ITALIAN SKETCHES
Italian Sketches
Alfonso Bialetti
The little man with a moustache
Between 1957 and 1977, Carosello [the Carousel] was a 10-minute spot of advertising broadcast every night on Italian national television immediately after the evening news. More like a variety show than hard-sell publicity, it was so popular that it became normal …
Il Fatto Bello
Ruffled Feathers
Il fatto bello della settimana. Moments from everyday Italy
Getting married is complicated enough. She needs her wedding dress to be simple. So, Carlotta marched into the bridal boutique and quickly informed the saleslady of all of her semi-neurotic stylistic limitations. Nothing too sparkly, lacy, shiny or puffy. She was …
Italian Sketches
Gianni Agnelli
The gentleman industrialist
Someone once said that ‘the rich get richer and the poor get children'. The first part of this saying was certainly true in the case of Giovanni Agnelli, known as Gianni, possibly Italy's most important industrialist as chairman and major shareholder …
Il Fatto Bello
Sense of direction
Il fatto bello della settimana. Moments from everyday Italy
It happens often. I get a song stuck in my head and it clings to my brainwaves as if they were the only source of energy in the world. The other day, I found myself singing the theme song from Roberto …
Style + Fashion
Inside the Designer Zone
Florence is a city of the masters. Michelangelo, da Vinci, Dante, Vasari: the evidence of their capolavori is apparent in the buildings, the lines of tourists. Even the street names echo with the memories of great artists. Every street-corner display says …
Italian Sketches
Padre Pio
Worker of miracles
Padre Pio was already a revered holy man of great humility and piety when he offered himself as a victim to bring an end to WWI, the war considered ‘the suicide of Europe' by Pope Benedict XV. Between August 5 and …
Life
Irresistible temptation for the shopaholic
The traveling weekly market
I confess
to an addiction that has caused me to have to find ways constantly to expand
the clothes storage space in my apartment. Others, however, may be able to
enjoy the experience of the traveling market in a more balanced fashion.
In most
Italian cities, …
Il Fatto Bello
Language sponges
Il fatto bello della settimana. Moments from everyday Italy
My two-hour-a-week job at a Venetian nursery school was, strangely enough, Berlusconi's idea. In order to conquer the ills plaguing Italy, the then prime minister proposed the Three I' Initiative: Imprese, Internet and Inglese. A focus on enterprise, web technology and …
Italian Sketches
Giangiacomo Feltrinelli
The millionaire revolutionary
On March 15, 1972, the body of a man was found at the foot of one of the main electricity pylons at Segrate, a suburb of Milan. It appeared he had been killed when the dynamite he was attempting to strap …
Il Fatto Bello
Return tomorrow
Il fatto bello della settimana. Moments from everyday Italy
Last September I took a job in Venice selling jewelry behind the cityys only piazza. If you ever need quick employment and mindless labor, know that a cubicle full of hanging necklaces will provide you with both. During the job interview, …
Italian Sketches
Pier Paolo Pasolini
One of the towering intellects of recent times, the controversial novelist, theorist, poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) embodies twentieth-century Italy’s explosive mix of contradictions and inconsistencies. The polemic and the passion, the triumph and the tragedy of the mid-century …
Insider Florence
Soccer Sunday
The low down on Florences beloved pastime
by Adam Wenger
In America it’s known as soccer. In Europe, it’s football, or the ‘beautiful game’. And if you’re staying in Florence, then you owe yourself a visit to a Fiorentina game, Florence’s football team. Known to their fans as Viola, they play …
Italian Sketches
Enrico Caruso
When Luciano Pavarotti died in September 2007, he was hailed as ‘one of the greatest’ Italian tenors of the twentieth century. The other ‘great’? During his lifetime, Enrico Caruso was as famous as Pavarotti for his unique and powerful voice, his …
Italian Sketches
Courage under fire
Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino
The crater in the highway near the turnoff to a town called Capaci, about 20 kilometres between the Palermo Airport of Punta Raisi and Palermo itself, was about 30 meters wide and 8 meters deep. On May 23, 1992, a remote-controlled …
Life
Who wants to be a professore?
One teachers venture into Italys public school system
If you’ve lived in Italy long enough, or if you have ever seen ‘Ciao, Professore!’, directed by Lina Wertmuller, you know that professore (masculine) and professoressa (feminine) mean not only ‘professor’, but also a middle- or secondary-school teacher.
Antonella Gatto, an Italian-Canadian …
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Saturday, May 25, 2013