24 March

NEW - Salvatore Viganò – dancer and choreographer

Ballet performer inspired Beethoven to compose music to suit his choreography

Salvatore Viganò, an innovative dancer who became the ballet master at La Scala opera house in Milan, was born on this day in 1769 in Naples.  He introduced the idea of ‘coreodramma’, a synthesis of dance and pantomime, in dramatic ballets based on historical and mythological themes and Shakespeare’s plays.  Viganò was born into a family of dancers and was the nephew of the composer Luigi Bocherini. When he was young, his main interests were literature and music. He studied composition with his uncle, Bocherini, and was composing his own music by the time he was a teenager.  His mother, Maria, Bocherini’s sister, had been a ballerina, and dance gradually became Viganò’s main interest. In 1788 he appeared as a dancer on the stage in Venice and the following year he performed in the coronation festivities of Charles IV of Spain.  His elder sister, Vincenza Vigano-Mombelli also became a dancer and she wrote the libretto for Rossini’s first opera, Demetrio e Polibio. While performing in Madrid,he met and married the dancer, Maria Medina. He also met the choreographer Jean Dauberval, who he later joined up with in France and England. His friendship with Dauberval stimulated his interest in choreography. Read more...

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Mimmo Jodice - photographer

Camera work with shades of metaphysical art

Domenico ‘Mimmo’ Jodice, who has been a major influence on artistic photography in Italy for half a century, was born on this day in 1934 in Naples.  Jodice, who was professor of photography at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli from 1969 to 1996, is best known for his atmospheric photographs of urban scenes, especially in his home city.  Often these pictures reflected his fascination with how Italian cities habitually mix the present and the future with echoes of the past in their urban landscapes, with the incongruous juxtapositions of ancient and modern that were characteristic of metaphysical art occurring naturally as part of urban evolution.  His books Vedute di Napoli (Views of Naples) and Lost in Seeing: Dreams and Visions of Italy have been international bestsellers and he has exhibited his work all over the world.  Born in the Sanità district of Naples, Jodice was the second of four children. His father died when he was still a boy and the requirement that he find work as soon as he was able meant he had only a limited education.  Nonetheless, he was drawn towards art and the theatre, classical music and jazz.  Read more…

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Dario Fo – writer and actor

Prolific playwright put the spotlight on corruption

Playwright and all-round entertainer Dario Fo was born in Leggiuno Sangiano in the Province of Varese in Lombardy on this day in 1926.  His plays have been widely performed and translated into many different languages. He is perhaps most well known for Accidental Death of an Anarchist and Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997.  Fo’s early work is peppered with criticisms of the corruption, crime, and racism that affected life in Italy at the time. He later moved on to ridicule Forza Italia and Silvio Berlusconi and in later life his targets included the banks and big business.  He was brought up near the shores of Lago Maggiore but moved to Milan to study. During the war he served with several branches of the forces before deserting. He returned to Milan to study architecture but gave it up to paint and work in small theatres presenting improvised monologues. In the 1950s Fo worked in radio and on stage performing his own work. He met and later married actress Franca Rame and they had a son, Jacopo, who also became a writer.  Read more…

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Luigi Einaudi - politician and winemaker

Composer's grandfather was President of the Republic

The politician, economist, journalist and winemaker Luigi Einaudi was born on this day in 1874 in Carrù, in the province of Cuneo in what is now Piedmont.   Einaudi, who is the grandfather of the musician and composer Ludovico Einaudi and the father of publisher Giulio Einaudi, was elected President of the new Italian Republic between 1948 and 1955, the second person to occupy the post.  He was actively involved with politics from his university days, when he supported socialist movements.  For a decade he edited a socialist magazine but later took a more conservative position. After being appointed to the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy in 1919, in the days when the upper house of the Italian parliament was a non-elected body, he was one of the signatories in forming the Italian Liberal Party (PLI).  The PLI initially joined forces with the Italian Fascists and it was through their support that Mussolini was able to win the 1924 general election with an absolute majority.  Einaudi had been both a journalist and an academic since graduating in law from Turin University in 1895.  Read more…

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Guido Menasci - poet, librettist and biographer

Respected writer and historian who found fame from an opera

The writer Guido Menasci, who is best known as a co-author of the libretto for composer Pietro Mascagni’s successful opera Cavalleria rusticana but was also a respected historian, was born on this day in 1867 in the Tuscan port of Livorno.  Menasci, a law graduate from the University of Pisa and briefly a prosecutor at the Court of Appeal in Lucca, wrote for a number of literary magazines in Italy and beyond and produced a biography of the German poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang Goethe that is considered a definitive work.  Fluent in French as well as Italian, he published books and gave lectures in Paris, often on the subject of art history, which was another of his fascinations.  Yet he was most famous for his work with Mascagni and his fellow librettist, Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, whom he met through his involvement with literary and cultural societies in Livorno, where all three grew up.  They collaborated on a number of operas, the most famous of which by some way was Cavalleria rusticana, which was performed for the first time in 1890, at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.   Based on a novella of the same name by Giovanni Verga, Cavalleria rusticana is a simple story of betrayal and revenge.  Read more…

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Giorgio Gori - politician

Mayor who steered city of Bergamo through Covid nightmare

The politician Giorgio Gori, who as Mayor of Bergamo became one of the spokespersons for Italy during the first stage of the Covid-19 pandemic, was born in Bergamo on this day in 1960.  Of 158,000 deaths from the virus in Italy since it was identified in a patient from the town of Codogno in February 2020, more than 39,000 have been in the Lombardy region, with the city of Bergamo and the surrounding area suffering the heaviest toll.  Bergamo province lost 4,500 citizens in the first month of the pandemic alone and is haunted by the image of a convoy of military vehicles carrying coffins away for cremation elsewhere because the city’s own crematorium could no longer cope with the numbers of dead.  As television crews descended on the city, Gori regularly agreed to be interviewed on camera and thus was seen by audiences in many countries as the story of Covid-19’s devastating impact on Italy dominated news bulletins.  Gori’s own background is in the media. Educated in the magnificent but traditionally demanding surroundings of the Liceo Classico Paolo Sarpi in Bergamo’s historic Città Alta, he went on to study architecture at the University of Milan but at the same time began to contribute to local newspapers, including L’Eco di Bergamo and Bergamo-Oggi, and the city’s own television station, BergamoTV.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Lost in Seeing: Italy, Thirty Years of Visions, by Mimmo Jodice. Words by Francine Prose

Lost in Seeing covers a 30-year journey through the changes of the Italian scene.  Mimmo Jodice, one of the greatest Italian photographers, offers unexpected visions and unseen things, famous places and territories of the imagination. He crossed Italy from the north to the south in his modern Grand Tour, drawing a comprehensive portrait of striking images. Jodice’s magical realism leads us through the Mediterranean islands, the Italian countryside, the restoration of St. Peter’s church in Rome, the decommissioning of Venice-Marghera, the remains of Pompeii, and the urban transformations and the sites of archaeology.  Seen through his lens, Italy takes on a whole new aspect; even its landmarks vibrate with movement and possibility.

Mimmo Jodice is one of the main names in the history of photography and a prominent protagonist of the Italian cultural debate for much of his working and academic life. Francine Prose is an acclaimed author of novels, short stories and non-fiction, a contributing editor at Harper's and writes on art for the Wall Street Journal.

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Salvatore Viganò – dancer and choreographer

Ballet performer inspired Beethoven to compose music to suit his choreography

Viganò's innovative choreographer
helped popularise ballet in Italy

Salvatore Viganò, an innovative dancer who became the ballet master at La Scala opera house in Milan, was born on this day in 1769 in Naples.

He introduced the idea of ‘coreodramma’, a synthesis of dance and pantomime, in dramatic ballets based on historical and mythological themes and Shakespeare’s plays.

Viganò was born into a family of dancers and was the nephew of the composer Luigi Bocherini. When he was young, his main interests were literature and music. He studied composition with his uncle, Bocherini, and was composing his own music by the time he was a teenager.

His mother, Maria, Bocherini’s sister, had been a ballerina, and dance gradually became Viganò's main interest. In 1788 he appeared as a dancer on the stage in Venice and the following year he performed in the coronation festivities of Charles IV of Spain.

His elder sister, Vincenza Viganò-Mombelli also became a dancer and she wrote the libretto for Gioachino Rossini’s first opera, Demetrio e Polibio.

While performing in Madrid,he met and married the dancer, Maria Medina. He also met the choreographer Jean Dauberval, who he later joined up with in France and England. His friendship with Dauberval stimulated his interest in choreography.

After dancing and choreographing ballets in Vienna, for a few years, Viganò returned to live in Italy. By 1791 he and his wife were a successful partnership performing all over Italy and he had choreographed his first ballet, Raoul de Crèqui.

Salvatore Viganò was appointed
ballet master at La Scala in 1811

Viganò was active at Teatro San Carlo in his native city of Naples, where he initiated the ‘show dance’ being performed during the interval of an opera.

Viganò’s ballets were very dramatic and he would often write the music for them himself if he couldn’t find the music he wanted. He tried to select music for his ballets that was appropriate to their themes and he combined conventional dance movements with pantomime. He choreographed more than 40 ballets.

Beethoven composed the music for Viganò’s ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, especially for the dancer, in 1801.

Viganò became ballet master at La Scala in 1811. The theatre in Milan was Italy’s principal opera and ballet theatre and under Viganò’s influence, ballet began to flourish in Italy. A rich female admirer left her entire fortune to him and he was able to concentrate on choreographing and perfecting his ballets with no money worries.

Viganò trained the Neapolitan dancer Carlo Blasis who carried on the traditions that Viganò himself had learnt from Dauberval. The French choreographer had learnt them from Jean-Georges Noverre, who is considered the creator of ballet d’action, the precursor of 19th century ballet. Noverre is considered so important to the art of ballet that his birthday is now observed as International Dance Day and Viganò has gone down in history as providing the vital link in perpetuating his techniques.

Salvatore Viganò died in Milan in 1821.

Teatro di San Carlo in Naples is the oldest
opera house in continous use in Italy

Travel tip:

Teatro di San Carlo in Naples was officially opened in 1737, ahead of La Scala in Milan and La Fenice in Venice. Built in Via San Carlo close to Piazza del Plebiscito, the main square in Naples, Teatro di San Carlo quickly became one of the most important opera houses in Europe and renowned for its excellent productions. The theatre was designed by Giovanni Antonio Medrano for the Bourbon King of Naples, Charles I. The official inauguration was on the King’s saint’s day, the festival of San Carlo, on the evening of 4 November. There was a performance of L’Achille in Sciro by Pietro Metastasio with music by Domenico Sarro, who also conducted the orchestra for the music for two ballets.

Travel tip:

Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, where Viganò served as ballet master, was officially inaugurated in 1778. Known to Italians simply as La Scala, the theatre has become the leading opera house in the world. A fire had destroyed the Teatro Regio Ducale, which had previously been the home of opera in Milan, and a new theatre was built on the site of the former Church of Santa Maria alla Scala, which is how the theatre got its name. Many of the world’s finest singers have appeared on La Scala’s stage during the past 200 years and the theatre has hosted the premieres of operas by Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini. The original 18th century structure was renovated in 1907 and, after bomb damage during World War II, it had to be rebuilt and was reopened in 1946. The museum at La Scala has on display a bust of Salvatore Viganò by Lorenzo Bartolini.

More reading:

How the great Carla Fracci changed her mind about ballet

Pierina Legnani’s conquest of St Petersburg

A Neapolitan star who thrilled audiences across Europe

Also on this day:

1867: The birth of poet and librettist Guido Menasci

1874: The birth of politician Luigi Einaudi

1926: The birth of playwright and actor Dario Fo

1934: The birth of photographer Mimmo Jodice

1960: The birth of Bergamo politician Giorgio Gori

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23 March

Lorenzino de’ Medici - assassin

Mystery over motive for killing cousin

Lorenzino de’ Medici, who became famous for the assassination of his cousin, the Florentine ruler Alessandro de’ Medici, was born on this day in 1514 in Florence.  The killing took place on the evening of January 6, 1537.  The two young men - Alessandro was just four years older - were ostensibly friends and Lorenzino was easily able to lure Alessandro to his apartments in Florence on the promise of a night of passion with a woman who had agreed to meet him there.  Lorenzino, sometimes known as Lorenzaccio, left him alone, promising to return with the woman in question, at which point Alessandro dismissed his entourage and waited in the apartments.  When Lorenzino did return, however, it was not with a female companion but with his servant, Piero, and the two attacked Alessandro with swords and daggers. Although a struggle ensued, they killed him.  The motive has been debated for centuries. One theory was that it was an act of revenge following a legal controversy the previous year, when Alessandro sided against Lorenzino in a dispute over the inheritance of his great, great grandfather, Pierfrancesco the Elder.  Read more…

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Franco Battiato – singer-songwriter

Long career of a musical philosopher

One of the most popular singer-songwriters in Italy, Franco Battiato, was born on this day in 1945 in Ionia in Sicily.  Nicknamed Il Maestro, Battiato has written many songs with philosophical and religious themes. He has also had a long-lasting professional relationship with Italian singer Alice, with whom he represented Italy at the 1984 Eurovision Song Contest.  Battiato graduated from high school at the Liceo Scientifico Archimede in Acireale, a city in the province of Catania in Sicily.  He went to Rome and then moved on to Milan, where he won his first musical contract. After his first single, La Torre, was released, Battiato performed the song on television. After some success with the romantic song E l’amore, he released the science fiction single La convenzione, which was judged to be one of the finest Italian progressive rock songs of the 1970s.  The albums of electronic music he produced in the ‘70s, obscure at the time, are now sought after by collectors.  His popularity grew after he moved away from progressive rock to a more mainstream pop style, producing music that was regarded as elegant, yet easy to listen to. Read more…

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Ugo Tognazzi - comic actor

Achieved international fame through La Cage aux Folles

Ugo Tognazzi, the actor who achieved international fame in the film La Cage aux Folles, was born on this day in 1922 in Cremona.  Renowned for his wide repertoire in portraying comic characters, Tognazzi made more than 62 films and worked with many of Italy's top directors.  Along with Vittorio Gassman, Alberto Sordi and Nino Manfredi, Tognazzi was regarded as one of the four top stars of commedia all'italiana - comedy the Italian way - in the 1960s and 1970s.  In 1981 he won the award for best actor at the Cannes International Film Festival for his role in Bernardo Bertolucci's Tragedia di un Uomo Ridicolo (The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man).  His work was widely acclaimed in Italy, but it was not until he was cast in the role of homosexual cabaret owner Renato Baldi in the French director Édouard Molinaro's 1979 movie La Cage Aux Folles that he became known outside Italy.   The film became in its time the most successful foreign language film ever released in the United States, with box office receipts of more than $20 million.  The film spawned two sequels in which Tognazzi reprieved the role of the mincing Baldi, who in the story was the joint owner of a night club in St Tropez that specialised in drag acts.  Read more…

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The founding of the Italian Fascists

Mussolini launched party at 1919 Milan rally

Italy's notorious dictator Benito Mussolini officially formed what would become known as the National Fascist Party on this day in 1919 at a rally in Milan's Piazza San Sepolcro.  A war veteran and former socialist activist who had moved towards a more nationalist political stance, Mussolini initially drew his followers together as the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Group).  This group evolved into the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF) two years later, sweeping to power in 1922 when King Victor Emmanuel III, fearing civil war after 30,000 of Mussolini's supporters, the Blackshirts, marched on Rome, asked Mussolini to form a government.  Born the son of a blacksmith in Predappio, in Emilia-Romagna, Mussolini had been an active socialist, first in Switzerland, where he had moved as a 19-year-old to seek work and avoid military service, and again when he returned to Italy.  He became a leading figure in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and edited the left-wing newspaper Avanti.  But he was expelled by the PSI because of his opposition to the party's neutral stance on the First World War.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance, by Paul Strathern

A dazzling account of the infamous family that become one of the most powerful in Europe, weaving its history with Renaissance greats from Leonardo da Vinci to Galileo.  Against the background of an age which saw the rebirth of ancient and classical learning, The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance is a remarkably modern story of power, money and ambition. Strathern paints a vivid narrative of the dramatic rise and fall of the Medici family in Florence, as well as the Italian Renaissance which they did so much to sponsor and encourage.  Strathern also follows the lives of many of the great Renaissance artists with whom the Medici had dealings, including Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello; as well as scientists such as Galileo and Pico della Mirandola; and the fortunes of those members of the Medici family who achieved success away from Florence, including the two Medici popes and Catherine de' Médicis, who became Queen of France and played a major role in that country through three turbulent reigns.

Paul Strathern studied philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin. He has lectured in philosophy and mathematics. He is a Somerset Maugham Prize-winning novelist and a prolific author of non-fiction books, mostly on popular history.

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22 March

NEW - Lea Pericoli - tennis player

Star remembered for on-court fashion as much as tournament success

The tennis player Lea Pericoli, who won 30 tournaments on the international circuit between 1953 and 1972, was born in Milan on this day in 1935.  Pericoli, who continued playing until the age of 40, also won 27 titles at the Italian national championships, a record that still stands today.  She never progressed beyond the last 16 in singles at three three Grand Slam tournaments in which she participated but was a semi-finalist twice in women’s and mixed doubles at the French Open in Paris, playing on the red clay surface which most suited her game.  Yet she achieved fame beyond mere results after joining up with the British player-turned-fashion designer Teddy Tinling, whose designs she would often be the first to wear on court.  In an era not long after a female player wearing only a calf-length skirt was considered mildly outrageous, Tinling dressed Pericoli in a succession of culottes, short dresses and skirts, extravagantly decorated with lacy frills, sometimes feathers and even mink.  Crowds were drawn to Pericoli’s matches as much to see what she was wearing as to watch her play.  Read more…

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Nino Manfredi - actor and director

Totò fan became maestro of commedia all’italiana

The actor and director Saturnino ‘Nino’ Manfredi, who would become known as the last great actor of the commedia all’italiana genre, was born on this day in 1921 in Castro dei Volsci, near Frosinone in Lazio.  Manfredi made more than 100 movies, often playing marginalised working-class figures in the bittersweet comedies that characterised the genre, which frequently tackled important social issues and poked irreverent fun at some of the more absurd aspects of Italian life, in particular the suffocating influence of the church.  He was a favourite of directors such as Dino Risi, Luigi Comencini, Ettore Scola and Franco Brusati, who directed him in the award-winning Pane and cioccolata (Bread and Chocolate), which evoked the tragicomic existence of immigrant workers and was considered one of his finest performances.  It helped him fulfil his dream of following in the footsteps of his boyhood idol Totò, the Neapolitan comic actor whose eccentric characters took enormous liberties in mocking Italian institutions, and to be spoken off in the company of Ugo Tognazzi, Vittorio Gassman and Alberto Sordi as a true maestro of commedia all’italiana.  Read more…

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'La Castiglione' – model and secret agent

Beautiful woman helped the cause of Italian unification

Virginia Oldoini, who became known as La Castiglione, was born on this day in 1837 in Florence.  She became the mistress of the Emperor Napoleon III of France and also made an important contribution to the early development of photography.  She was born Virginia Oldoini to parents who were part of the Tuscan nobility, but originally came from La Spezia in Liguria. At the age of 17 she married the Count of Castiglione, who was 12 years older than her, and they had one son, Giorgio.  Her cousin was Camillo, Count of Cavour, who was the prime minister to Victor Emmanuel II, the King of Sardinia, later to become the first King of a united Italy.  When the Countess travelled with her husband to Paris in 1855, Cavour asked her to plead the cause of Italian unity with Napoleon III.  Considered to be the most beautiful woman of her day, she became Napoleon III’s mistress and her husband demanded a separation. During her relationship with Napoleon III she influenced Franco-Italian political relations, mingled with European nobility and met Otto von Bismarck.  She became known both for her beauty and elaborate clothes.  Read more…

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Vittorio Emanuele II Monument - Rome landmark

‘Altar of the Fatherland’ built to honour unified Italy’s first king

The foundation stone of Rome’s huge Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II was laid on this day in 1885 in the presence of his son and successor Umberto I and his family.  The monument, which took half a century to complete fully, occupies a site on the northern slope of the Capitoline (Campidoglio) Hill on the south-eastern side of the modern city centre, a few steps from the ruins of the Forum, the heart of ancient Rome.  Built in white Botticino marble, the multi-tiered monument is 135m (443 ft) wide, 130m (427 ft) deep, and 70m (230 ft) high, rising to 81m (266ft) including the two statues of a chariot-mounted winged goddess Victoria on the summit of the two propylaea.  Its appearance has earned it various nicknames, ranging from the ‘wedding cake’ to the ‘typewriter’, although it is officially known as Vittoriano or Altare della Patria.  The Altar of the Fatherland is actually just one part of the monument, at the front and in the centre, consisting of an inset statue of the goddess Roma and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where two soldiers guard an eternal flame.  Above it is a large bronze horse-back statue of Vittorio Emanuele II himself on a central plinth in front of the broad upper colonnade.  Read more…

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Michele Sindona - fraudster and killer

Failed banker ordered murder of investigating lawyer

The shadowy banker Michele Sindona, who had links to underworld figures in Italy and America as well as prominent politicians, died in hospital in the Lombardy town of Voghera, 70km (43 miles) south of Milan, on this day in 1986.  His death, attributed to cyanide poisoning, came four days after he had been sentenced to life imprisonment for ordering the killing of a lawyer investigating the collapse of his $450 million financial empire.  His own lawyer claimed Sindona had been murdered but although it was never established beyond doubt, the circumstances of his death, caused by drinking coffee laced with the poison at breakfast in Voghera's maximum-security prison, pointed towards suicide.  During his chequered career, which also saw him sentenced to 25 years' jail in America for fraud following the failure of the Franklin National Bank on Long Island, Sindona had links with Mafia bosses in Sicily and New York, with the illegal Propaganda Due masonic lodge and with the controversial head of the Vatican Bank, the American Archbishop, Paul Marcinkus.  He had close ties with another Vatican Bank client who met an untimely death, Roberto Calvi. Read more…

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Book of the Day: The A to Z of Italian Cinema, by Gino Moliterno

Italian cinema is regarded as one of the great pillars of world cinema. Films such as Ladri di biciclette (1948), La dolce vita (1960), and Nuovo cinema Paradiso (1988) attracted international acclaim and a reputation which only continues to grow. Italian cinema has produced such acting legends as Sophia Loren and Roberto Benigni, as well as world-renowned filmmakers including Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone, Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and Lina Wertmüller, the first woman to be nominated for the Best Director award. The A to Z of Italian Cinema provides a better understanding of the role Italian cinema has played in film history through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, appendices, black and white photos, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on actors, actresses, movies, producers, organisations, awards, film credits, and terminology.

Gino Moliterno is head of the film studies program at Australian National University.

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