Fascinating stories from each day of the year about the people and events that have shaped the culture and history of Italy
24 November 2021
24 November
23 November 2021
23 November
Franco Nero – actor
The film Camelot sparked long love affair with English actress
Francesco Clemente Giuseppe Sparanero, better known by his stage name Franco Nero, was born on this day in 1941 in San Prospero Parmense. Nero became well-known for playing the title role in Sergio Corbucci’s Spaghetti Western film Django in 1966 and then reprising the role in Nello Rossati’s film Django Strikes Again in 1987. The actor has had a long-standing relationship with British actress Vanessa Redgrave, which began in the 1960s during the filming of the musical comedy-drama Camelot. They had a son, Carlo Gabriel Redgrave Sparanero in 1969. Now known as Carlo Gabriel Nero, their son is a screenwriter and director. Franco Nero was the son of a Carabinieri officer, who was originally from San Severo, a city in the province of Foggia in Apulia. He grew up in Bedonia in Emilia-Romagna and then in Milan, where he studied briefly at the Economy and Trade Faculty of the University. He left there to study at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan. Nero’s first film role was a small part in Giuseppe Fina's Pelle Viva in 1962. After his success in Django, he played the part of Lancelot in Camelot, opposite Vanessa Redgrave as Guinevere, in 1967. Read more…
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Ludovico Einaudi – composer
Musician world famous for his unique blend of sounds
Pianist and film music composer Ludovico Maria Enrico Einaudi was born on this day in 1955 in Turin. Einaudi has composed the music for films such as The Intouchables and I’m Still Here and has released many solo albums for piano and orchestra. His distinctive music, which mixes classical with contemporary rhythms of rock and electronic, is now played all over the world and has been used as background music and in television commercials. Einaudi’s mother, Renata Aldrovandi, played the piano to him as a child and her father, Waldo Aldrovandi, was a pianist, opera conductor and composer, who went to live in Australia after the Second World War. His father, Giulio Einaudi, was a publisher, who worked with authors Italo Calvino and Primo Levi, and his grandfather, Luigi Einaudi, was President of Italy between 1948 and 1955. Einaudi started composing his own music and playing it on a folk guitar when he was a teenager. He began his musical training at the Conservatorio Verdi in Milan, obtaining a diploma in composition in 1982. He took an orchestration class with the composer Luciano Berio, in which, according to Einaudi himself, he learnt to have a very open way of thinking about music. Read more…
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Prospero Alpini - botanist
How coffee was first introduced to Europe
Physician and botanist, Prospero Alpini, was born on this day in 1553 in Marostica near Vicenza. He is credited with being the first person in Europe to observe and write about the coffee plant. Alpini went to study medicine in Padua in 1574 and after taking his degree settled down to work as a doctor in nearby Campo San Pietro. He was very interested in botany and so to extend his knowledge of exotic plants he travelled to Egypt in 1580 as physician to George Emo, the Venetian consul in Cairo. While in Egypt he studied date trees which helped him to work out that there were gender differences between plants. He wrote that: “the female date trees or palms do not bear fruit unless the branches of the male and female plants are mixed together, or, as is generally done, unless the dust found in the male sheath or male flowers is sprinkled over the female flowers.” In 1593 he was appointed professor of botany at Padua University and, after he died in 1617, he was succeeded in the role by his son, Alpino Alpini. His botanical work De Medicina Aegyptiorum is believed to contain the first report on the coffee plant ever published in the western world. Read more…
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Fred Buscaglione - singer and actor
Fifties sensation who died tragically young
The singer and actor Fred Buscaglione, a nightclub singer who became a huge star of the pop world in 1950s Italy, was born on this day in 1921 in Turin. Buscaglione’s style - he portrayed himself tongue-in-cheek as a sharp-suited gangster with a taste for whiskey and women - caught the imagination of an Italian public desperate to be entertained after the austerity of Fascism, when all ‘foreign’ music was banned. He formed a partnership with the writer Leo Chiosso after their first collaboration, on a song called Che bambola (What a Babe!), which resulted in more than one million record sales, catapulting Buscaglione to fame. They had several more hits, including Love in Portofino, which was covered by Andrea Bocelli in 2013 as the title track from an album. Born Ferdinando Buscaglione, he was from a creative family. His father was a painter and his mother a piano teacher. They enrolled their son at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Turin at the age of 11 but by his teens Buscaglione had adopted jazz as his passion. His career as a singer and musician was going well and Chiosso was one of the friends he had made through his appearances in night clubs around Turin. Read more…
22 November 2021
22 November
NEW - Joe Adonis - Mafia boss
Boy from mountainous Campania who became powerful New York mobster
The Mafia criminal Joe Adonis, who at one time was effectively America’s senior gangster as chairman of the so-called ‘Commission’, was born Giuseppe Antonio Doto on this day in 1902 at Montemarano, a small town in mountainous Campania. Doto became a friend and associate of the powerful Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, who would head one of the New York Mafia’s powerful Five Families. As Adonis, Doto would emerge as a powerful figure in his own right in Brooklyn and Manhattan and later New Jersey. Accounts of his arrival in the United States as a child vary. Many suppose that he travelled with his family among thousands of migrants from Italy who left for a new life in America in the 1900s, their names recorded at the immigrant inspection station on Ellis Island in 1909. Others suggest that he arrived in 1915, having travelled as a stowaway on a liner from Naples. Either way, he appears to have settled in Brooklyn, where he quickly turned to crime, making money through stealing and picking pockets. It was in partnership with Luciano and two up-and-coming figures in the Jewish-American underworld, Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel, that he became involved in bootlegging. Read more…
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Nevio Scala - footballer and coach
Led Parma to success in golden era of 1990s
Nevio Scala, a European Cup winner with AC Milan as a player and the most successful coach of Parma's golden era in the 1990s, was born on this day in 1947 in Lozzo Atestino, a small town in the Euganean Hills, just south of Padua. A midfielder who also played for Roma, Vicenza and Internazionale at the top level of Italian football, Scala was never picked for his country but won a Serie A title and a European Cup-Winners' Cup in addition to the European Cup with AC Milan. But his achievements with Parma as coach arguably exceeded even that, given that they were a small provincial club that had never played in Serie A when Scala was appointed. He had given notice of his ability by almost taking the tiny Calabrian club Reggina to Serie A in 1989 only a year after winning promotion from Serie C, and needed only one season to take Parma to the top flight for the first time. With the massive financial backing of Calisto Tanzi, the founder and chairman of the local dairy giants Parmalat, Scala then led Parma into a period of sustained success no one could have predicted. Between 1991 and 1995, Parma won the Coppa Italia, the European Cup-Winners' Cup, the European Super Cup and the UEFA Cup. Read more…
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Rocco Commisso - entrepreneur
US businessman with roots in Calabria
Rocco Commisso, the founder of the American cable TV provider Mediacom and owner of football clubs in the United States and Italy, was born on this day in 1949 in Marina di Gioiosa Ionica, a small seaside town in Calabria. With annual revenues of more than $2,000 million, Mediacom is the fifth largest cable company in the US, having been launched from Commisso’s basement in 1995, when he began to buy up small community cable systems, mainly in the Midwest and Southeast. It now has its headquarters in Blooming Grove, New York. Commisso, a football fan from his childhood, bought a majority stake in the New York Cosmos club in 2017 and completed the purchase of ACF Fiorentina in Italy two years later, with plans to return each club to its glory days of the past. With a southwest aspect on the Ionian coast, Marina di Gioiosa Ionica is something of an idyllic spot today, blessed with wide beaches and clear inviting water. As Commisso was growing up, however, it was a relative deprived area as Italy struggled to rebuild after World War Two and it was not uncommon for families to leave the area in search of prosperity elsewhere. Read more…
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Bernardo Pasquini - composer
Talented musician wrote music for a queen
Baroque composer Bernardo Pasquini died on this day in Rome in 1710. He is remembered as an important composer for the harpsichord and for his musical scores for operas. Along with his fellow composers Alessandro Scarlatti and Arcangelo Corelli, Pasquini was a member of the Arcadian Academy (Accademia degli Arcadi) which was set up in Rome by one of his patrons, Queen Christina of Sweden. Pasquini enjoyed Queen Christina’s protection while he was living in Rome and produced several operas in her honour. These were staged in Rome initially and then replayed in theatres all over Italy. Queen Christina had abdicated from the throne of Sweden in 1654, converted to Roman Catholicism and moved to live in Rome. While living in the Palazzo Farnese, she opened up her home for members of the Arcadian Academy to enjoy music, theatre, literature and languages with her. She became a cultural leader and protector of many Baroque artists, composers and musicians. The Baroque period, which influenced sculpture, painting and architecture, as well as literature, dance, theatre and music, began in Rome around 1600. Read more…
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Tasso’s patron raised Ferrara to the height of its glory
Alfonso II d’Este, who was to be the last Duke of Ferrara, was born on this day in 1533 in Ferrara in Emilia-Romagna. Famous as the protector of the poet Torquato Tasso, Alfonso II also took a keen interest in music. He was also the sponsor of the philosopher Cesare Cremonini, who was a friend of both Tasso and the scientist and astronomer Galileo Galilei. Although he was married three times, he failed to provide an heir for the Duchy. Alfonso was the eldest son of Ercole II d’Este and Renée de France, the daughter of Louis XII of France. As a young man, Alfonso fought in the service of Henry II of France against the Habsburgs but soon after he became Duke in 1559 he was forced by Pope Pius IV to send his mother back to France because she was a Calvinist. In 1583 he joined forces with the Emperor Rudolf II in his war against the Turks in Hungary. Alfonso II was proficient in Latin and French as well as Italian and like his ancestors before him encouraged writers and artists. He welcomed the poet Tasso to his court in Ferrara and he wrote some of his most important poetry while living there, including his epic poem, Gerusalemme Liberata. Read more…
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Paolo Gentiloni – politician
Italy’s 57th premier both noble and a Democrat
Italy’s Prime Minister from 2016 to 2018, Paolo Gentiloni, was born on this day in 1954 in Rome. A member of the Democratic Party, Gentiloni was asked to form a Government in December 2016 by Italian President Sergio Mattarella. A professional journalist before he entered politics, Gentiloni is a descendant of Count Gentiloni Silveri and holds the titles of Nobile of Filottranno, Nobile of Cingoli and Nobile of Macerata. The word nobile, derived from the Latin nobilis, meaning honourable, indicates a level of Italian nobility ranking somewhere between the English title of knight and baron. Gentiloni is related to the politician Vincenzo Ottorino Gentiloni, who was a leader of the Conservative Catholic Electoral Union and a key ally of Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti, who held the office five times between 1892 and 1921. Gentiloni attended the Classical Lyceum Torquato Tasso in Rome and went on to study at La Sapienza University in the city where he became a member of the Student Movement, a left wing youth organisation. He moved on to become a member of the Workers’ Movement for Socialism and graduated in Political Sciences. Read more…
Joe Adonis - Mafia boss
Boy from mountainous Campania who became powerful New York mobster
The mug shots of Joe Adonis held in the files of the New York police department in the 1930s |
Doto became a friend and associate of the powerful Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, who would head one of the New York Mafia’s powerful Five Families. As Adonis, Doto would emerge as a powerful figure in his own right in Brooklyn and Manhattan and later New Jersey.
Accounts of his arrival in the United States as a child vary. Many suppose that he travelled with his family among thousands of migrants from Italy who left for a new life in America in the 1900s, their names recorded at the immigrant inspection station on Ellis Island in 1909.
Others suggest that he arrived in 1915, having travelled as a stowaway on a liner from Naples. Either way, he appears to have settled in Brooklyn, where he quickly turned to crime, making money through stealing and picking pockets.
It was in partnership with Luciano and two up-and-coming figures in the Jewish-American underworld, Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel, that he became involved in bootlegging soon after the National Prohibition Act made the sale of alcohol illegal. Doto, who had a natural charm, found numerous clients among the actors, writers and producers that frequented the Broadway theatre scene.
Charles 'Lucky' Luciano, pictured in Rome in the 1940s, was a close friend of Adonis during his heyday |
Seeking to advance their careers as the Italian and Jewish gangs expanded their reach in the New York crime scene, Adonis became an enforcer for Frankie Yale, a Brooklyn racketeer, while Luciano took on a similar role working for Giuseppe Masseria.
Masseria became embroiled in a bloody battle for power with Salvatore Maranzano known as the Castellammarese War. By this time Adonis was working for Masseria. When ultimately, it became clear that Maranzano would prevail, Luciano secretly offered his services to Maranzano.
Word of this betrayal reached Masseria, whose immediate reaction was to want Luciano dead. He made the mistake, however, of asking Adonis to arrange the killing. Loyal to Luciano, Adonis warned his friend, who came up with a counter plot to eliminate Masseria.
This involved arranging a meeting with Masseria at a restaurant on Coney Island on 15 April, 1931, at one point in which Luciano excused himself to go to the bathroom. In his absence, Adonis, Siegel and two others - Vito Genovese and Alberto Anastasia - entered the restaurant and simultaneously opened fire on Masseria.
Salvatore Maranzano was ultimately killed by the ruthless Luciano |
Now Maranzano wanted Luciano out of the way but again Luciano was tipped off and instead, on 10 September, 1931, it was Maranzano who was killed, gunned down in his office in Manhattan by Luciano loyalists.
Adonis and Luciano presided over a lucrative bootlegging operation in Brooklyn and Midtown Manhattan, Adonis also moving into car sales and buying vending machines which he filled with stolen cigarettes. Luciano built on Masseria’s ideas for organising the New York crime scene by setting up a national committee, known as the 'Commission' or the 'Syndicate', as an umbrella organisation for gang activity across the whole of North America.
Meanwhile, Adonis helped protect himself and Luciano from attention by bribing politicians and high-ranking police officers.
Not everyone could be bought, however, and their luck ran out in 1936 when Thomas E Dewey, a state prosecutor, secured a conviction against Luciano on charges relating to his prostitution rackets that put him in jail for 30 years.
Genovese briefly took control of the Luciano family but fled to Italy to avoid prosecution in 1937, leaving Frank Costello as the new Luciano family capo, with Adonis at the head of the 'Syndicate'.
Luciano was released from prison in 1946 after helping the United States military plan their invasion of Sicily in 1943, but only on condition he was deported to Italy. Nonetheless, Luciano tried to hang on to his operations in New York and met with Adonis and other crime bosses in Havana, Cuba in 1946, with the intention of using the island as his base. Within less than a year, however, he was sent back to Italy after US authorities put pressure on the Cuban government to expel him.
Adonis pictured around the time he was deported to Italy |
Convicted in 1951 on charges of operating three illegal gambling rooms in New Jersey, he was handed a two-to-three year jail sentence, during which it was established that he had never obtained American citizenship and was deported as an illegal alien, eventually leaving after his last appeal against the deportation order was thrown out in 1956.
He managed to move enough money to bank accounts in Italy to live out the next decade or so in comfort, with an apartment in Milan and a villa outside Naples. Although Luciano also lived in the Naples area, they never met. Adonis did attend his former associate’s funeral in 1962, however.
Adonis himself died in 1971. Arrested by Italian police as part of a general round-up of Mafia suspects, he was moved to Serra de' Conti, a small town near the Adriatic, along with more than 100 other mobsters for questioning over the murder of Pietro Scaglione, the public prosecutor in Palermo, Sicily. Under interrogation, Adonis suffered a heart attack and died in hospital in nearby Ancona.
Despite having declared him an alien, the US government acceded to requests from Adonis’s family, who had remained in New Jersey, to have his body flown back to America and, after a small funeral attended only by immediate family, he was buried at Madonna Cemetery in Fort Lee, New Jersey, under the name of Joseph Anthony Doto.
Travel tip:A view of the town of Montemarano, situated in
the hills of inland Campania, near Avellino
Giuseppe Antonio Doto’s home town of Montemarano, situated about 30km (19 miles) east of the city of Avellino by road, is a good example of a typical town in Irpinia, the inland area of Campania that clings to ancient traditions. The area produces famous Campania wines such as Fiano di Avellino, Greco di Tufo, and Taurasi and among several festivals taking place annually in Montemarano is the Festa del Vino. Another is the Festa del Bosco, dedicated to woodlands produce such as chestnuts, mushrooms, and truffles. The annual Carnevale di Montemarano features the tarantella montemaranese, the town’s own version of the traditional southern Italian folk dance.
Travel tip:A view over the largely rebuilt city of Avellino,
which suffered war and earthquake damage
The city of Avellino has its origins in the ancient Roman settlement, Abellinum, although the present city was founded by the Lombards and ruled at different times by the Byzantines, Normans, Swabians, Angevin, Aragonese, the Viceroy of Spain, the Austrians and the Bourbons. Heavily bombed during World War Two by Allied planes attempting to cut off the retreat of German panzer units, it suffered further massive damage in the huge earthquake that affected the area in 1980. Nonetheless, it has a cathedral, dedicated to the Madonna dell 'Assunta, that was built in the 12th century and has a neoclassical facade redone in 1891.
Also on this day:
1533: The birth of Alfonso II d’Este, the last Duke of Ferrara
1710: The death of Baroque composer Bernardo Pasquini
1947: The birth of football coach Nevio Scala
1949: The birth of businessman Rocco Commisso
1954: The birth of former prime minister Paolo Gentiloni