27 October

Enrico Mattei – industrialist and entrepreneur

Death in plane crash remains an unsolved mystery

Enrico Mattei, one of the most important figures in Italy’s post-War economic rebirth, was killed on this day in 1962 in a plane crash near the village of Bascapè in Lombardy.  Accompanied by a Time-Life journalist, William McHale, Mattei was returning to Milan from Catania in Sicily in a French-built four-seater Morane-Saulnier jet being flown by Irnerio Bertuzzi, a respected pilot who had flown many daring missions during the Second World War.  They were on their descent towards Milan Linate when the crash happened, less than 17km (10.5 miles) from the airport.  Mattei, a politically powerful industrialist, best known for turning round Italy’s seemingly unviable oil industry, was not short of enemies and after his death there was considerable speculation that it did not happen by accident.  A government-led investigation, overseen by the then Italian Defence Minister Giulio Andreotti, concluded that a storm was to blame for the crash, even though the pilot was highly experienced and very unlikely to have allowed bad weather to bring him down.  Questions about the initial inquiry’s findings led to a second inquiry being opened in 1966 but shelved without reaching a conclusion.  Read more…

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Simone Moro - mountaineer

Bergamo climber with unique record

The mountaineer Simone Moro, who is the only climber whose list of achievements includes the first winter ascent of four of the so-called eight-thousanders, was born on this day in 1967 in the city of Bergamo in Lombardy.  The eight-thousanders are the 14 peaks on Earth that rise to more than 8,000m (26,247ft) above sea level. All are located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges in Asia.  A veteran of 15 winter expeditions, he completed the winter ascent of Shisha Pangma (8,027m) in 2005, Makalu (8,485m) in 2009, Gasherbrum II (8,035m) in 2011 and Nanga Parbat (8,126m) in 2016.  He has scaled Everest (8,848m) four times, including the first solo south-north traverse in 2006. In total he has completed more than 50 expeditions, conquering peaks in Tien Shan, Pamir, Andes, Patagonia and Antarctica as well as the Himalayas and Karakoram.  Moro is also renowned for his courage and bravery. During his 2001 attempt on the Everest-Lhotse traverse, he abandoned his ascent at 8,000m and battled through the most dangerous conditions in darkness to save the life of British climber Tom Moores.  Read more…

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Giovanni Giolitti – Prime Minister

Long-lasting Liberal politician made important social reforms

Giovanni Giolitti, who served as Prime Minister of Italy five times, was born on this day in 1842 in Mondovì in Piedmont.  A Liberal, he was the leading statesman in Italy between 1900 and 1914 and was responsible for the introduction of universal male suffrage in the country.  He was considered one of the main liberal reformers of late 19th and early 20th century Europe, along with George Clemenceau, who was twice prime minister of France, and David Lloyd George, who led the British government from 1916 to 1922.  Giolitti is the longest serving democratically elected prime minister in Italian history and the second longest serving premier after Benito Mussolini. He is considered one of the most important politicians in Italian history.  As a master of the political art of trasformismo, by making a flexible, centrist coalition that isolated the extremes of Left and Right in Italian politics after unification, he developed the national economy, which he saw as essential for producing wealth.  The period between 1901 and 1914, when he was Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior with only brief interruptions, is often referred to as the Giolitti era.  Read more…

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Roberto Benigni - Oscar winner

How Life is Beautiful made Tuscan actor and director famous

Roberto Benigni, whose performance in the 1997 film Life is Beautiful won him an Oscar for Best Actor, was born on this day in 1952 in rural Tuscany, around 20km (12 miles) south of Arezzo.  The Academy Award, for which he beat off strong competition from Nick Nolte (Affliction) and Tom Hanks (Saving Private Ryan) among others, put him in the company of Anna Magnani (1955) and Sophia Loren (1961) as one of just three Italian winners of best actor or actress.  Benigni, who also directed Life is Beautiful, had won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film earlier in the awards ceremony, which delighted him so much he famously clambered on to the back of the seats of audience members in the row in front of his to lead the applause before stepping up to the stage to receive the award from Sophia Loren.  When Helen Hunt called out his name for Best Actor - the first since Loren to win the most coveted prize with a foreign language film - he began his acceptance speech by apologising for having "used up all my English", before proceeding to deliver another joyously emotional expression of gratitude.  Read more…

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Niccolò Paganini - musician and composer

Extraordinary talent aroused bizarre suspicions

The musician and composer Niccolò Paganini, widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time, was born on this day in 1782 in Genoa. Paganini’s ability was so far ahead of his contemporaries that to some observers it defied comprehension. He possessed unusually long fingers, a memory that enabled him to play entire pieces without the need for sheet music, and could play at up to 12 notes per second.  This, combined with his appearance - he was tall and thin, with hollow cheeks, pale skin and a fondness for dressing in black - as well as a habit of making wild, exaggerated movements as he played, gave rise to outlandish theories that he was possessed by the Devil, or even was the Devil himself. He also pursued a somewhat dissolute lifestyle, drinking heavily, gambling and taking advantage of his fame to engage in numerous affairs.  The suspicion of demonic associations stayed with him all his life to the extent that after his death at the age of 58 it was four years before his body was laid to rest because the Catholic Church would not give him a Christian burial, their reticence not helped by his refusal to accept the last rites.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, by Daniel Yergin

The definitive work on the subject of oil and a major contribution to understanding our century, The Prize is a book of extraordinary breadth, riveting excitement - and great importance.  The struggle for wealth and power that has surrounded oil for decades continues to shake the world economy, dictate the outcome of wars, and transform the destiny of men and nations. The Prize is as much a history of the 20th century as of the oil industry itself. The canvas of this history is enormous - from the drilling of the first well in Pennsylvania through two great world wars to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Operation Desert Storm. The cast extends from wildcatters and rogues to oil tycoons, and from Winston Churchill and Ibn Saud to George Bush and Saddam Hussein.

Daniel Yergin is a respected writer and president of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a company specialising in political risk and economic analysis. He advises ministers, politicians, CEOs and investors around the world.

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26 October

Primo Carnera - boxer

Heavyweight’s career dogged by ‘fix’ rumours

The boxer Primo Carnera, who was world heavyweight champion between 1933 and 1934, was born on this day in 1906 in a village in Friuli-Venezia Giulia.  After launching his professional career in Paris in 1928, Carnera moved to the United States in 1930 and spent many years there, returning from time to time to Italy, where he had a house built for himself and his family, but not permanently until he was in declining health and decided he would like to spend his final years in his home country.  He won 89 of his 103 fights, 72 by a knockout, although there were suspicions that many of his fights were fixed by the New York mobsters who made up his management team, even including the victory over the American Jack Sharkey that earned him the world title.  Physically, he was a freak.  Said to have weighed 22lbs at birth he had grown to the size of an adult man by the time he was eight. By adulthood, he was a veritable giant, by Italian standards, standing 6ft 6ins tall when the average Italian man was 5ft 5ins.  His fighting weight was as high at times as 275lb (125kg).  He was born into a peasant family in the village of Sequals, around 45km (28 miles) west of Udine.  Read more…

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Trieste becomes part of Italy

Fascinating city retains influences from past rulers

The beautiful seaport of Trieste officially became part of the Italian Republic on this day in 1954.  Trieste is now the capital of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, one of the most prosperous areas of Italy.  The city lies towards the end of a narrow strip of land situated between the Adriatic Sea and Slovenia and it is also just 30km (19 miles) north of Croatia.  Trieste has been disputed territory for thousands of years and throughout its history has been influenced by its location at the crossroads of the Latin, Slavic and Germanic cultures.  It became part of the Roman Republic in 177 BC and was granted the status of a Roman colony by Julius Caesar in 51 BC.  In 788 Trieste was conquered by Charlemagne on behalf of the French but by the 13th century was being occupied by the Venetian Republic. Austria made the city part of the Habsburg domains in the 14th century but it was then conquered again by Venice. The Hapsburgs recovered Trieste in the 16th century and made it an important port and a commercial hub.  Trieste fell into French hands during the time of Napoleon but then became part of Austrian territory again.  Read more…

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Domenico Scarlatti - composer

Neapolitan famous for his 555 keyboard sonatas

The composer Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti, known as Domenico Scarlatti, was born in Naples on this day in 1685.  Born in the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, Scarlatti was the sixth of 10 children fathered by the composer Alessandro Scarlatti.  Like his father, Domenico composed in a variety of musical styles, making the transition in his lifetime from Baroque to traditional Classical. Today, he is known mainly for his 555 keyboard sonatas, which expanded the musical possibilities of the harpsichord.  Although he began his career in Naples, Scarlatti spent a large part of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. In fact, he died in Madrid in 1757.  Early in 1701, at the age of just 15, Scarlatti was appointed as composer and organist at the royal chapel in Naples. At 17, his first operas, L’Ottavia restituita al trono and Il giustino, were produced there.  In 1705 his father sent him to Venice, reputedly to study with the composer Francesco Gasparini, although nothing is known with certainty about his life there. It is thought he may have met a young Irishman, Thomas Roseingrave, who later described Scarlatti’s advances in harpsichord music to the English musicologist Charles Burney.  Read more…

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Trilussa - poet and journalist

Writer used humour and irony in social commentary

The Roman poet who went under the name Trilussa was born on this day in 1871.  The writer, best known for his works in Romanesco dialect, was actually christened Carlo Alberto Camillo Mariano Salustri. His pseudonym was an anagram of his last name.  He was inspired to take up poetry by his admiration for Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, who satirised life in 19th century Rome in his sonnets, which were also written in Roman dialect.  Born in a house in Via del Babuino, near the Spanish Steps, Carlo was the son of a waiter originally from Albano Laziale in the Castelli Romani area around Lago Albano south of Rome. His mother, Carlotta, was a seamstress born in Bologna.  His early years were marred by tragedy. He lost both a sister and his father before he had reached four years old.  After living for a short time in Via Ripetta, close to the Tiber river, his family were offered accommodation in a palazzo in Piazza di Pietra, a square midway between the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain.  The palazzo was owned by Carlo’s Godfather, the Marquis Ermenegildo del Cinque, who had been introduced to the family by Professor Filippo Chiappini, a disciple of Belli who for a while was Trilussa’s tutor.  Read more…

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Giuditta Pasta – soprano

The first singer to perform the roles of Anna Bolena and Norma

Singer Giuditta Pasta, whose voice was so beautiful Gaetano Donizetti wrote the role of Anna Bolena especially for her, was born on this day in 1797 in Saronno in Lombardy.  Her mezzo-soprano voice was much written about by 19th century opera reviewers and in modern times her performance style has been compared with that of Maria Callas.  Indeed, Vincenzo Bellini’s opera Norma, which Callas would turn into her signature role, was actually written for Pasta in 1831.  Pasta was born Giuditta Negri, the daughter of a Jewish soldier. She studied singing in Milan and made her operatic debut there in 1816.  Later that year she performed at the Theatre Italien in Paris as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, but it was not until 1821 that her talent was fully recognised when she appeared in Paris as Desdemona in Gioachino Rossini’s Otello.  Giuditta married another singer, Giuseppe Pasta, in 1816 and as well as being her regular leading man he handled her business affairs and identified likely roles and composers who might wish to work with her.  Read more…

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Primo Carnera: The Life and Career of the Heavyweight Boxing Champion, by Joseph S Page

At over six and a half feet tall and nearly 300 pounds, heavyweight champion Primo Carnera was a giant for his times, but today "the Ambling Alp" is too often written off as an unskilled oaf and a product of the mob dealings that plagued boxing during the 1930s. He may not have been a natural in the ring, but he worked as hard as any boxer to learn his craft, to be in top condition, and he repeatedly showed that he was tougher than nails. Primo Carnera: The Life and Career of the Heavyweight Boxing Champion details Carnera's early life and boxing career, his success as a fighter as well as accusations of fight fixing, his strengths and limitations in the ring, and his later career as a wrestler.

Joseph S Page is an American writer who is also the author of Pro Football Championships Before the Super Bowl: A Year-by-Year History, 1926–1965.

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25 October

Camillo Sivori – virtuoso violinist

Paganini’s successor was also a talented composer

Ernesto Camillo Sivori, a virtuoso violinist and composer, was born on this day in 1815 in Genoa.  Remembered as the only pupil of the great virtuoso violinist Niccolò Paganini, Sivori began his career as a travelling virtuoso at the age of 12, having by then also studied with other violin teachers.  He was acclaimed as ‘Paganini reincarnated’, or even, ‘Paganini without the flaws’, by music critics during a lengthy tour of Europe that he made between 1841 and 1845.  During his travels he met some of the best-known composers of the day, such as Mendelssohn, Schumann and Berlioz and he took part in hundreds of concerts.  After being compared to other celebrated violinists, his status as Paganini’s successor was confirmed, even though the great man had died in 1840 and was still remembered in the musical world.  Sivori had met Paganini, who was also from Genoa, when he was seven years old and had made such a favourable impression on him that Paganini gave him lessons between October 1822 and May 1823.  Paganini also wrote pieces of music for his pupil ‘to shape his spirit’ and even provided guitar accompaniment when Sivori performed these pieces privately.  Read more…

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Evangelista Torricelli – inventor of the barometer

Physicist's name lives on in scientific terminology

The inventor of the barometer, Evangelista Torricelli, died on this day in 1647 in Florence at the age of just 39.  A disciple of Galileo, Torricelli made many mathematical and scientific advances during his short life and had an asteroid and a crater on the moon named after him.  Torricelli was born into a poor family from Faenza in the province of Ravenna.  He studied science under the Benedictine monk, Benedetto Castelli, a professor of Mathematics at the Collegio della Sapienza, now known as the Sapienza University of Rome, who had been a student of Galileo Galilei.  After Galileo’s death the Grand Duke Ferdinand II de’ Medici asked Torricelli to succeed Galileo as Chair of Mathematics at the University of Pisa.  Torricelli was also interested in optics and designed and built telescopes and microscopes.  His most important invention was the mercury barometer, which he produced after he had discovered the principle of the barometer while trying to find a solution to the limitations of the suction pump in forcing water upwards.  Scientific terms such as the Torricellian tube and Torricellian vacuum are named after the scientist, as is the torr, a unit of pressure in vacuum measurements.  Read more…

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Carlo Gnocchi – military chaplain

Remembering a protector of the sick and the mutilated

Carlo Gnocchi, a brave priest who was chaplain to Italy’s alpine troops during the Second World War, was born on this day in 1902 in San Colombano al Lambro, near Lodi in Lombardy.  In recognition of his life, which was dedicated to easing the wounds of suffering and misery created by war, his birthday was made into his feast day when he was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on October 25, 2009 in Milan.  Gnocchi was the youngest of three boys born to Henry and Clementine Gnocchi. His father died when he was five years old and his two brothers died of tuberculosis before he was 13.  He was ordained a priest in 1925 in the archdiocese of Milan and afterwards worked as a teacher.  When war broke out he joined up as a voluntary priest and departed first for the front line between Greece and Albania and then for the tragic campaign in Russia, which he miraculously survived, despite suffering from frostbite.  While he was chaplain to alpine troops in the war he helped Jews and Allied prisoners of war escape to Switzerland. During this time he was imprisoned for writing against Fascism.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Paganini: The 'Demonic' Virtuoso, by Mai Kawabata

Our inherited image of Nicolo Paganini as a 'demonic violinist' has never been analysed in depth. What really made him 'demonic'? This book investigates the legend of Paganini. Separating fact from fiction, it explains how the virtuoso violinist challenged the very notion of what it meant to be a musician. Mai Kawabata considers Paganini's performance innovations, violin techniques and musical ethos in the light of contemporary attitudes towards music and the supernatural, gender, sexuality, violence, heroism and masculinity as well as conceptions of power. The many perceptions of Paganini as demonic - Faust, magician, devil, rake/libertine, Napoleon - were interrelated but not equivalent. A swirl of cultural factors coalesced in the performer to create that phenomenon of Romanticism, a larger-than-life Gothic villain. In The 'Demonic' Virtuoso, Kawabata shows how the idea of virtuosity spiralled out of control, acquiring a potent, overwhelmingly negative aura in the process, as the mythology surrounding Paganini outlived and outgrew the man to monstrous proportions. An appendix brings together late 19th-century British press and literature coverage of Paganini that contributed to the developing myth surrounding the now famous composer and performer. 

Mai Kawabata is Lecturer in Music at the University of East Anglia and a professional violinist.

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24 October

NEW - Nicola Bombacci - revolutionary

Communist who eventually allied with Mussolini

Nicola Bombacci, who was executed with Fascist leader Benito Mussolini after partisans intercepted their attempt to flee Italy in 1945, was born on this day in 1879 in Civitella di Romagna, a small town about 40 minutes by road from the city of Forlì in Emilia-Romagna.  Although he ended his life as a political ally of the right-wing dictator, Bombacci’s roots were in Marxism. Indeed, he had been a founder-member in 1921 of the Italian Communist Party, alongside among others Antonio Gramsci, the left-wing intellectual who was subsequently arrested by Mussolini and sentenced to 20 years in jail.  He shifted his position during the 1930s, seeing fascism as a form of national socialism that could unify Italy. He embraced Mussolini's Italian Social Republic, the German puppet state in northern Italy created after the Nazis had freed the deposed Mussolini from house arrest in 1943, believing it to represent a blend of Marxist principles and fascist ideology that could still be a force for good.  Born little more than 20km (12 miles) from Mussolini’s home town of Predappio, Bombacci’s connections with the future dictator can be traced back to his early 20s. Read more…

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Tito Gobbi – baritone

Singer found fame on both stage and screen

Opera singer Tito Gobbi was born on this day in 1913 in Bassano del Grappa in the Veneto region.  He had a career that lasted 44 years and sang more than 100 different operatic roles on stages all over the world.  Gobbi also sang in 25 films and towards the end of his career directed opera productions throughout Europe and America.  His singing talent was discovered by a family friend while he was studying law at the University of Padua, who suggested that he studied singing instead. As a result, Gobbi moved to Rome in 1932 to study under the tenor, Giulio Crimi.  At his first audition he was accompanied at the piano by Tilde De Rensis, the daughter of musicologist Raphael De Rensis. She was later to become Gobbi’s wife.  Gobbi made his debut in 1935 in Gubbio, singing the role of Count Rodolfo in Vincenzo Bellini’s La sonnambula, and then went to work for a season at La Scala in Milan as an understudy, which gained him valuable experience.  He made his first appearance on stage there as the Herald in Ildebrando Pizzetti’s Orseolo.  In 1942 he sang the role of Belcore in Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore at La Scala, conducted by Tullio Serafin.  Read more…

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Domitian - Roman emperor

Authoritarian ruler was last of the Flavian dynasty

The emperor Domitian, the last of three members of the Flavian dynasty to rule Rome, was born on this day in 51AD.  He was the son of Vespasian and the younger brother of Titus, during whose reigns he had a minor role in the government of the empire that was largely ceremonial. Yet when Titus died suddenly only two years after succeeding his father in 79AD, Domitian quickly presented himself to the Praetorian Guard to be proclaimed emperor.  The official record was that Titus, who had spent virtually the whole of his period on the throne dealing with the aftermath of the catastrophic eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD and a devastating fire in Rome, succumbed to a fever on a trip to the Sabine territories north of the city, but there were suspicions that he had been poisoned by his brother, perhaps in revenge for not having been given the position of power he had anticipated when Titus succeeded Vespasian. At the same time, there were rumours of an affair between Titus and Domitian’s wife, Domitia.  Vespasian and Titus had governed as the heads of a republic, but Domitian decided immediately that he wanted absolute power.   Read more…

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Sir Moses Montefiore - businessman

Italian-born philanthropist who made his fortune in London

The businessman and philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore, who made his fortune in England and became a prominent supporter of Jewish rights, was born in Livorno on this day in 1784.  Born into a Sephardic Jewish family, his grandfather, Moses Vita (Haim) Montefiore, had emigrated from Livorno to London in the 1740s, but regularly returned to Italy, as did other members of the family.  Moses Montefiore was born while his parents, Joseph Elias and Rachel - whose father, Abraham Mocatta, was a powerful bullion broker in London - were in Livorno on business.  Their son was to amass considerable wealth in his working life, accumulating such a fortune on the London stock exchange he was able to retire at 40, but in his youth his family’s situation was so perilous he had to abandon his education without qualifications in order to find a job.  First apprenticed to a firm of grocers and tea merchants, he left to become one of 12 so-called ‘Jew brokers’ in the City of London.  His early days in the city were not without setbacks, notably when a major fraud in 1806 caused him to lose most of his clients’ money.  Read more…

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Luciano Berio – composer

War casualty who became significant figure in Italian music

The avant-garde composer Luciano Berio, whose substantial catalogue of diverse work made him one of the most significant figures in music in Italy in the modern era, was born on this day in 1925 in Oneglia, on the Ligurian coast.  Noted for his innovative combining of voices and instruments and his pioneering of electronic music, Berio composed more than 170 pieces between 1937 and his death in 2003.  His most famous works are Sinfonia, a composition for orchestra and eight voices in five movements commissioned by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1968, and dedicated to the conductor Leonard Bernstein, and his Sequenza series of 18 virtuoso solo works that each featured a different instrument, or in one case a female voice alone.  Berio's musical fascinations included Italian opera, particularly Monteverdi and Verdi, the 20th-century modernism of Stravinsky, the Romantic symphonies of Schubert, Brahms and Mahler, folk songs, jazz and the music of the Beatles.  All these forms influenced him in one way or another and even his most experimental work paid homage to the past.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Singers of Italian Opera: The History of a Profession, by John Rosselli

Adelina Patti was the most highly regarded singer in history. She earned nearly $5,000 a night and had her own railway carriage. Yet a minor comic singer would perform for the cost of his food and a pair of shoes to wear on stage. John Rosselli's wide-ranging study introduces all those singers, members of the chorus as well as stars, who have sung Italian opera from 1600 to the twentieth century. Singers are shown slowly emancipating themselves from dependence on great patrons and entering the dangerous freedom of the market. Rosselli also examines the sexist prejudices against the castrati of the 18th century and against women singers. Securely rooted in painstaking scholarship and sprinkled with amusing anecdote, Singers of Italian Opera is a book to fascinate and inform opera fans at all levels.

John Rosselli was an Italian-born British historian, academic, journalist, music critic and writer on music. A former deputy London editor at The Guardian, he subsequently taught history at the University of Sussex and wrote extensively on the history of Italian music, particularly opera. He published several books on the subject.

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