ITALIAN SKETCHES
Italian Sketches
Mario Moretti Polegato
A man that's all sole
What do blistered feet, a hot desert in America and a young Italian winemaker have in common? The answer is a footwear revolution. The man behind it, Mario Moretti Polegato, has often told the story about how he was in Reno, …
Italian Sketches
Vasco Pratolini
Florentine memories and nostalgia
In over half a century since his last book appeared, only vestiges of the Florence that novelist, playwright and poet Vasco Pratolini described in his books remain, but that in no way diminishes their importance; indeed, quite the contrary. During his …
Italian Sketches
Calisto Tanzi
Milking it dry
The
bankruptcy of the dairy products multinational corporation Parmalat in December
2003, sent shock waves throughout global financial markets. In what was to
prove the biggest corporate fraud so far in European history, Parmalat finished
up in a black hole of 14 billion euro of …
Italian Sketches
Gualtiero Marchesi
A recipe for success
Even though the age-old debate about whether cooking
is an art or a science rages on, when Italian chef and restaurant owner
Gualtiero Marchesi, founder of Italy's nuova cucina (‘new cuisine'),
says it is both, you can believe him. The first non-Frenchman to receive …
Italian Sketches
Leonardo Del Vecchio
The emperor of eyewear
It probably isn't that much fun
coming second at anything, but when, over the past several years, the
prestigious American business magazine Forbes has ranked you as the second
richest man in Italy, with an estimated worth of 11.5 billion dollars, you
can't complain all …
Italian Sketches
Mario Draghi
The bankers? banker
Economist and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith maintained that ‘in central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly and results far much less.’ Certainly, there can be no arguing with the first part …
Italian Sketches
Fosco Maraini
Bridging east and west
When
ethnologist, mountain climber, travel writer, poet and photographer Fosco
Maraini died on June 8, 2004, at 92, the Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence
acquired his unique collection of over 8,000 volumes and 42,000 photographs
centred on Asia, and especially Tibet and Japan. It was therefore …
Italian Sketches
Iris Origo
Her need to testify
If not for the tragic
death in 1933 of her ?radiant' 7-year-old son, Gian Clemente Bayard Origo,
known as Gianni, from tubercular meningitis, Anglo-American biographer and
author Iris Origo may never have taken up writing seriously. To fill the void left by his death, …
Italian Sketches
Zucchero 'Sugar' Fornaciari
From rock to blues
When he appears on stage, frequently wearing a velvet top hat or some other eccentric headgear, Adelmo Fornaciari, in art Zucchero (‘Sugar'), looks more like a snake-oil salesman in a Wild West travelling show than one of Italy's most popular singer-songwriters. …
Italian Sketches
Alessandro Martini
007's great acquaintance
Her majesty's secret servant, James Bond, would certainly not be happy, but I really don't mind whether they are shaken or stirred, just as long as my martinis are icy cold. The martini's important ingredient, vermouth-from wermut, German for ‘wormwood,' a …
Italian Sketches
Angelo Rizzoli
From magazines to movies
The life of publishing magnate and cinema mogul, Angelo Rizzoli, reads like the story in the melodramas regularly found in the magazines he published. Rizzoli was born in Milan on October 31, 1889, to an impoverished family. Despite their circumstances, however, …
Italian Sketches
Vincenzo Peruggia
The man who stole the Mona Lisa
Her custodians at the Louvre in Paris have banned any future travels. But this has not discouraged Italy's National Committee for the Enhancement of History, Culture and Environment ('Comitato nazionale per la valorizzazione dei beni storici, culturali e ambientali') from continuing …
Italian Sketches
Giovanni Buitoni
Pasta and chocolate
The Chinese may
have invented it, but the Italians perfected it: pastasciutta. Today, one of the most famous brands of pasta
worldwide is Buitoni, an industry that grew out of a modest pasta shop opened
in 1827 by Giovan Battista Buitoni and his wife …
Italian Sketches
Enrico Fermi
The father of the atomic bomb
On December 10, 1942, a
dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan replaced the annual
Nobel Prize award ceremony in Stockholm, which had been suspended in
1939 because of World War II. Eleven of the 28 laureates then living
in the United States attended. Most …
Italian Sketches
Eleonora Duse
La Divina
A gate in the garden wall that separated the two villas at Settignano gave the two lovers the freedom and privacy to come and go as they pleased. Poet Gabriele D'Annunzio stayed in and lavishly furnished the villa called La Capponcina …
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Sunday, May 26, 2013