Enzo Jannacci, a father of Italian rock and roll, jazz musician, actor, writer, comedian, and doctor had a
50+ year career in Italy. He died yesterday of cancer at the age of 77. His biggest hit song, 1968's
Ho Vista un Re (I Saw a King), written by the 1997 Nobel Prize winner for Literature
Dario Fo and Eugenio Esposito, was banned on RAI TV and radio, due to its
subversive lyrics. Jannacci performed and worked until illness forced his retirement in 2011, though still beloved by Italians of all ages.
posted by droplet
on Mar 30, 2013 -
3 comments
The Poet-King Of Fiume
There is no decent way of containing the excesses of Gabriele d'Annunzio's lives. It would astonish his contemporaries to discover that he is now only faintly remembered outside Italy. Even within Italy, though firmly entrenched in the literary canon, he is most commonly recalled with a sort of collective cringe. For once upon a time, in the fervid fin de siècle - for reasons variously literary, political, military and, not least, sexual - he was one of the towering figures of European culture. Think Wilde crossed with Casanova and Savonarola; Byron meets Barnum meets Mussolini - and you would have some of the flavours, but still not quite the essence, of this extraordinary, unstoppable and in many ways quite ridiculous figure
.
The Pike - A Review [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns
on Mar 5, 2013 -
6 comments
There's been quite the political
earthquake in Italy this weekend: the
latest national elections have
up-ended all
expectations, with Silvio Berlusconi's populist right bouncing back to a photo-finish against the forecasted favourite center-left coalition, headed by Pier Luigi Bersani. But it's neither of their results that will cause the real aftershocks - those are the sole honour (and, now, onus) of the most
meteoric of political entities Europe has ever
witnessed: former comic
Beppe Grillo's 5-Star MoVement, formally founded just three years ago, have crowned their national electoral debut by earning over 25% of the popular vote, becoming Italy's leading political force.
[more inside]
posted by progosk
on Feb 25, 2013 -
71 comments
Boateng walks off: Kevin-Prince Boateng, the former Tottenham and Portsmouth midfielder left the field after AC Milan players were abused in a friendly against Pro Patria.
On his way from the pitch, Boateng applauded sections of the crowd, who then reacted angrily towards the corner of the ground from which the chants came.
It was quickly established that play would not restart and AC Milan's official website said other black players in the Milan side - M'Baye Niang, Urby Emanuelson and Sulley Muntari - suffered abuse.
[Video on Daily Mirror Website]
BBC report.
posted by marienbad
on Jan 3, 2013 -
38 comments
GlamourFilter: Opening Night at La Scala. Pictures from
La Scala's opening nights, dating through the fifties and sixties. (Main story
here, slideshow
here, those links in Italian, but easy enough to figure out for non-speakers.) Pictures of Callas, Toscanini, Princess Grace, Dick and Liz, and many more, all looking impossibly fab and glamourous. (
Via the always informative and entertaining
Opera Chic.)
posted by Capt. Renault
on Dec 13, 2012 -
10 comments
"
Buffalo mozzarella is the Great White Whale of American cheesemaking: a dream so exotic and powerful that it drives otherwise sensible people into ruinous monomaniacal quests."
posted by Chrysostom
on Oct 11, 2012 -
61 comments
Perhaps to compensate for his not-so imposing physique, lack of good looks, and plebeian background, Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938) embraced excess in everything he did. And he did many things: novelist, playwright, poet, aviator and sailor, a genuine war hero, a narcissist, a drug addict, a gifted rabble-rouser, debt-evader, and a noted womanizer.
posted by Chrysostom
on Oct 4, 2012 -
7 comments
Franco Fiorito, also known as Batman, is the (ex) leader and treasurer of Berlusconi's party -
Il Popolo della Libertà(PdL) in the Lazio regional council. He is being accused of channeling 800k of the party's funds into 12 of his bank accounts and making extravagant expenditures for his own benefit. Reports say that in court he is
more annoyed than afraid: "Yes, I went to two beautiful resorts of the Costa Smeralda with PdL money. The regional election campaign left me exhausted and depressed. I needed a big vacation". Fiorito is now
lashing out at other PdL
councillors: "There are eight thieves. I didn't steal, I distributed the money."
[more inside]
posted by Marauding Ennui
on Sep 20, 2012 -
20 comments
Perry Anderson's book length three part series on the history of India from
the beginnings of its independence movement,
through independence and partition into
its recent history as a nation-state is the latest in a series of erudite, opinionated and wordy articles in The London Review of Books by the UCLA professor of history and sociology on the modern history of various countries, so far taking in Brazil, Italy, Turkey, Cyprus, the EU, Russia, Taiwan and France.
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 25, 2012 -
6 comments
"
Euphoria", which won the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest (
previously), is a #1 in several countries, including
Ireland,
Austria, and
Switzerland Of course, it's not the only song charting internationally that you might never hear on US radio. It should come as no surprise that one can readily find international hits online.
For instance -
Sweden, #4: Panetoz -
Dansa Pausa
Sweden, #9: Mange Makers -
Drick Den
This doesn't purport to be an exhaustive list, but rather a jumping-off point.
[more inside]
posted by LSK
on Jun 13, 2012 -
25 comments
Moscow of 1931 is a collection of hand-tinted lantern slides by Branson DeCou, an American photographer and travelogue lecturer who traveled the world for 30 years before his death in 1941. You can view more of the DeCou corpus online at the
Branson Decou Archive at the University of California, Santa Cruz where they've been attempting to sort, preserve, identify and digitize 10,000 DeCou slides received in 1971, a gift referred to the university chancellor by photographer Ansel Adams.
[more inside]
posted by taz
on Apr 14, 2012 -
16 comments
The Camorra Never Sleeps: "The Camorra is not an organization like the Mafia that can be separated from society, disciplined in court, or even quite defined. It is an amorphous grouping in Naples and its hinterlands of more than 100 autonomous clans and perhaps 10,000 immediate associates, along with a much larger population of dependents, clients, and friends. It is an understanding, a way of justice, a means of creating wealth and spreading it around. It has been a part of life in Naples for centuries—far longer than the fragile construct called Italy has even existed. At its strongest it has grown in recent years into a complete parallel world and, in many people’s minds, an alternative to the Italian government, whatever that term may mean."
[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns
on Apr 10, 2012 -
29 comments
78 78s - In Search Of Lost Time - is a streaming mix of beautiful 78s from around the world, collected and curated by Ian Nagoski. "I started sifting through boxes of junky old 78s that no one else wanted about 15 years ago, and almost right away, I made a rule: Anything that wasn't in English, buy it."
[more inside]
posted by carter
on Jan 29, 2012 -
15 comments
Nobody was surprised when Italy Prime Minister Mario Monti presented a draconian
"save Italy" emergency Budget decree on Sunday - that's what he had been nominated to do. But the full impact of the measures, especially hitting pensioners, became stunningly clear when Welfare Minister Elsa Fornero, invited by Monti to present her ministry's section of the decree to the press and TV,
broke down (SLYT) and was unable to bring out the word "sacrifice".
posted by aqsakal
on Dec 4, 2011 -
72 comments
Most people know that Venice has long been threatened by chronic flooding, but in recent years the Queen of the Adriatic has faced a rising tide of a different sort:
advertising.
From the
Doge's Palace to
St. Mark's Square to the bittersweet
Bridge of Sighs -- named for the grief its splendid views once inspired in crossing death row prisoners -- immense billboards
lit late into the night now mar the city's most treasured places.
Allegedly built to cover the cost of restoration work in the face of government cutbacks, the ads have brought in around $600,000 per year since 2008 -- a fraction of the shortfall -- and show no sign of going away any time soon. Their presence prompted a consortium of the world's leading cultural experts led by the
Venice in Peril Fund to air
an open letter demanding the city government put a stop to the placards that "hit you in the eye and ruin your experience of one of the most beautiful creations of humankind." Mayor Giorgio Orsoni, for one, was not moved, saying last year "If people want to see the building
they should go home and look at a picture of it in a book."
posted by Rhaomi
on Oct 4, 2011 -
59 comments
Evan Osnos joins a tour group from China as they traverse Europe. In the front row of the bus, Li stood facing the group with a microphone in hand, a posture he would retain for most of our waking hours in the days ahead. In the life of a Chinese tourist, guides play an especially prominent role—translator, raconteur, and field marshal—and Li projected a calm, seasoned air. He often referred to himself in the third person—Guide Li—and he prided himself on efficiency. “Everyone, our watches should be synchronized,” he said. “It is now 7:16 P.M.” He implored us to be five minutes early for every departure. “We flew all the way here,” he said. “Let’s make the most of it.” [more inside]
posted by WalterMitty
on Jul 28, 2011 -
71 comments
Italy's PM: can I privatize water supply, guarantee private investors a minimum 7% ROI on investments in water supply infrastructure, avoid showing up at scheduled court hearings and build a few nuclear plants, please?
NO, you can't, answered nearly 30 million italians (
95% of the voters, 57% of the people that held the right to vote) in the latest italian national referendum, whose final results are just about to be
published (italian).
[more inside]
posted by elpapacito
on Jun 13, 2011 -
22 comments
"We have assembled objects in the form of a
human figure, objects of all types that we found here each day and selected for their form and color, to obtain a familial nucleus that is the unity through which the individual forms itself and develops its ability to live and realize itself in the world."
Artworks by Dario Tironi.
via iGNANT
posted by unliteral
on Jun 8, 2011 -
4 comments
Thank God Silvio Exists! A beautiful blond woman, standing in a grocery store beside a pile of bananas, sings, “There’s a big dream that lives in all of us.” A throng of women belt out the chorus together under a cloudless sky: “Menomale che Silvio c’è”— “Thank God there’s Silvio.” Other women in various settings pick up the tune: a young mother in a pediatrician’s office, surrounded by nurses; a brunette in a beauty parlor, dressed for work in a camisole that barely covers her breasts. To American eyes, the ad looks like a parody, or perhaps some new kind of musical pornography that’s just about to erupt into carnality. (
from a New Yorker blog post)
[more inside]
posted by KokuRyu
on Jun 5, 2011 -
43 comments
