Giuseppina Bozzacchi (November 23, 1853 – November 23, 1870) was an Italian ballerina, noted for creating the role of Swanhilda in Léo Delibes' ballet Coppélia at the age of 16 while dancing for the Paris Opera Ballet.
Bozzacchi, who was born in Milan, had come to Paris to study with Mme Dominique. The choreographer Arthur Saint-Léon and the director of the Académie Royale de Musique, Émile Perrin, had been searching for a suitable Swanhilda, after deciding that none of the ballerinas previously considered – Léontine Beaugrand and Angelina Fioretti – were suitable, while Adèle Grantzow, the favorite ballerina of Saint-Léon, had started to prepare the role with choreography in 1868 but then fell seriously ill. In 1869 they even asked the composer, Léo Delibes, to seek out a suitable Swanhilda on his trip to Italy. He returned empty-handed; in the meantime, Saint-Léon and Perrin had discovered 16-year-old Bozzacchi.
She created the Swanhilda role on 25 May 1870 in the presence of Emperor Napoleon III. She repeated her success in the following weeks. In July an international dispute broke out between France and Prussia over the succession to the Spanish throne, and on July 19 France declared war. Bozzacchi danced Swanhilda for the 18th and last time on 31 August, when the Paris Opéra closed for the duration of the Franco-Prussian War. The Opéra had stopped paying salaries, and Bozzacchi, weakened by lack of food, became ill. She contracted smallpox and fever, and died on the morning of her 17th birthday. She was buried at Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris.
Ballerina, She became famous for creating the role of 'Swanilda' in "Coppelia". Her career was one of the shortest of record. Trained with Amina Boschetti, a prima ballerina of Milan, then studied in Paris with Mme Dominique, she danced in "Coppleia" for the first time in 1870 but was only to perform the role 18 times before she caught a fever and passed away on her 17th birthday ************ Coppélia
Both Italy and Switzerland are paying tribute to the philosopher and revolutionary who helped shape modern Italy
Italian President Sergio Matterella today paid tribute to Italian philosopher Carlo Cattaneo, who died on February 5 1869, and a series of special events was announced to commemorate his life and work
Cattaneo is best known as an influential figure in the 'Risorgimento', the Italian unification movement led by Garibaldi.
He led Milan’s city council during the 1848 uprising in Lombardy against an occupation by Austrian forces under Marshal Radetzky.
In the so-called Five Days of Milan, residents of the northern Italian city rose up and boycotted tobacco and gambling, key revenues for the Austrians – which resulted in violent street clashes.
That protest is widely seen as the one of the incidents that kickstarted the Risorgimento, and Italy's drive towards independence and a unified nation state.
READ ALSO: Everything you need to know about March 17th, Italy's Unity Day
When the Austrians returned to occupy Milan in revenge for the uprising led by Cattaneo, the Italian philosopher was forced to flee to Lugano in late 1848, where he wrote his most famous work, History of the 1848 Revolution.
He died just over 20 years later in 1869 outside the Italian-speaking Swiss city of Lugano, where he had spent the last 20 years of his life in exile.
President Mattarella today described Cattaneo as “a great figure of the Italian Risorgimento, a builder of national unity, and a multifaceted intellectual who was able to combine thought with courageous political action aimed at progress and to social justice.”
He said Cattaneo’s thinking was still relevant across Europe today.
Cattaneo "was among the first to formulate the goal of the United States of Europe, as a framework of authentic federalism capable of maintaining independence, unity, freedom and solidarity,” he said.
“Thinking that still speaks to our responsibility as Europeans, today, in the face of the great changes we are experiencing.”
Now the Carlo Cattaneo Association, the Italian-Swiss Committee for the publication of Cattaneo's works, has organised events in both countries to mark the anniversary.
A series of talks and events in schools, museums and universities will cover everything from the philosopher's impact on European thought to his contemporary relevance.
The Five Days of Milan uprising, as well as other similar revolts across the Italian peninsula in 1848, contributed to Italy's First War of Independence.
Cattaneo was elected to the Italian parliament several times after Italy's unification in 1861. Each time he refused to take up his seat, citing resistance to swearing an oath to the king.
Cattaneo always rejected Cavour and Garibaldi's overtures to join their movement because of opposition to its patron, Victor Emmanuel II, the king of the House of Savoy in Piedmont. Cattaneo was a lifelong and staunch republican.
Cattaneo died in 1869 in Castagnola, Lugano, an Italian-speaking part of Switzerland.
As Cattaneo was an important figure for both Italy and Switzerland, the commemorative events being held from March to October 2019 is transnational.
"Catteneo is one of the most important Italian-Swiss exiles," Pietro Montorfani, head of Lugano's historical archive, told The Local.
Events are scheduled in Lugano in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland, as well as in the Italian cities of Milan and Castellanza, home to Carlo Cattaneo University.
Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) In 1800, Alessandro Volta of Italy built the voltaic pile and discovered the first practical method of generating electricity. Count Volta also made discoveries in electrostatics, meteorology and pneumatics. His most famous invention, however, is the first battery. Amazing how a bit of imagination can change the world. -- radioguy1620 Almost three hundred year my Gee but ask an average normal person to built a battery or at least explain how is a battery made lol -- jassir amed Watching this with my 5yr old son as an explanation on how the age of electricity has begun (: -- Uladzimir Darożka Very interesting. -- matthewakian2 Thank You Volta -- Aventanario
************ Galvani vs. Volta [Luigi Galvani vs. Alessandro Volta] [Similar to the dueling wizards "Tesla vs. Edison"] Volta, a professor of experimental physics in the University of Pavia, was among the first scientists who repeated and checked Galvani’s experiments. At first, he embraced animal electricity. However, he started to doubt that the conductions were caused by a specific electricity intrinsic to animal's legs or other body parts. Volta believed that the contractions depended on the metal cable Galvani used to connect the nerves and muscles in his experiments. Volta's investigations led shortly to the invention of an early battery. Galvani believed that the animal electricity came from the muscle in its pelvis. Volta, in opposition, reasoned that the animal electricity was a physical phenomenon caused by rubbing frog skin and not a metallic electricity. Every cell has a cell potential; biological electricity has the same chemical underpinnings as the current between electrochemical cells, and thus can be duplicated outside the body. Volta's intuition was correct. Volta, essentially, objected to Galvani’s conclusions about "animal electric fluid", but the two scientists disagreed respectfully and Volta coined the term "Galvanism" for a direct current of electricity produced by chemical action. Thus, owing to an argument between the two in regard to the source or cause of the electricity, Volta built the first battery in order to specifically disprove his associate's theory. Volta's “pile” became known therefore as a voltaic pile. After the controversy with Volta, Galvani kept a low profile partly because of his attitude towards the controversy, and partly because his health and spirits had declined, especially after the death of his wife, Lucia, in 1790. Since Galvani was reluctant to intervene in the controversy with Volta, he trusted his nephew, Giovanni Aldini, to act as the main defender of the theory of animal electricity.
The former Yankee catcher was universally liked, mostly due to his "Yogi Berraisms."
New York Yankees legend Yogi Berra passed away at the age of 90. An 18-time All-Star and 10-time World Series champion, Berra was not only one of the most accomplished catchers of all-time, he will go down as one of the greatest to ever wear the famous pinstripes of the New York Yankees.
The Missouri native played as an outfielder and as a catcher with the Yankees from 1946-63, followed by a short stint with the Mets. In addition to his playing experience, Berra was a manager in Major League Baseball with the Yankees in 1964 and again from 1984-85. He also managed the Mets from 1972-75.
Growing up as a Red Sox fan, I despised everything about the New York Yankees. I didn't like the players, the managers, the fans or those pinstriped uniforms. I didn't like any of their history either. You could say — like many people — I was a Yankee hater.
But I never hated Yogi Berra.
Yogi was baseball to kids growing up in New York. Your grandpa would talk about him like they were friends. If you played catcher, you were the next Yogi Berra.
But Yogi was bigger than just baseball, largely due to some of the crazy-yet-poiniant things he would say. The zaney statements came to be known as "Yogi Berra-isms." Here are some of his best:
Yogi Berra's 10 Best Quotes & Sayings
"When you get to a fork in the road, take it."
"It gets late early around here."
"A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore."
"The future ain't what it used to be."
"Ninety percent of this game is half mental."
"I really didn't say everything I said."
"You can observe a lot just by watching."
"Half the lies they tell about me aren't true."
"If you don't know where you're going, you might end up someplace else."
"We have a good time together, even when we're not together."
A bonus (and perhaps the most famous of his fantastic baseball quotes):
"It ain't over till it's over."
Today, we're all sad it's over. Rest in Peace, Yogi.
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Yogi Berra was of Milanese/Lombard descent. He was from "The Hill" in St. Louis, which was a Milanese district going back to the 1880s up to about a century ago when it started to become a Sicilian district.
This article on Isa Miranda was written by Chiara Ricci, author of the newly released book “Anna Magnani. Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore.” It has been translated from Italian. Trying to explain what Isa Miranda means to Italian cinema is not easy because of her life-long sensibility, her professional choices, and her unique and rare gift of versatility and being able to adapt under every circumstance. Isa Miranda worked in Italy, in Switzerland, in France, in the United Kingdom, and in the USA. She is the first Italian actress – after Rodolfo Valentino and Francesca Bertini – to be called to Hollywood to sign a contract with Paramount. Isa Miranda was born in Milan as Ines Isabella Sampietro, a humble peasants’ daughter. She managed, only with her strength and her ambition for a better life, to become one of the most important actresses during the period 1934–1944. In 1934, her true entrance in the world of cinema came with her performance in La signora di tutti, directed by Max Ophüls, where she is Gaby, a young femme fatale. After becoming a star of Italian cinema, Isa made her way to Hollywood. In 1937, with producer Alfredo Guarini (who she will marry in 1939 in Tucson, Arizona) Isa traveled to the USA to get away from a fascist cinema. She was considered an antagonist of Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. The star system worked on her image and attitude, creating the appearance of an unattainable woman, much like the other female stars of the day.
Miranda does not consider herself a diva, but an actress. In the USA, she takes part in two films: Hotel Imperial (1939) directed by Robert Florey with Ray Milland, and Adventures in Diamonds (1940) directed by George Fitzmaurice, the same director of Mata Hari. But these films are not successful. The relationship between Miranda and the American star system is not idyllic. Adding to this stress is the outbreak of the war, and more importantly, the illness of Isa’s mother. This brings an end to Isa’s American adventure, and in 1940, she returns to Italy where she finds many surprises. Because of her antifascist opinions, Isa runs into a lot of problems with the regime and with other actresses. The press receives orders from higher-ups, forbidding them to talk to, write about, or advertise Miranda. In fact, her return to Italy is completely unpublicized and her career comes to a halt. Her husband tries to help by producing and directing three of her films between 1940 and 1942, without success: Senza cielo, E’ caduta una donna and Documento Z3.
Finally, things begin to turn around. It is 1942 and Mario Soldati wants Isa Miranda to be Marina in Malombra, a film inspired by Antonio Fogazzaro’s novel of the same name. This is a great success! The same year, Renato Castellani chooses her for the title role in Zazà. In this film, a singer falls in love with a married man, so she decides to leave him to his family, sacrificing her love. This is another success and the public discovers a new Isa Miranda. These films are two gems in Miranda’s filmography where she is in her maturity as an actress, finding the perfect balance between herself and her characters. In fact, she loves to study, to create her roles, but she wants to live them, to have them, to build them, and to cry and to laugh with them, too! She wants to be the character, and she wants to give it life by inserting her vitality and her temper. Then Miranda divides herself between Italy and France where she makes other films, though they pass almost unseen: La carne e l’anima by Wladimiro Strichewsky (1943), Lo sbaglio di essere vivo by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia (1945) and L’avventura comincia domani by Richard Pottier (1947). But in 1949, things change. René Clément directs her with Jean Gabin in Le mura di Malapaga. In this film, she is Marta, a hostess who falls in love to a man who is wanted by the police for homicide. She hides him, but in the end, he is arrested. Thanks to this part, Miranda wins the International Gran Prix as Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival and the New York filmgoers vote her the Best Foreign Actress of 1949–1950.
In 1950, she again works in France with director Max Ophüls. She takes part in La ronde, inspired by the namesake piece written by Arthur Schnitzler. It is a choral film and tells how love is like a merry-go-round. After this film Miranda will have only little parts, short presences in film that are unimpressive, for example: Cameriera bella presenza offresi (1951) directed by Giorgio Pàstina, I sette peccati capitali directed by Eduardo De Filippo (1952) in the episode Avarizia e ira and in the forth episode of Donne where she is directed by Luigi Zampa. This last performance is one of her most intense; she tells about the pain of not having children and her deep feeling of motherhood.
Miranda is almost completely forgotten in Italy and decides to work abroad: in France with Prima del diluvio (1954) directed by André Cayatte, Il tradimento di Elena Marimon (1954) directed by Georges Combret; in the USA she takes a part alongside Katherine Hepburn in Summertime (1955), directed by David Lean.
In Italy, she has only a few short roles in Arrivano i dollari! (1957) directed by Mario Costa with Alberto Sordi, Nino Taranto, Riccardo Billi, Mario Riva and in Gli sbandati directed by Mario Costa. It is hard to understand and to explain why her career is so varied. She is not stereotypical because she gives life to so many different women; to think differently would be to misunderstand her work. But it is true that she chose to play all these women after 1946, to help her husband following a financial breakdown. So she appears in La corruzione by Mauro Bolognini (1963), La noia by Damiano Damiani (1963), Lo chiameremo Andrea by Vittorio De Sica (1972) and Il portiere di notte by Liliana Cavani (1974). These are Miranda’s last performances and we see the same professionalism and seriousness as she had at the beginning of her career. Finally, she decides to live in England. It is difficult for her because she has to start over with nothing. She works as babysitter and as secretary. But she has no regrets; she has a perfect inner-balance, and she is happy about what life has given her. Even today, Isa Miranda is the representation of Italian (and international) cinema and of an era. She is the girl from Milan and the perfect diva; she is the femme fatale, and the mother she never became in real life; she is the secretary and the muse of the most important painters of last century. She is Isa Miranda. She is always Ines Isabella Sampietro, La signora di tutti. I would like to thank Chiara Ricci for the hard work that went into writing this article. Please take a moment to visit Chiara’s website at www.riccichiara.com and purchase a copy of her new book!
Hotel Imperial 1939 - Ray Milland - Isa Miranda - Gene Lockhart ClassicMovieShop Want to get the full film on DVD? Visit https://www.lovingtheclassics.com/hotel-imperial-1939.html ************ Don't order this from http://lovingtheclassics.com/ they are listed on http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/specific_search/Loving+the+Classics they are also listed as the fourth highest business with complaints at the Ohio Better Business Bureau. If you want to purchase old movies go to a reputable site like oldies.com they are very inexpensive unlike the above site which prices are a lot higher and you will most likely not receive anything if you do, which most don't it will be something recorded from TV in garbage quality according to the complaints at ripoff report.I don't know why youtube lets them promote sales on their site without paying for it or verifying their business licence and status. All other advertisers pay to have their products promoted on sites. -- Jim Smith, YouTube user ************************* IMDB Mini Bio Isa Miranda was one of the most significant actresses in Europe from the 1930s-'50s. Her remarkable talent expressed itself both in cinema and theater. She reached international popularity in the 1930s, especially in France, Germany and Austria, and became the only international movie star produced by the fascist cinema. In the 1950s, when her film career began declining, she played on stage in Italy, the US ("Mike McCauley", 1951), France ("Le serpent à sonettes", 1953) and England ("Orpheus Descending" by Tennessee Williams, 1959), receiving positive reviews everywhere. In the 1960s she started a TV career in England, appearing in many made-for-TV movies. She was a versatile actress, exceedingly sensible, a charming woman, and unjustly forgotten at the end of her life even by those who should have remembered her. -- Giuseppe Alessi .
Born Ines Isabella Sampietro in Bergamo, she worked as a typist whilst attending the drama academy in Milan and training as a stage actress. She went on to play bit parts in Italian films in Rome. She changed her name to Isa Miranda and success came with Max Ophüls' film La Signora di tutti (Everybody's Woman) (1934) in which she played Gaby Doriot, a famous film star and adventuress with whom men cannot help falling in love. Having brought several of them to their ruin, she slits her wrists. This performance brought in its wake several film offers and a Hollywood contract with Paramount Pictures. There, billed as the "Italian Marlene Dietrich", she played several femme fatale roles in such films as Hotel Imperial (1939) and Adventure in Diamonds (1940).
She returned to Italy soon after the outbreak of World War II and continued to act on the stage and to make films. In 1949, she starred in René Clément's The Walls of Malapaga, which won an Academy Award for the most outstanding foreign language film of 1950, and for Miranda, the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Another success of that period was La Ronde (1950), also directed by Ophüls. Her career took her to France, Germany and England, where she frequently appeared in TV films, including The Avengers. Other notable film appearances include Siamo donne (1953), a portmanteau film where Miranda shares the screen with three other screen legends, Anna Magnani, Alida Valli and Ingrid Bergman, Summertime (1955), Gli Sbandati (1955), La Noia (The Empty Canvas, 1963), The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964), The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) and Liliana Cavani's Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter, 1974).
Miranda was married to the Italian director and producer Alfredo Guarini until his death in 1981. She died in Rome in 1982, three days after her 73rd birthday.
Movie Legends - Isa Miranda Movie Legands Isa Miranda was an Italian actress with an international film career.
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Isa Miranda, was meant to be the Italian answer to the legendary Marlene Dietrich. Miranda between 1930s and 1940s has been one of the greatest actresses of Italian cinema with Clara Calamai, Anna Magnani, Assia Noris and Alida Valli. BAZ, this is a special tribute to a beautiful actress who unfortunately has been forgotten. Malombra is one of her most famous roles, but unfortunately her films are not remembered on television. Congratulations for this work! -- The Big Valley, YouTube user
Most beautiful actress... C.J. Blanda, YouTube user
Nino Rota - Romeo And Juliet (1968) Theme oldmoviemusic One of the most classic and memorable romantic themes of any film, Franco Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet score, composed by Nino Rota, reflects the tragic passion of the famous story it portrays. When youths Romeo Montigue and Juliet Capulet first meet it is a bond that cannot be broken, love at first sight. However, with the blood feud between their families still as strong as ever, it is teh most famous romance of all time destined for tragic doom. Starring: Olivia Hussey, Leonard Whiting Directed by: Franco Zefferelli Composer: Nino Rota ************************* I haven't seen where the 1968 British-Italian film 'Romeo and Juliet' has been aired on TV for many years. It was a very popular movie and was aired often throughout the 70s and 80s. Especially memorable was Argentine-American actress Olivia Hussey who played Juliet. Milanese born Nino Rota composed the music and Mantuan born Danilo Donati won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design.
Nino Rota Giovanni "Nino" Rota (3 December 1911 – 10 April 1979) was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor and academic who is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti. He also composed the music for two of Franco Zeffirelli's Shakespeare films, and for the first two films of Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy, receiving the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Godfather Part II (1974). During his long career Rota was an extraordinarily prolific composer, especially of music for the cinema. He wrote more than 150 scores for Italian and international productions from the 1930s until his death in 1979—an average of three scores each year over a 46-year period, and in his most productive period from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s he wrote as many as ten scores every year, and sometimes more, with a remarkable thirteen film scores to his credit in 1954.
Alongside this great body of film work, he composed ten operas, five ballets and dozens of other orchestral, choral and chamber works, the best known being his string concerto. He also composed the music for many theatre productions by Visconti, Zeffirelli and Eduardo De Filippo as well as maintaining a long teaching career at the Liceo Musicale in Bari, Italy, where he was the director for almost 30 years.
Romeo and Juliet (1968 film) Romeo and Juliet is a 1968 British-Italian romance film based on the tragic play of the same name (1591–1595) by William Shakespeare. The film was directed and co-written by Franco Zeffirelli, and stars Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey. It won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography (Pasqualino De Santis) and Best Costume Design (Danilo Donati); it was also nominated for Best Director and Best Picture, making it the last Shakespearean film to be nominated for Best Picture to date. Sir Laurence Olivier spoke the film's prologue and epilogue and reportedly dubbed the voice of the Italian actor playing Lord Montague, but was not credited in the film. Being the most financially successful film adaptation of a Shakespeare play at the time of its release, it was popular among teenagers partly because it was the first film to use actors who were close to the age of the characters from the original play. Several critics also welcomed the film enthusiastically.
Danilo Donati Danilo Donati (April 6, 1926 - December 1, 2001) was an Italian costume designer and production designer. He won the Academy Award for Costume Design twice: the first time for his work in Romeo and Juliet (1968), the second time for his work in Fellini's Casanova (1976). In addition, he received numerous David di Donatello and Nastro d'Argento awards for his costume and production designs in various films. Among the film directors with whom Donati had worked were Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Nino Rota (December 3, 1911 - April 10, 1979) was an Italian composer.
He is particularly remembered for his work on film scores, especially
The Godfather series and a number of films by Federico Fellini.
Rota
was born into a musical family in Milan, and studied at the
conservatory there under Ildebrando Pizzetti. Later, the conductor
Arturo Toscanini encouraged him to go to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to
study. This he did, where he worked under Fritz Reiner, amongst others.
He later returned to Milan, where he wrote a thesis on the renaissance
composer Gioseffo Zarlino.
Rota at age 12
Rota wrote his first film score in
1944 for Zaza, a film directed by Renato Castellani. He later met the
director Federico Fellini while the latter was working on his first
film, Lo Sceicco Bianco. The two collaborated on many occasions, with
Rota’s score for 8 1/2 often cited as one of the main factors which
makes the film more cohesive.
His score for Fellini’s Juliet of
the Spirits (1965) included a collaboration with Eugene Walter on the
song, “Go Milk the Moon” (cut from the final version of the film), and
they teamed again for the song “What Is Youth,” part of Rota’s score for
Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet.
All pieces performed by The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.
Track List:
1. Toby Dammit (0:00) 2. The White Sheik (3:38) 3. Juliet of the Spirits (6:26) 4. 8 1/2 (13:48) 5. I Vitelloni (19:02) 6. Il Bidone (22:05) 7. The Nights of Cabiria (26:56) 8. Boccaccio ’70 (33:06) 9. Satyricon (34:35) 10. The Clowns (37:41) 11. Roma (42:04) 12. Amarcord (45:57) 13. Casanova (51:09) 14. La Dolce Vita (54:37) 15. Prova D’Orchestra (1:01:49) 16. La Strada (1:05:53) .
Arnold of Brescia (c. 1090 – June 1155), also known as Arnaldus (Italian: Arnaldo da Brescia), was an Italian canon regular from Lombardy. He called on the Church to renounce property ownership and participated in the failed Commune of Rome.
Exiled at least three times and eventually arrested, Arnold was hanged by the papacy, then was burned posthumously and (his ashes) thrown into the River Tiber. Though he failed as a religious reformer and a political leader, his teachings on apostolic poverty gained currency after his death among "Arnoldists" and more widely among Waldensians and the Spiritual Franciscans, though no written word of his has survived the official condemnation. Protestants rank him among the precursors of the Reformation.
Biography
Born in Brescia, Arnold became an Augustinian canon and then prior of a monastery in Brescia. He criticized the Catholic Church's temporal powers that involved it in a land struggle in Brescia against the Count-Bishop of Brescia. He called on the Church to renounce its claim and return ownership to the city government so as not to be tainted by possession—renunciation of worldliness being one of his primary teachings. He was condemned at the Second Lateran Council in 1139 and forced from Italy.
According to the chronicler Otto of Freising, Arnold had studied in Paris under the tutelage of the reformer and philosopher Pierre Abélard. He took to Abélard's philosophy of reform ways. The issue came before the Synod of Sens in 1141 and both Arnold and Abélard's positions were overruled by Bernard of Clairvaux. Arnold stood alone against the church's decision after Abélard's capitulation; he returned to Paris, where he continued to teach and preach against Bernard. As a consequence he was then commanded to silence and exiled by Pope Innocent II. He took refuge first in Zurich then probably in Bavaria. His writings were also condemned to be burned as a further measure, though the condemnation is the only evidence that he had actually written anything. Arnold continued to preach his radical ideas concerning apostolic poverty. Arnold, who is known only from the vituperative condemnation of his foes, was declared to be a demagogue; his motives were impugned.Having returned to Italy after 1143, Arnold made his peace in 1145 with Pope Eugene III, who ordered him to submit himself to the mercy of the Church in Rome. When he arrived, he found that Giordano Pierleoni's followers had asserted the ancient rights of the commune of Rome, taken control of the city from papal forces, and founded a republic, the Commune of Rome. Arnold sided with the people immediately and, after Pierleoni's deposition, soon rose to the intellectual leadership of the Commune, calling for liberties and democratic rights. Arnold taught that clergy who owned property had no power to perform the Sacraments. He succeeded in driving Pope Eugene into exile in 1146, for which he was excommunicated on 15 July 1148. When Pope Eugene returned to the city in 1148, Arnold continued to lead the blossoming republic despite his excommunication. In summing up these events, Caesar Baronius called Arnold "the father of political heresies", while Edward Gibbon later expressed his view that "the trumpet of Roman liberty was first sounded by Arnold."
After Pope Eugene's death, Pope Adrian IV swiftly took steps to regain control of Rome. He allied with Frederick Barbarossa, who took Rome by force in 1155 after a Holy Week interdict and forced Arnold again into exile. Arnold was seized by Imperial forces and tried by the Roman Curia as a rebel. Importantly, he was never accused of heresy. Faced with the stake, he refused to recant any of his positions. Convicted of rebellion, Arnold was hanged in June and his body burnt. Because he remained a hero to large sections of the Roman people and the minor clergy, his ashes were cast into the Tiber, to prevent his burial place becoming venerated as the shrine of a martyr.
In 1882, after the collapse of Papal temporal powers, the city of Brescia erected a monument to its native son.
In this presentation, Professor Robert M. Worley provides an in-depth discussion of Cesare Beccaria, the Founder of the Classical School of Criminology. Worley provides a historical background of the time in which Classical theories of crime first came to fruition and also identifies and fully discusses the tenets of Classical theories.
Born: March 15, 1738 - Milan, Duchy of Milan, Austrian Empire Died: November 28, 1794 (aged 56) - Milan, Duchy of Milan, Austrian Empire Occupation: Jurist, philosopher, politician, and criminologist Children: Giulia, Maria, Giovanni Annibale, Margherita
Cesare Bonesana-Beccaria, Marquis of Gualdrasco and Villareggio (Italian: [ˈtʃeːzare bekkaˈriːa]; 15 March 1738 – 28 November 1794) was an Italian criminologist, jurist, philosopher, and politician, who is widely considered as the most talented jurist and one of the greatest thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment. Recognized to be one of the fathers of classical criminal theory and modern penology, he is well remembered for his treatise On Crimes and Punishments (1764), which condemned torture and the death penalty, and was a founding work in the field of penology and the Classical School of criminology by promoting criminal justice.
According to John Bessler, Beccaria's works had a profound influence on the Founding Fathers of the United States.
Birth and education
Born in Milan on 15 March 1738, Beccaria received his early education in the Jesuit college at Parma. Subsequently, he graduated in law from the University of Pavia in 1758. At first he showed a great aptitude for mathematics, but studying Montesquieu (1689-1755) redirected his attention towards economics. In 1762 his first publication, a tract on the disorder of the currency in the Milanese states, included a proposal for its remedy.
In his mid-twenties, Beccaria became close friends with Pietro and Alessandro Verri, two brothers who with a number of other young men from the Milan aristocracy, formed a literary society named "L'Accademia dei pugni" (the Academy of Fists), a playful name which made fun of the stuffy academies that proliferated in Italy and also hinted that relaxed conversations which took place in there sometimes ended in affrays. Much of its discussion focused on reforming the criminal justice system. Through this group Beccaria became acquainted with French and British political philosophers, such as Hobbes, Diderot, Helvetius, Montesquieu, and Hume. He was particularly influenced by Helvétius.
Later life and influence
With great hesitation, Beccaria acted on an invitation to Paris to meet the great thinkers of the day. With the Verri brothers, Beccaria travelled to Paris, where he was given a very warm reception by the philosophes. A chronically shy person, Beccaria made a poor impression at Paris and after three weeks retreated, returning to Milan and his young wife Teresa and never venturing abroad again. The break with the Verri brothers proved lasting; they were never able to understand why Beccaria had left his position at the peak of success.
Beccaria continued, however, to gain official recognition and held several nominal political positions in Italy. Separated from the invaluable input from his friends, though, he failed to produce another text of equal importance. Outside Italy, an unfounded myth grew that Beccaria's literary silence owed to Austrian restrictions on free expression in Italy.
Legal scholars of the time hailed Beccaria's treatise, and several European emperors vowed to follow it. Many reforms in the penal codes of the principal European nations can be traced to Beccaria's treatise, although few contemporaries were convinced by Beccaria's argument against the death penalty. When the Grand Duchy of Tuscany abolished the death penalty, as the first nation in the world to do so, it followed Beccaria's argument about the lack of utility of capital punishment, not about the state's lacking the right to execute citizens. In November 1768, Beccaria was appointed to the chair of law and economy founded expressly for him at the Palatine college of Milan. His lectures on political economy, which are based on strict utilitarian principles, are in marked accordance with the theories of the English school of economists. They are published in the collection of Italian writers on political economy (Scrittori Classici Italiani di Economia politica, vols. xi. and xii.). Beccaria never succeeded in producing another work to match Dei Delitti e Delle Pene, although he made various incomplete attempts in the course of his life. A short treatise on literary style was all he saw to press. In 1771, Beccaria was made a member of the supreme economic council, and in 1791 he was appointed to the board for the reform of the judicial code, where he made a valuable contribution. During this period he spearheaded a number of important reforms, such as the standardisation of weights and measurements. He died in Milan.
Following his death, talk of Beccaria spread to France and England. People speculated as to whether Beccaria’s lack of recent writing on criminal justice was evidence that he had been silenced by the British government. In fact, Beccaria, prone to periodic bouts of depression and misanthropy, had grown silent on his own.
A forerunner in criminology, his influence during his lifetime extended to shaping the rights listed in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. "On Crimes and Punishments" served as a guide to the founding fathers.
Beccaria’s theories, as expressed in his treatise "On Crimes and Punishments," have continued to play a great role in recent times. Current policies impacted by his theories include, but are not limited to, truth in sentencing, swift punishment and the abolishment of the death penalty in some U.S. states. While many of Beccaria’s theories are popular, some are still a source of heated controversy, even more than two centuries after the famed criminologist’s death.
His grandson was Alessandro Manzoni, the noted Italian novelist and poet who wrote, among other things, The Betrothed, one of the first Italian historical novels, and "Il 5 Maggio", a poem on Napoleon's death.
Commemorations
Beccaria Township in central Pennsylvania, United States, is named for him. .
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (15 May 1567 (baptized) -- 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.
Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition: the heritage of Renaissance polyphony and the new basso continuo technique of the Baroque. Enjoying fame in his lifetime, he wrote one of the earliest operas, L'Orfeo, which is still regularly performed.
"Missa in illo tempore : Crucifixus à 4" Performed : Bach Collegium Japan Dir : Masaaki Suzuki
Image : stained glass window - detail of head of Christ, Scopwick Church, Lincolnshire, England
Claudio Monteverdi Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (Italian; 15 May 1567 (baptized) – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, singer and Roman Catholic priest.
Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the change from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period period. He developed two styles of composition – the heritage of Renaissance polyphony and the new basso continuo technique of the Baroque. Monteverdi wrote one of the earliest operas, L'Orfeo, a novel work that is the earliest surviving opera still regularly performed. He is widely recognized as an inventive composer who enjoyed considerable fame in his lifetime.
Claudio Monteverdi was born in 1567 in Cremona, Lombardy. His father was Baldassare Monteverdi, a doctor, apothecary and amateur surgeon. He was the oldest of five children. During his childhood, he was taught by Marc'Antonio Ingegneri, the maestro di cappella at the Cathedral of Cremona. The Maestro’s job was to conduct important worship services in accordance with the liturgy of the Catholic Church. Monteverdi learned about music as a member of the cathedral choir. He also studied at the University of Cremona.
His first music was written for publication, including some motets and sacred madrigals, in 1582 and 1583. His first five publications were: Sacrae cantiunculae, 1582 (a collection of miniature motets); Madrigali Spirituali, 1583 (a volume of which only the bass partbook is extant); Canzonette a tre voci, 1584 (a collection of three-voice canzonettes); and the five-part madrigals Book I, 1587, and Book II, 1590. He worked at the court of Vincenzo I of Gonzaga in Mantua as a vocalist and viol player, then as music director. In 1602, he was working as the court conductor and Vincenzo appointed him master of music on the death of Benedetto Pallavicino.
In 1599 Monteverdi married the court singer Claudia Cattaneo, who died in September 1607. They had two sons (Francesco and Massimilino) and a daughter (Leonora). Another daughter died shortly after birth. In 1610 he moved to Rome, arriving in secret, hoping to present his music to Pope Paul V. His Vespers were printed the same year, but his planned meeting with the Pope never took place.
In 1612 Vincenzo died and was succeeded by his eldest son Francesco. Heavily in debt, due to the profligacy of his father, Francesco sacked Monteverdi and he spent a year in Mantua without any paid employment. His 1607 opera L'Orfeo was dedicated to Francesco. The title page of the opera bears the dedication "Al serenissimo signor D. Francesco Gonzaga, Prencipe di Mantoua, & di Monferato, &c."
By 1613, he had moved to San Marco in Venice where, as conductor, he quickly restored the musical standard of both the choir and the instrumentalists. The musical standard had declined due to the financial mismanagement of his predecessor, Giulio Cesare Martinengo. The managers of the basilica were relieved to have such a distinguished musician in charge, as the music had been declining since the death of Giovanni Croce in 1609.
In 1632, he became a priest. During the last years of his life, when he was often ill, he composed his two last masterpieces: Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (The Return of Ulysses, 1641), and the historic opera L'incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea, 1642), based on the life of the Roman emperor Nero. L'incoronazione especially is considered a culminating point of Monteverdi's work. It contains tragic, romantic, and comic scenes (a new development in opera), a more realistic portrayal of the characters, and warmer melodies than previously heard. It requires a smaller orchestra, and has a less prominent role for the choir. For a long period of time, Monteverdi's operas were merely regarded as a historical or musical interest. Since the 1960s, The Coronation of Poppea has re-entered the repertoire of major opera companies worldwide.
Monteverdi died, aged 76, in Venice on 29 November 1643 and was buried at the church of the Frari. .
Antonio Stradivari Antonio Stradivari (1644 – 18 December 1737) was an Italian luthier and a crafter of stringed instruments such as violins, cellos, guitars, violas and harps. Stradivari is generally considered the most significant and greatest artisan in this field. The Latinized form of his surname, Stradivarius, as well as the colloquial "Strad" are terms often used to refer to his instruments. The Hills Violin Shop estimate that Antonio produced 1,116 instruments, of which 960 were violins. It is also estimated that around 650 of these instruments survive, including 450 to 512 violins.
Stradivari and the Cremonese violin making school
San Matteo, the Stradivari parish, as well as San Faustino, the Amati parish, made up the center of cremonese violin making.They exerted influence not only on one another, in terms of the shape, varnish and sound of instruments, but also on many of their contemporaries; they defined violin making standards for the next 300 years.
Even at the beginning of the 18th century, Stradivari’s influence could be seen not only in the work of Cremonese makers, but also international ones, such as Barak Norman’s, one of the first important British makers. In the 1720s Daniel Parker, a very important British luthier, produced fine violins after Stradivari’s work selling anywhere from £30,000 - £60,000 in recent auctions. Parker based his best instruments on Stradivari's` `long pattern`, having the opportunity to study one or more of the instruments. Well into the 19th century, Jean Baptiste Vuillaume, the leading French luthier of his time, also made many important copies of Strads and Guarneris.
In the 18th century, Cremonese luthiers were the suppliers and local players on the demand side. After Stradivari’s death, this drastically changed. Although the Cremonese luthiers remained the suppliers, the demand side consisted of collectors, researchers, imitators, profiteers and speculators. Many local players could no longer afford the sought out instruments and most of the purchased instruments would be hidden in private collections, put in museums, or would be simply put back in their cases, hoping that they would gain value over time. It is then that the so-called ‘fever’ for Stradivaris took off.
Cozio, Tarisio and Vuillaume were the fathers of this frenzy that would extend well into the 21st century. Also, soon after Stradivari’s death, most of the other major Cremonese luthiers would die, putting an end to the golden period of Cremona’s violin making, which lasted more than 150 years, starting with the Amatis and ending with the Cerutis.
Stradivarius instruments
Stradivari's instruments are regarded as amongst the finest bowed stringed instruments ever created, are highly prized, and are still played by professionals today. Only one other maker, Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù, commands a similar respect among violinists. However, neither blind listening tests nor acoustic analysis have ever demonstrated that Stradivarius instruments are better than other high-quality instruments or even reliably distinguishable from them.
Fashions in music, as in other things, have changed over the centuries, and the supremacy of Stradivari's and Guarneri's instruments is accepted only today. In the past, instruments by Nicolò Amati and Jacob Stainer were preferred for their subtle sweetness of tone.
Eugenio Beltrami Born: 16 November 1835 Cremona, Lombardy, Austrian Empire Died: 18 February 1900 (aged 64) Rome, Kingdom of Italy Residence: Italy Nationality: Italian Fields: Mathematician Institutions: University of Bologna University of Pisa University of Rome Alma mater: University of Pavia Doctoral advisor: Francesco Brioschi Doctoral students: Giovanni Frattini Known for: Laplace–Beltrami operator
Eugenio Beltrami (November 16, 1835 in Cremona – 18 February 1900 in Rome) was an Italian mathematician notable for his work concerning differential geometry and mathematical physics. His work was noted especially for clarity of exposition. He was the first to prove consistency of non-Euclidean geometry by modeling it on a surface of constant curvature, the pseudosphere, and in the interior of an n-dimensional unit sphere, the so-called Beltrami–Klein model. He also developed singular value decomposition for matrices, which has been subsequently rediscovered several times. Beltrami's use of differential calculus for problems of mathematical physics indirectly influenced development of tensor calculus by Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro and Tullio Levi-Civita.
Short biography
Beltrami was born in Cremona in Lombardy, then a part of the Austrian Empire, and now part of Italy. He began studying mathematics at University of Pavia in 1853, but was expelled from Ghislieri College in 1856 due to his political opinions. During this time he was taught and influenced by Francesco Brioschi. He had to discontinue his studies because of financial hardship and spent the next several years as a secretary working for the Lombardy–Venice railroad company. He was appointed to the University of Bologna as a professor in 1862, the year he published his first research paper. Throughout his life, Beltrami had various professorial jobs at universities in Pisa, Rome and Pavia. From 1891 until the end of his life Beltrami lived in Rome. He became the president of the Accademia dei Lincei in 1898 and a senator of the Kingdom of Italy in 1899.
Contributions to non-Euclidean geometry
In 1868 Beltrami published two memoirs (written in Italian; French translations by J. Hoüel appeared in1869) dealing with consistency and interpretations of non-Euclidean geometry of Bolyai and Lobachevsky. In his "Essay on an interpretation of non-Euclidean geometry", Beltrami proposed that this geometry could be realized on a surface of constant negative curvature, a pseudosphere. For Beltrami's concept, lines of the geometry are represented by geodesics on the pseudosphere and theorems of non-Euclidean geometry can be proved within ordinary three-dimensional Euclidean space, and not derived in an axiomatic fashion, as Lobachevsky and Bolyai had done previously. In 1840, Minding already considered geodesic triangles on the pseudosphere and remarked that the corresponding "trigonometric formulas" are obtained from the corresponding formulas of spherical trigonometry by replacing the usual trigonometric functions with hyperbolic functions; this was further developed by Codazzi in 1857, but apparently neither of them noticed the association with Lobachevsky's work.
In this way, Beltrami attempted to demonstrate that two-dimensional non-Euclidean geometry is as valid as the Euclidean geometry of the space, and in particular, that Euclid's parallel postulate could not be derived from the other axioms of Euclidean geometry. It is often stated that this proof was incomplete due to the singularities of the pseudosphere, which means that geodesics could not be extended indefinitely. However, John Stillwell remarks that Beltrami must have been well aware of this difficulty, which is also manifested by the fact that the pseudosphere is topologically a cylinder, and not a plane, and he spent a part of his memoir designing a way around it. By a suitable choice of coordinates, Beltrami showed how the metric on the pseudosphere can be transferred to the unit disk and that the singularity of the pseudosphere corresponds to a horocycle on the non-Euclidean plane. On the other hand, in the introduction to his memoir, Beltrami states that it would be impossible to justify "the rest of Lobachevsky's theory", i.e. the non-Euclidean geometry of space, by this method.
Cremona, Lombardy
In the second memoir published during the same year (1868), "Fundamental theory of spaces of constant curvature", Beltrami continued this logic and gave an abstract proof of equiconsistency of hyperbolic and Euclidean geometry for any dimension. He accomplished this by introducing several models of non-Euclidean geometry that are now known as the Beltrami–Klein model, the Poincaré disk model, and the Poincaré half-plane model, together with transformations that relate them. For the half-plane model, Beltrami cited a note by Liouville in the treatise of Monge on differential geometry. Beltrami also showed that n-dimensional Euclidean geometry is realized on a horosphere of the (n + 1)-dimensional hyperbolic space, so the logical relation between consistency of the Euclidean and the non-Euclidean geometries is symmetric. Beltrami acknowledged the influence of Riemann's groundbreaking Habilitation lecture "On the hypotheses on which geometry is based" (1854; published posthumously in 1868).
Although today Beltrami's "Essay" is recognized as very important for the development of non-Euclidean geometry, the reception at the time was less enthusiastic. Cremona objected to perceived circular reasoning, which even forced Beltrami to delay the publication of the "Essay" by one year. Subsequently, Felix Klein failed to acknowledge Beltrami's priority in construction of the projective disk model of the non-Euclidean geometry. This reaction can be attributed in part to the novelty of Beltrami's reasoning, which was similar to the ideas of Riemann concerning abstract manifolds. J. Hoüel published Beltrami's proof in his French translation of works of Lobachevsky and Bolyai.
Works
Beltrami, Eugenio (1868). "Saggio di interpretazione della geometria non-euclidea". Giornale di Mathematiche VI: 285–315.
Beltrami, Eugenio (1868). "Teoria fondamentale degli spazii di curvatura costante". Annali. di Mat., ser II 2: 232–255. doi:10.1007/BF02419615.
Opere matematiche di Eugenio Beltrami pubblicate per cura della Facoltà di scienze della r. Università di Roma (volumes 1–2) (U. Hoepli, Milano, 1902–1920)[1]
Same edition, vols. 1–4
References
Study, E. (1909). "Review: Opere matematiche di Eugenio Beltrami". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 16 (3): 147–149. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1909-01882-8.
Stillwell, John (1996). Sources of hyperbolic geometry. History of Mathematics 10. Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society. ISBN 978-0-8218-0529-9. MR 1402697
Jeremy Gray, Poincaré and Klein — Groups and Geometries. In 1830–1930: a Century of Geometry (ed L.Boi, D.Flament and J.-M.Salanskis), Springer, 1992, 35–44 External links
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