23 April

Stefano Bontade - Mafia supremo

Well-connected Cosa Nostra boss had links to ex-premier Andreotti

Stefano Bontade, one of the most powerful and well connected figures in the Sicilian Mafia in the 1960s and 1970s, was born on this day in 1939 in Palermo, where he was murdered exactly 42 years later in a birthday execution that sparked a two-year war between the island’s rival clans.  Known as Il Falco – the Falcon – he was said to have close links with a number of important politicians in Sicily and with the former Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti.  He was strongly suspected of being a key figure in the 1962 murder of Enrico Mattei, the president of Italy’s state-owned oil and gas conglomerate ENI, and in the bogus kidnapping of Michele Sindona, the disgraced banker who used the Vatican Bank to launder the proceeds of Cosa Nostra heroin trafficking.  Born into a Mafia family, Bontade controlled the Villagrazia area in the south-west of Palermo and became head of the Santa Maria di Gesù crime family at the age of 25 when his father, Francesco Paolo Bontade, a major Cosa Nostra boss known as Don Paolino, stepped down in failing health.  He was banished to the mainland, specifically Qualiano in Campania, following his arrest in 1972.  Read more…

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Ruggero Leoncavallo – opera composer

Writer and musician created one of the most popular operas of all time

Ruggero Leoncavallo, the composer of the opera, Pagliacci, was born on this day in 1857 in Naples.  Pagliacci - which means 'clowns' - is one of the most popular operas ever written and is still regularly performed all over the world.  Leoncavallo also wrote the song, Mattinata, often performed by Enrico Caruso and still recorded by today’s tenors.  Leoncavallo was the son of a judge and moved with his father from Naples to live in the town of Montalto Uffugo in Calabria when he was a child.  He later returned to Naples to be educated and then studied literature at the University of Bologna under the poet Giosuè Carducci.  Leoncavallo initially worked as a piano teacher in Egypt but then moved to Paris where he found work as an accompanist for artists singing in cafes.  He then moved to Milan where he taught the piano and started to compose operas.  After the success of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, Leoncavallo produced his own verismo work, Pagliacci. Verismo was a post-romantic operatic tradition, often featuring true stories about the lives of poor people.  Leoncavallo claimed he had derived the plot for Pagliacci from a real-life murder trial.  Read more…

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Milva - singer and actress

Popular star of five decades

The singer and actress known as Milva died on this day in 2021 in Milan at the age of 81.  Born Maria Ilva Biolcati in Goro, a fishing village on the Po delta, her popularity was such that she sold more than 80 million records. Her output was extraordinary, running to 126 singles and a staggering 173 albums in a career spanning more than half a century. No Italian artist has recorded so many albums.   For a time she bestrode the pop world, earning the nickname La Pantera di Goro  - The Panther of Goro - as recognition by the Italian media of her status as one of the three best-loved female performers of her generation, alongside Mina - dubbed the Tiger of Cremona - and Iva Zanicchi, who found herself labelled the Eagle of Ligonchio.  Yet Milva was equally at home with the musical theatre of Bertolt Brecht and the operatic works of Luciano Berio and earned plaudits early in career when she sang Édith Piaf's repertoire at the prestigious Olympia theatre in Paris.  She was said to have an uncanny ability to sing almost any kind of music in any language after listening to it just once.  Her versatility enabled her to adapt to new trends in music and prolong her career.  Read more…

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Gaspara Stampa – poet

Beautiful sonnets were inspired by unrequited love

Gaspara Stampa, the greatest female poet of the Italian Renaissance, died on this day in 1554 in Venice at the age of 31.  She is regarded by many as the greatest Italian female poet of any age, despite having had such a brief life.  Gaspara was born in Padua and lived in the city until she was eight years old. Her father, Bartolomeo, had been a jewel and gold merchant, but after he died, Gaspara’s mother, Cecilia, took her three children to live in Venice. They were accommodated in the house of Geronimo Morosini, who was descended from a noble Venetian family, in the parish of Santi Gervasio and Protasio, now known as San Trovaso.  Along with her sister, Cassandra, and brother, Baldassare, Gaspara was educated in literature, music, history and painting. She excelled at singing and playing the lute and her home became a cultural hub as it was visited by many Venetian writers, painters and musicians, among them Francesco Sansovino, a poet and writer who was the son of the great Florentine architect, Jacopo Sansovino.  Gaspara dedicated most of her poems to Count Collatino di Collalto of Treviso, with whom she had an affair.  Read more…

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Gianandrea Noseda - conductor

Milanese musician has achieved worldwide acclaim

Gianandrea Noseda, who is recognised as one of the leading orchestra conductors of his generation, was born on this day in 1964 in Milan.  He holds the title of Cavaliere Ufficiale al Merito della Repubblica Italiana for his contribution to the artistic life of Italy.  Noseda studied piano and composition in Milan and began studying conducting at the age of 27.  He made his debut as a conductor in 1994 with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi. He won the Cadaques International Conducting Competition for young conductors in Spain the same year.  In 1997 he became principal guest conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg and during his time there became fluent in Russian.  In 2002 he became principal conductor of the BBC Philharmonic and in this role led live performances in Manchester of Beethoven’s nine symphonies. In 2006 his title was changed to chief conductor.  The London Symphony Orchestra announced the appointment of Noseda as its new principal guest conductor in 2016.  Noseda has been Music Director of the Teatro Regio Torino since 2007, taking their orchestra to the Edinburgh Festival in 2017.  Read more… 

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Book of the Day: Mafia Republic: Cosa Nostra, 'Ndrangheta and Camorra from 1946 to the Present, by John Dickie

In 1946, Italy became a democratic Republic, thereby entering the family of modern western nations. But deep within Italy there lurked a forgotten curse: three major criminal brotherhoods, whose methods had been honed over a century of experience. As Italy grew, so did the mafias. Sicily's Cosa Nostra, the camorra from Naples, and the mysterious 'ndrangheta from Calabria stood ready to enter the wealthiest and bloodiest period of their long history.  Italy made itself rich by making scooters, cars and handbags. The mafias carved out their own route to wealth through tobacco smuggling, construction, kidnapping and narcotics. And as criminal business grew exponentially, the mafias grew not just more powerful, but became more interconnected. There followed a titanic confrontation between heroic representatives of the law, and mafiosi who could no longer tolerate any obstacle to their ambitions. This was a war for Italy's future as a civilized country. At its peak in 1992-93, the 'ndrangheta was beheading people in the street, and the Sicilian mafia murdered its greatest enemies, investigating magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, before embarking on a terrorist bombing campaign on the Italian mainland.  Today, the long shadow of mafia history still hangs over the nation. Its reach is astonishing: it controls much of Europe's wholesale cocaine trade, and representatives from as far away as Germany, Canada and Australia come to Calabria to seek authorisation for their affairs.  In Mafia Republic, John Dickie shows how the Italian mafias have grown in power and become more and more interconnected, with terrifying consequences.

John Dickie is Professor of Italian Studies at University College, London and author of the international bestsellers Cosa Nostra and Mafia Brotherhoods. 

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22 April

Vittorio Jano - motor racing engineer

Genius behind the success of Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Ferrari

Born on this day in 1891, Vittorio Jano was among the greatest engine designers in motor racing history.  Jano's engines powered cars for Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Ferrari during a career that spanned four decades, winning numerous Grand Prix races.  The legendary Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio won the fourth of his five Formula One world championships in Jano's Lancia-Ferrari D50, in 1956.  Almost 30 years earlier, Jano's Alfa Romeo P2 won the very first Grand Prix world championship in 1925, while its successor, the P3, scored a staggering 46 race wins between 1932 and 1935.  He worked for Ferrari from the mid-50s onwards, where his greatest legacy was the V-8 Dino engine, which was the staple of Ferrari cars on the track and the road between 1966 and 2004.  Jano's parents were from Hungary, but settled in Italy, where his father worked as a mechanical engineer in Turin.  He was born in the small town of San Giorgio Canavese in Piedmont, about 35km (22 miles) north of Turin, and was originally called Viktor János.  Following his father into engineering, he joined Fiat at the age of just 20.  Read more…

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Fiorenza Cossotto - operatic mezzo-soprano

Career overshadowed by story of ‘row’ with Maria Callas

Fiorenza Cossotto, a singer considered one of the greatest mezzo-sopranos of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1935 in Crescentino in Piedmont.  Cossotto was hailed for her interpretations of the major mezzo and contralto roles from mid-19th-century Italian operas, particularly those of Giuseppe Verdi such as Aida, Il trovatore and Don Carlos, but also Gaetano Donizetti, Amilcare Ponchielli, Vincenzo Bellini and the other important composers of the day.  Yet she is often remembered for a supposed spat with Maria Callas that led the Greek-American soprano to walk off the stage during her final performance at the Opéra in Paris of her signature role in Bellini’s Norma in 1965.  The incident in question took place immediately after Callas, as Norma, and Cossotto, as Adalgisa, had joined in their duet ‘Mira, o Norma’.  Callas, by that stage a little below her prime, was notoriously temperamental and within moments onlookers were imagining a row, theorising that Cossotto had tried to sabotage Callas’s performance by holding her own high notes longer and singing over Callas.  Read more…

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Alida Valli - actress

Scandal dogged star admired by Mussolini

The actress Alida Valli, who was once described by Benito Mussolini as the most beautiful woman in the world after Greta Garbo, died on this day in 2006 at the age of 84.  One of the biggest stars in Italian cinema in the late 1930s and 40s, when she starred in numerous romantic dramas and comedies, she was best known outside Italy for playing Anna Schmidt, the actress girlfriend of Harry Lime in Carol Reed’s Oscar-winning 1949 classic The Third Man.  She was cast in the role by the producer David O Selznick, who shared the Fascist leader’s appreciation for her looks, and who billed her simply as Valli, hoping it would create for her a Garboesque enigmatic allure.  Later, however, she complained that having one name made her “feel silly”.  Valli was born in Pola, Istria, then part of Italy (now Pula, Croatia), in 1921. She was christened Baroness Alida Maria Laura Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg, on account of a noble line to her paternal grandfather, Baron Luigi Altenburger, an Austrian-Italian from Trento and a descendant of the Counts d’Arco.  Her father was a journalist and professor. The family moved to Como when she was young.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Grand Prix Ferrari: The Years of Enzo Ferrari's Power, 1948-1980, by Anthony Pritchard

The history of racing Ferraris is extremely complex, with a succession of brilliant, interesting, and sophisticated competition cars that have vied for supremacy on the race tracks of the world for over 60 years. In this book, author Anthony Pritchard, a leading motor racing historian and a keen enthusiast of the marque, presents an enthralling narrative of Ferrari's racing history. With detailed model development tables, racing specifications, chassis numbers, and comprehensive race results, this account of Ferrari's formidable motor racing history is supported with 300 colour and black and white photographs. This edition of Grand Prix Ferrari is a limited collectors’ edition of 1,500 copies.

The late Anthony Pritchard was a solicitor by profession but became better known as a motor racing enthusiast, prolific author and an authority on Maserati and Ferrari. His book Maserati: A History, published in 1976, is still regarded as the standard history on the marque.

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21 April

NEW - Pietro Della Valle – composer and travel writer

Adventurous Roman wrote unique accounts of 17th century Persia and India 

Composer, musicologist, and writer Pietro Della Valle, who travelled to the Holy Land, Persia and India during the Renaissance and wrote about his experiences in letters to a friend, died on this day in 1652 in Rome.  Della Valle was born in Rome into a wealthy and noble family and grew up to study Latin, Greek, classical mythology and the Bible. Another member of his family was Cardinal Andrea della Valle, after whom the Basilica Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome was named.  Having been disappointed in love, Pietro Della Valle vowed to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He sailed from Venice to Istanbul, where he lived for more than a year learning Turkish and Arabic.  He then travelled to Jerusalem, by way of Alexandria, Cairo, and Mount Sinai, where he visited the holy sites. He wrote regular letters about his travels to Mario Schipano, a professor of medicine in Naples, who later published them in three volumes.  Della Valle moved on to Damascus, went to Baghdad, where he married a Christian woman, Sitti Maani Gioenida, before moving on to Persia, now known as Iran. While in the Middle East, Della Valle created one of the first modern records of the location of ancient Babylon.  Read more…

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Alessandro Moreschi - the last castrato

Only singer of his type to make solo recordings

Alessandro Moreschi, the singer generally recognised as the last castrato, and the only castrato of whom solo recordings were made, died on this day in 1922 in his apartment in Rome.  Suffering from pneumonia, Moreschi passed away in his apartment in Via Plinio, just a few minutes walk from the Vatican, where he sang for 30 years as a member of the Sistine Chapel choir.  Castrati were male classical singers with voices that were the equivalent of the female soprano, mezzo-soprano or contralto, but which carried much greater power. As the name suggests, these vocal qualities in men were produced through castration, which had to take place before puberty to prevent normal development.  The procedure both impaired the development of the larynx so that the pre-pubescent vocal range was retained and altered the way in which the subject’s bones developed, which resulted often in unusually long limbs and, more significantly, very long ribs, which gave the castrato’s lungs unrivalled capacity.  It was a barbaric practice and many boys did not survive it, but the rewards for those who did were potentially huge.   Read more…

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The birth of Rome

City said to have been founded on April 21, 753 BC

Three days of celebrations in Rome mark the annual Natale di Roma Festival, which commemorates the founding of the city in 753BC.  The traditional celebrations take place largely in the large open public space of Circus Maximus, which hosts many historical re-enactments.  In past years a costumed parade has toured the city, featuring more than 2,000 gladiators, senators, vestal virgins and priestesses.  City museums traditionally offer free entry and many of the city’s restaurants have special Natale di Roma menus.  After dark, many public places are lit up, torches illuminate the Aventine Hill, and firework displays take place by the Tiber river.  According to legend, Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, founded Rome on the site where they were suckled by a she-wolf as orphaned infants.  They were said to be the sons of Rhea Silvia, the daughter of King Numitor of Alba Longa, a city located in the nearby Alban Hills southeast of what would become Rome.  Before they were born, Numitor was deposed by his younger brother Amulius, who murdered his existing son and forced Rhea to become a vestal virgin so that she would not give birth to rival claimants to his title.  Read more…

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Cosimo I de' Medici

The grand designs of a powerful archduke

The second duke of Florence and first grand duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I, died on this day in 1574 at the Villa di Castello near Florence.  Cosimo had proved to be both shrewd and unscrupulous, bringing Florence under his despotic control and increasing its territories.  He was the first to have the idea of uniting all public services in a single building. He commissioned the Uffizi - offices - a beautiful building that is now an art gallery in the centre of Florence.  Cosimo was the great-great-grandson of Lorenzo the Elder, whose brother was Cosimo the Elder but played no part in politics until he heard of the assassination of his distant cousin, Alessandro.  He immediately travelled to Florence and was elected head of the republic in 1537 with the approval of the city’s senate, assembly and council.  He also had the support of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. The Emperor’s generals defeated an army raised against Cosimo, who then had the principal rebels beheaded in public in Florence.  Cosimo began to style himself as a duke and sidelined the other Government bodies in the city.  As the Emperor’s protégée, he remained safe from the hostility of Pope Paul II and King Francis I of France.  Read more…

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Silvana Mangano - actress

Star who married the producer Dino De Laurentiis

The actress Silvana Mangano, who was decried as a mere sex symbol and later hailed as a fine character actress during a quite restricted career, was born on this day in 1930 in Rome.  She found fame through Giuseppe De Santis’s neorealist film Bitter Rice, in which she played a female worker in the rice fields in the Po Valley who becomes involved with a petty criminal Walter, played by Vittorio Gassman.  Mangano’s character was a sensual, lustful young woman and the actress, a former beauty queen, carried it off so well that she was hailed by one critic as “Ingrid Bergmann with a Latin disposition” and likened also to the American glamour queen Rita Hayworth.  She went on to work with many of Italy's leading directors, including Alberto Lattuada, Vittorio De Sica, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Luchino Visconti, but she made only 30 films, in part because she preferred to spend time with her family but also because Dino De Laurentiis, the producer of Bitter Rice who soon became her husband, controlled her career.  It is said that she was offered the important part of Maddalena in Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita but that De Laurentiis prevented her from taking it.  Read more…

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Gino Strada - surgeon and charity founder

‘Maestro of humanity’ built hospitals for war victims

The surgeon and founder of the medical and humanitarian charity Emergency, Gino Strada, was born on this day in 1948 in Sesto San Giovanni, a town that is now effectively a suburb of Milan.  Emergency has provided free healthcare to more than 11 million people in 19 different countries, including locations severely affected by conflict such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen.  It also operates in Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Sudan, Cambodia, Serbia, Nicaragua and Sri Lanka.  The hospitals set up by the organisation - some designed with the help of Strada’s friend, the world-renowned architect Renzo Piano - are built to the highest standards, with the aim of providing world-class treatments and after-care. Strada, who was said himself to have performed more than 30,000 operations on direct or indirect victims of conflict, insisted that the hospitals in which his European volunteers worked had to be places where “you would be happy to have one of your family members treated”.  When Strada died in 2021, among the many tributes paid to him was one by the then president of the European parliament, David Sassoli, who described him as the ‘maestro of humanity’. Read more…

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Book of the Day: SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, by Mary Beard

Ancient Rome matters.  Its history of empire, conquest, cruelty and excess is something against which we still judge ourselves. Its myths and stories - from Romulus and Remus to the Rape of Lucretia - still strike a chord with us. And its debates about citizenship, security and the rights of the individual still influence our own debates on civil liberty today.  SPQR is a new look at Roman history from one of the world's foremost classicists. It explores not only how Rome grew from an insignificant village in central Italy to a power that controlled territory from Spain to Syria, but also how the Romans thought about themselves and their achievements, and why they are still important to us. Covering 1,000 years of history, and casting fresh light on the basics of Roman culture from slavery to running water, as well as exploring democracy, migration, religious controversy, social mobility and exploitation in the larger context of the empire, this is a definitive history of ancient Rome.  SPQR is the Romans' own abbreviation for their state: Senatus Populusque Romanus, 'the Senate and People of Rome'.

Dame Winifred Mary Beard is an English classicist specialising in Ancient Rome. She is a trustee of the British Museum and formerly held a personal professorship of classics at the University of Cambridge. She is a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, and Royal Academy of Arts Professor of Ancient Literature.

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Pietro Della Valle – composer and travel writer

Adventurous Roman wrote unique accounts of 17th century Persia and India 

Della Valle's journey expanded
knowledge of Indian history

Composer, musicologist, and writer Pietro Della Valle, who travelled to the Holy Land, Persia and India during the Renaissance and wrote about his experiences in letters to a friend, died on this day in 1652 in Rome.

Della Valle was born in Rome into a wealthy and noble family and grew up to study Latin, Greek, classical mythology and the Bible. Another member of his family was Cardinal Andrea della Valle, after whom the Basilica Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome was named.

Having been disappointed in love, Pietro Della Valle vowed to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He sailed from Venice to Istanbul, where he lived for more than a year learning Turkish and Arabic.

He then travelled to Jerusalem, by way of Alexandria, Cairo, and Mount Sinai, where he visited the holy sites. He wrote regular letters about his travels to Mario Schipano, a professor of medicine in Naples, who later published them in three volumes.

Della Valle moved on to Damascus, went to Baghdad, where he married a Christian woman, Sitti Maani Gioenida, and then to Persia, now known as Iran. While in the Middle East, Della Valle created one of the first modern records of the location of ancient Babylon. 

A 17th century representation
of Della Valle's visit to India

His wife died after delivering a stillborn child in Persepolis, but Della Valle continued his journey, taking her embalmed body with him so that it could eventually be buried in his family vault in Rome. 

Reaching Surat in north western India in 1623, he was introduced to the king of Kaladi in south India. Della Valle’s memoirs about his experiences provide the best contemporary account of society in that area in the 17th century and are one of the most important sources of history about that period for the region.

The traveller continued southward along the coast to Calicut for the next year and returned to Italy by way of Basra in southern Mesopotamia - now Iraq - and through the desert to Aleppo in Syria, finally reaching Cyprus and then Rome in 1626. 

He was appointed a gentleman of the bedchamber - an honorary ceremonial position in the papal court - by Pope Urban VIII to reward him for his exploits. 

From his 36 letters to Schipano, which contained more than a million words, three volumes were eventually published: Turkey (1650), Persia (1658) and India (1663). Part of his accounts of his time in India have been translated into English.

Della Valle was also a keen book collector and purchased rare manuscripts while he was in Syria that he brought back to Italy with him.

Once living back in Rome, Della Valle concentrated on music, composing religious music and writing treatises about musical theory, which praised the music of the time countering the criticisms of other contemporary writers. He also wrote libretti for musical spectacles that were performed in Rome.

After his death in 1652, Pietro Della Valle was buried alongside his wife in the family vault in Santa Maria Ara Coeli in Rome.

The Basilica of Santa Maria Ara Coeli on the
Campidoglio Hill, where Della Valle is buried

Travel tip

Santa Maria Ara Coeli, the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Altar in Heaven, where Pietro Della Valle is buried in his family’s vault, is on the highest summit of the Campidoglio, one of the seven hills of Rome. It houses relics belonging to Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine. It is claimed the church was built on the site where the Tiburtine Sibyl prophesied the coming of Christ to the Emperor Augustus. In the Middle Ages, condemned criminals used to be publicly executed at the foot of the steps. It is now the designated church of Rome City Council.

The beautiful Basilica of Sant'Andrea della Valle,
in the Sant'Eustachio district of Rome

Travel tip

The Basilica of Sant'Andrea della Valle, named after Cardinal Andrea della Valle, and dedicated to St Andrew the Apostle, is a minor basilica in the rione of Sant’Eustachio in Rome. The dome of the church is the third largest in Rome, behind St Peter’s and the Pantheon. Building work started on the church in 1590 following the designs of Giacomo della Porta and Pier Paolo Olivieri. The church was used as a setting by the composer Puccini for his opera, Tosca.

Also on this day:

753BC: The founding of Rome

1574: The death of Tuscan ruler Cosimo I de’ Medici

1922: The death of castrato singer Alessandro Moreschi

1930: The birth of actress Silvana Mangano

1948: The birth of surgeon and charity founder Gino Strada

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