies and his harsh ways of dealing with civil unrest.  Read more…

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Calisto Tanzi - disgraced businessman

Man at the centre of the Parmalat scandal 

Calisto Tanzi, the business tycoon jailed for 18 years following the biggest corporate disaster in Italian history, was born on this day in 1938 in Collecchio, a town in Emilia-Romagna, about 13km (8 miles) from the city of Parma.  Tanzi was founder and chief executive of Parmalat, the enormous global food conglomerate that collapsed in 2003 with a staggering €14 billion worth of debt.  Subsequent criminal investigations found that Tanzi, who built the Parmalat empire from the grocery store his father had run in Collecchio, had been misappropriating funds and engaging in fraudulent practices for as much as a decade in order to maintain an appearance of success and prosperity when in fact the business was failing catastrophically.  Of all those hurt by the collapse, the biggest victims were more than 135,000 small investors who had bought bonds in the company, some of them trusting Parmalat with their entire life savings.  Between 2008 and 2010, Tanzi was found guilty by four different courts of fraud, of the fraudulent bankruptcy of Parmalat, the fraudulent bankruptcy of Parmatour, a travel industry subsidiary, and of false accounting at Parma, the football club he owned.  Read more…

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Giovanni Pico della Mirandola – philosopher

Writer of the 'Manifesto of the Renaissance' met an early death

Renaissance nobleman and philosopher, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola died on this day in 1494 in Florence, sparking a murder mystery still not solved more than 500 years later and that led to the exhumation of his body in 2007.  Pico became famous for writing the Oration on the Dignity of Man, which was later dubbed the 'Manifesto of the Renaissance'.  At its heart, the Oration proposed that man is the only species of being to which God assigned no specific place in the chain of being and that man could ascend the chain through the exercise of his intellectual capacity, and for that reason it stresses the importance of the human quest for knowledge.  Renowned for his memory as well as his intellect, he could recite Dante’s Divine Comedy line-by-line backwards and by the time he was 20 he has mastered six languages.  But he made enemies and it his thought that his death at the age of just 31 was the result of poisoning because of concerns that he had become too close to hellfire preacher Girolamo Savonarola, an enemy of Florence's ruling Medici family.  It was Savonarola himself who delivered the funeral oration when Pico was buried at the Convent of San Marco in Florence where he was the Prior.  Read more…

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Premiere of Verdi’s first opera

Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio performed at La Scala

The title page of the libretto for the
opera's debut staging in Milan

Giuseppe Verdi’s first opera to be performed made its debut at Teatro alla Scala in Milan on this day in 1839.

Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio, which Verdi had written over a period of four years, is an opera in two acts. It is thought to have been based on an existing libretto by Antonio Piazza, reworked as a new libretto by Temistocle Solera, an Italian novelist.

Piazza’s libretto had been given to Verdi by Pietro Massini, director of the Società Filarmonica, a choral group to whom he had been introduced by Vincenzo Lavigna, the maestro concertatore at La Scala, of whom Verdi was a private pupil.

It was given the title of Rocester and Verdi was keen to see it produced in Parma, at the opera theatre nearest to his home town of Busseto, where he held the post of maestro di musica of the municipal orchestra

However, Parma said they had no interest in staging new works and instead an approach was made to Milan. Whether Rocester actually became the basis for Oberto is subject to some disagreement among academics.

Verdi is said to have been invited to meet the La Scala impresario, Bartolomeo Merelli, who had been given good reports of Oberto’s musical quality and offered to put it on during the 1839 season. It was received well enough on its premiere to be given another 13 additional performances.  Merelli was impressed enough to commission Verdi to write three more operas.

Ignazio Marini was the first
to perform the role of Oberto

The first of those, Un giorno di regno, a comedy, was a flop, being pulled after only one night. While he was writing it, Verdi’s wife, Margherita, had died of encephalitis, aged only 26, leaving him heartbroken. At one point, it is claimed he vowed never to compose another work, but was persuaded to continue.  In the event, his third opera, originally titled Nabucodonosor and later renamed as Nabucco, was a triumph, setting him on the road to musical immortality.

The action in Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio, is set in Bassano del Grappa, in the Veneto region of northern Italy, at and around Ezzelino da Romano's castle.

Following a battle fought between Oberto, Count of San Boniface, and the Salinguerra, led by Ezzelino da Romano, the vanquished Oberto retreats to Mantua.

Meanwhile, his daughter Leonora has been seduced and abandoned by Riccardo, Count of Salinguerra, and Riccardo is about to marry Cuniza, Ezzelino's sister. Leonora makes her way to Bassano on Riccardo's wedding day, intent on confronting him.

The opening night cast, under the direction of conductor Eugenio Cavallini, featured the bass Ignazio Marini in the role of Oberto, with soprano Antonietta Marini-Rainieri as Leonora, the English mezzo-soprano Mary Shaw as Cuniza, mezzo-soprano Marietta Sacchi as Cuniza’s confidante, Imelda, and tenor Lorenzo Salvi in the role of Riccardo.

The opera is only occasionally performed today, although in celebration of the Verdi bicentennial, it was staged by La Scala in April/May 2013.

Bassano del Grappa is famous for Andrea Palladio's timber
bridge over the Brenta river, built between 1124 and 1209

Travel tip:

Bassano del Grappa, where Oberto is set, is an historic town at the foot of Monte Grappa in the Vicenza province of the Veneto, famous for inventing grappa, a spirit made from the grape skins and stalks left over from wine production, which is popular with Italians as an after dinner drink to aid digestion. A famous sight is the Ponte degli Alpini, a bridge designed by Andrea Palladio. The painter Jacopo Bassano was born in Bassano del Grappa and took his name from the town.

The church of San Michele Arcangelo in Busseto, where
Giuseppe Verdi played the organ as a young man

Travel tip:

Busseto is a town in the province of Parma, about 40km (25 miles) from the city of Parma. Verdi was born in the nearby village of Le Roncole but moved to Busseto in 1824. The area has plenty to offer Verdi fans, who can visit the house where he was born, in 1813, in Le Roncole, the churches of Santa Maria degli Angeli and San Michele Arcangelo, where he played the organ, the Palazzo Orlandi and the Villa Verdi, two of his homes, the Teatro Giuseppe Verdi, which was named in his honour, and the Casa Barezzi, the home of his patron, Antonio Barezzi, which now houses a permanent exhibition of objects and documents related to Verdi and the Barezzi family.

Also on this day:

1494: The death of philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

1503: The birth of the Mannerist painter Bronzino

1878: Umberto I survives assassination attempt

1938: The birth of disgraced businessman Calisto Tanzi


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16 November

Tazio Nuvolari – racing driver

Man from Mantua seen as greatest of all time

Tazio Nuvolari, the driver many regard as the greatest in the history not only of Italian motor racing but perhaps of motorsport in general, was born on this day in 1892 in Castel d’Ario, a small town in Lombardy, about 15km (9 miles) east of the historic city of Mantua.  Known for his extraordinary daring as well as for his skill behind the wheel, Nuvolari was the dominant driver of the inter-war years, winning no fewer than 72 major races including 24 Grands Prix.  He was nicknamed Il Mantovano Volante - the Flying Mantuan.  From the start of his career in the 1920s, Nuvolari won more than 150 races all told and would have clocked up more had the Second World War not put motor racing in hibernation.  As it happens, Nuvolari’s last big victory came on September 3, 1939, the day the conflict began, in the Belgrade Grand Prix.  When he died in 1953 from a stroke, aged only 60, his funeral in his adopted home city of Mantua attracted at least 25,000 people.  His coffin was placed on a car chassis pushed by legendary drivers Alberto Ascari, Luigi Villoresi and Juan Manuel Fangio, at the head of a mile-long procession.  Read more…

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Maurizio Margaglio - ice dancer

Multiple champion remembered for famous fall

The ice dancer Maurizio Margaglio, who enjoyed a prolifically successful partnership with Barbara Fusar-Poli from the mid-1990s to the early part of the new century, was born on this day in 1974 in Milan.  Margaglio and Fusar-Poli were national champions of Italy nine times and in 2001 they became the first Italian pair to become World champions, winning in Vancouver ahead of the defending champions Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat of France.  They were European champions the same year, during a remarkable season in which they won every event they entered.  Yet they never won an Olympic title in three attempts, and as well as their successes they are remembered as much for the calamity that befell them at their home Olympics in Turin in 2006. In their first appearance in international competition for four years, Margaglio and Fusar-Poli were in the gold medal position, leading by a full half-point over the Russian favourites and two-time World champions, Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomorav, after the opening compulsory dance section of the competition.  Yet just seconds away from potentially consolidating their lead in the original dance section, disaster struck.  Read more…

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Sofonisba Anguissola – Renaissance artist

Portrait painter paved the way for other women artists

Painter Sofonisba Anguissola died on this day in 1625 in Palermo at the age of 93.  As a young woman Anguissola had been introduced to Michelangelo in Rome, who had immediately recognised her talent.  She served an apprenticeship with established painters, which set a precedent for women to be accepted as students of art in the 16th century. Her success later in life paved the way for other women to pursue serious careers as artists. Many of her paintings can still be seen in prestigious galleries all over the world.  Anguissola was born in Cremona in Lombardy in 1532 to noble parents who believed they had a connection to the ancient Carthaginians and named their first daughter after the tragic Carthaginian figure, Sophonisba.  All their children were encouraged to cultivate their talents and five of the daughters became painters, but Sofonisba was the most accomplished and became the most famous.  Sofonisba was 14 when she was sent with her younger sister, Elena, to study with Bernardino Campi, a respected portrait and religious painter. When he moved to another city, she continued her education with Bernardino Gatti.  Read more…

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San Giuseppe Moscati - doctor

Remembering the kindness of a brilliant young doctor

Doctor and scientist Giuseppe Moscati was beatified by Pope Paul VI on this day in 1975.  Giuseppe was renowned for his kindness and generosity to his patients and even before his death people talked of ‘miracle’ cures being achieved by him.  He was canonised by Pope John Paul II in 1987 and his feast day is 16 November.  Moscati was born into a big family in Benevento in 1880. His father, a lawyer and magistrate, was active in the church and Giuseppe inherited his piety.  The family later moved to Naples and Giuseppe enrolled in the medical school of the University of Naples in 1897.  On graduating he went to work in a hospital but continued with his brilliant scientific research and attended Mass frequently.  When Vesuvius erupted in 1906 he helped evacuate all the elderly and paralysed patients before the roof collapsed on the hospital under the weight of the ash.  He worked tirelessly to research ways to eradicate cholera in Naples and personally cared for many of the soldiers wounded in the First World War.  He was compassionate to the poor and often gave them money as well as free medical treatment and a prescription.  Read more…


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15 November

Francesco Rosi - film director

Documentary style put him among greats of Italian cinema

The film director Francesco Rosi, one of Italy's most influential movie-makers over four decades, was born on this day in 1922 in Naples.  Rosi, who made his directing debut in 1958 and filmed his last movie in 1997, built on the fashion for neo-realism that dominated Italian cinema in the immediate post-war years and his films were often highly politicised.  Many of his works were almost pieces of investigative journalism, driven by his revulsion at the corruption and inequality he witnessed in the area in which he grew up, and the dubious relationships between local government and figures from the crime world.  His film Hands Over the City, for example, starring Rod Steiger as unscrupulous land developer, sought to show how the landscape of Naples was shaped by greed and political interests.  The film's disclaimer stated that “All characters and events narrated in this film are fictitious, but the social reality that created them is authentic.”  The Mattei Affair, which starred Gian Maria Volonté - himself a political activist - tells the story of Enrico Mattei, a former Italian resistance fighter who rose to be head of ENI, the state-owned oil company, and died in a plane crash in Sicily.  Read more…

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The murder of Pellegrino Rossi

Political assassination opened way to creation of Roman Republic

One of the key events during the revolutionary upheaval of 1848 in Italy took place on this day in that year when the politician Count Pellegrino Rossi was murdered at the Palazzo della Cancelleria, the seat of the government of the Papal States in Rome.  The event precipitated turmoil in Rome and led eventually to the formation of the short-lived Roman Republic.  Rossi was the Minister of the Interior in the government of Pope Pius IX and as such was responsible for a programme of unpopular reforms, underpinned by his conservative liberal stance, which gave only the well-off the right to vote and did nothing to address the economic and social disruption created by industrialisation.  Street violence, stirred up by secret societies such as Giuseppe Mazzini’s Young Italy movement, had been going on for weeks in Rome and Rossi had been declared an enemy of the people in meetings as far away as Turin and Florence.  There was also anger in Rome at Pius IX’s decision to withdraw the support of the Papal Army from the First Italian War of Independence, being fought between the Kingdom of Sardinia (Piedmont) and the Austrian Empire.  Read more…

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Annunzio Mantovani - conductor

Orchestra leader brought light relief during World War Two

Conductor and composer Annunzio Paolo Mantovani - best known simply as Mantovani - was born on this day in Venice in 1905.  The music produced by his orchestras, which became known as ‘the Mantovani sound', brought pleasure to millions and his recordings were best sellers in Britain and the US before the Beatles came on the scene.  Mantovani’s father, Benedetto Paolo Mantovani, who was known as ‘Bismarck’, was a violinist and leader of the orchestra of Teatro alla Scala opera house in Milan, at the time Arturo Toscanini was conductor.  The Mantovani family moved to England in 1912 after Bismarck was appointed conductor of the orchestra at Covent Garden.  Young Annunzio Mantovani studied the violin and piano in London before joining a touring orchestra. He quickly became a violin soloist and then a conductor.  He went on to form his own orchestra, which toured the country, made radio broadcasts and recorded albums for Columbia and Decca.  His music was popular with the troops, who danced to it with their sweethearts when they came home on leave during the Second World War. Read more…

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Roberto Cavalli – fashion designer

Florentine who conceived the sand-blasted look for jeans

The designer Roberto Cavalli was born on this day in 1940 in Florence.  Cavalli has become well-known in high-end Italian fashion for his exotic prints and for creating the sand-blasted look for jeans. From an artistic family, Cavalli has a grandfather, Giuseppe Rossi, who was a talented painter whose work is on show in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.  As a student, Cavalli attended an art institute where he learnt about printing textiles and in the early 1970s he invented and patented a printing process for leather and began creating patchworks of different materials.  When he took samples of his work to Paris he received commissions from such fashion houses as Hermes and Pierre Cardin. At the age of 32, Cavalli presented the first collection in his name in Paris and then showed it in Florence and Milan.  He opened his first boutique in Saint Tropez in 1972 and added further boutiques in Italy and other parts of France.  In 1994 he showed the first sand-blasted jeans in his autumn/winter collection and then worked with Lycra to invent stretch jeans in 1995.  In 2001 he opened his first café store in Florence and this was followed by the opening in Milan of the Just Cavalli café and another boutique on the fashionable Via della Spiga.  Read more…


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14 November

NEW - Enzo Cucchi - artist

Enjoyed prominence as part of Transavanguardia movement

The artist Enzo Cucchi, who was a prominent member of the Italian Transavanguardia movement, was born on this day in 1949 in Morro d'Alba, a walled town set among hills about 10km (6 miles) inland from the Adriatic and 24km (15 miles) west of Ancona in the Marche region.  The Transavanguardia, which peaked during the 1980s, was part of an international revival of expressionist painting. Other Italians who could be considered part of the movement included Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Nicolo de Maria and Mimmo Paladino.  Cucchi’s most important works include the frescoes of the Chapel of Monte Tamaro near Lugano, designed by the architect Mario Botta, which he painted between 1992 and 1994, and the design of the curtain for the theater La Fenice of Senigallia (1996), not far from Morro d’Alba.  In his early years, although his self-taught skills as a painter attracted praise, Cucchi was more interested in writing poetry. Some of his writing was published by La Nuova Foglio di Macerata, a small publishing house, through whom he met art critic Achille Bonito Oliva, who became an important figure in his career.  It was Oliva who came up with the term transavanguardia.  Read more…

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Carlo Emilio Gadda - writer and novelist

Author who drew comparisons with Levi and Joyce

The essayist and novelist Carlo Emilio Gadda, whose work has been compared with the writings of Primo Levi, James Joyce and Marcel Proust, was born on this day in 1893 in Milan.  His novels and short stories were considered outstanding for his original and innovative style, moving away from the rather staid language of Italian literature in the early 20th century, adding elements of dialect, technical jargon and wordplay.  It has been said that Gadda opted for his experimental style because he thought that only through the use of a fragmentary, incoherent language could he adequately portray what he considered a disintegrated world.  Born into an upper middle-class family living on Via Manzoni in the centre of Milan, Gadda lost his father when he was only a child, after which his mother had to bring up the family on limited means, although she refused to compromise with her lifestyle. His father’s business ineptitude and his mother’s obsession with keeping up appearances would figure strongly in his 1963 novel, La cognizione del dolore, published in English as Acquainted with Grief.  Gadda fought in the First World War as a volunteer with the Alpini and was captured at the Battle of Caporetto.  Read more…

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Aleardo Aleardi - poet and patriot

History-loving writer dreamed of a united Italy

Patriotic poet Aleardo Aleardi was born on this day in 1812 in Verona.  At the height of his success he was hailed as an important figure in the Risorgimento movement and there is now a school named after him in the city of his birth.  Aleardi’s poems are mostly about events in Italian history and his love for his home country, which was under Austrian occupation while he was growing up.  He was originally named Gaetano Maria but changed his name to Aleardi, the surname of his father, Count Giorgio Aleardi, when he started writing.  Aleardi studied law at Padova University but gradually became more interested in poetry, influenced by some of his fellow students who were involved in the romantic Risorgimento movement.  Risorgimento, which means resurgence, was the name for the political and social movement that led to the consolidation of the different states of the Italian peninsula into the single state of the Kingdom of Italy during the 19th century. Most historians agree that the process began in 1815 with the end of Napoleonic rule in Italy and was completed in 1871 when Rome became the capital of the new united Italy.  Read more…

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Giuseppina Strepponi – soprano

Death of the woman who inspired Donizetti and Verdi

Opera singer Giuseppina Strepponi died on this day in 1897 at the village of Sant’Agata in the province of Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna.  She was the second wife of the composer Giuseppe Verdi and is often credited with helping him achieve his first successes, having starred in several of his early operas.  Strepponi was born Clelia Maria Josepha Strepponi in Lodi, a little over 40km south-east of Milan, in 1815.  Her father was the organist at Monza Cathedral and also a composer and he gave her piano lessons when she was very young. At the age of 15 she was enrolled at the Milan Conservatory and she won first prize for singing in her final year.  Strepponi made her professional debut in 1834 at the Teatro Orfeo in Taranto and enjoyed her first success the following spring in Trieste, singing the title role in Rossini’s Matilde di Shabran. She quickly became a celebrity, singing Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini roles all over Italy to great acclaim.  She made her debut at Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1839 as Leonora in the first production of Giuseppe Verdi’s first opera, Oberto.  Her strong performance was one of the main reasons the opera was received so well.  Read more…

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Maria Cristina of Savoy

Pious princess was beatified by Pope Francis

Princess Maria Cristina Carlotta Giuseppina Gaetana Elisa of Savoy was born on this day in 1812 in Cagliari on the island of Sardinia.  She was the youngest child of King Victor Emmanuel I of Piedmont-Sardinia and his wife Queen Maria Teresa of Austria-Este.  Maria Cristina was described as beautiful, but she was also modest and pious and in 2014 she was beatified by the current Pope, Francis.  As a Savoy princess she had been expected to make an advantageous marriage alliance and when she was just 20 years of age she was married to Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies, in an attempt to keep southern Italy on friendly terms, at a ceremony in Genoa.  Modest and reserved, she was never comfortable at the royal court in Naples and she was unhappy with Ferdinand. But she was said to be loved by the ordinary people of the Two Sicilies, who were charmed by her beauty and kindness.  She had always been a devout Catholic and her commitment to God and the Church along with her beauty caused people to regard her as an angelic figure.  She gave birth to her only child, who would grow up to become Francis II of the Two Sicilies, in January 1836.  Read more…


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