Italy: cradle of Classical music When we speak about classical music, we truly speak about centuries and centuries of western musical creation. The adjective is, by definition, associated to music rooted in the Western cultural heritage, and composed between the 11th and the 20th century. Both profane and sacred music composed and performed in […]
The multi-cultural origins of Italian traditional and popular music. Italy is a young country, after all. It only unified in 1861, a century and a half ago. We are used to consider pre-unification Italy as a political melting pot of states and principalities, often ruled over by foreign powers. What we […]
A UNESCO Heritage Site rich in history, beauty, good food and great wines I was born in the province of Cuneo, near the Alps, in a village that looks like a still from a 1930’s movie, where women still feel they need to have red lipstick and heels to leave […]
Every culture is associated to stereotypes often hard to dispel, and the Italian’s is no different. While we often hear about them, it’s important to remember that we can’t generalize, and think that the whole of a country acts the same way. People abroad often seem to think of Italians along […]
Follow the fingers of sun from the sky to the pavement where a lifetime of furniture waits to be tossed into a truck and trundled away. Ducking under a wobbling mattress I grab a couple of cases to add them to the pile as a clasp cracks open and papers […]
The music of Salento is the result of centuries of varied foreign domination, but more importantly, of exchanges with other Mediterranean cultures. Officina Zoe was born in the spring of 1993 out of a group of musicians from Salento with a common need to rediscover the traditional popular music of their own […]
The church of Santa Maria delle Grazie is located in Milan and is a very famous church and a convent. The church is also known for the Last Supper which has been made by Leonardo da Vinci. The History of Santa Maria delle Grazie The Dominican convent and the church […]
Is your favorite Italian American actor really of Italian decent, or just a convincing actor? Peter Falk, the dearly missed actor who played TV’s cunning inspector Colombo, used to do such an excellent job at imitating the Italian American sleuth that most TV viewers believe he was of Italian descent. In reality, […]
La Ragazza di Bube (Bebo’s girl) is a novel written by Carlo Cassola in 1960 and made into a film in 1963, starring an amazing Claudia Cardinale. The story is about a 16 years old girl after WWII that falls in love with a partisan. What is good about the book and […]
Meet Anthony, 107 yo, the oldest barber in the world, an Italian living in New York.
