By
PADDY AGNEW
St Paddy alla bolognese
There was a time when St Patrick’s Day would go unnoticed in Italy. But for some time now, cities such as Bologna and Florence have held annual “Irlanda in Festa” events to mark the day. This year, notwithstanding the serious competition offered by 150th anniversary celebrations of the unification of Italy, also scheduled for March 17th, both Bologna and Florence will be at it again.
The Florence event, now 16 years old, will be enlivened by the Modena City Ramblers, who certainly are not Irish, and by the uillean piper John McSherry, who certainly is.
Looking at the programme, we can feel pretty confident that some of the music is going to be interesting, but what can we say of the gastronomic side of the event? Colcannon, Dublin coddle and Irish stew are on the menu. Let us just hope that all three dishes will have benefited from a little Tuscan culinary intervention.
Patriotic, to a point
How many performers could bring the house down with an unaccompanied, softly-softly rendering of just one verse of the national anthem? How many would even attempt it? Italian comedian Roberto Benigni, winner of a 1999 Oscar with La Vita E Bella, has never been your ordinary stand-up comedian.
Appearing at this year's San Remo song festival, an annual event which, despite the inevitably awful treacle it serves by way of music, still attracts audiences in excess of 12 million, the outrageously talented Benigni opted to give a masterclass on the history, significance and meaning of the Italian national anthem, Fratelli D'Italia.
With his blend of mischievous humour and genuine patriotism, Benigni was given a standing ovation for his portrayal of Goffredo Mameli, the Sardinian-born poet who not only wrote the words of the national anthem but who also fought in the Risorgimento, dying from an infection prompted by a bayonet wound at the tender age of 21.
Of course, there is a background to all this. In this 2011, the year that marks the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy, Benigni was keen to make a point against the government coalition partners, the federalist Northern League, who – surprise, surprise – have been less than lukewarm about the event. In the end, Benigni more than made his point.
Understanding the offside rule
If we were ever tempted to think the Berlusconi dynasty might end with the demise of the Italian prime minister, we can think again. Definitive proof that the next Berlusconi generation is preparing for the future came this week with a two-page interview, in the sports daily Gazzetta Dello Sport, with Barbara Berlusconi, daughter by Silvio's second marriage to Veronica Lario. The couple are now separated.
As Italy's best-selling sports newspaper (an average of four million Italians read it daily) Gazzettadoes not lightly concede its front page and its first two inside pages to just anybody. Not even Diego Maradona oor Francesco Totti could have expected as much.
In theory, Barbara was being asked about her seemingly new-found interest in the family football club, AC Milan. In reality, someone in Gazzettabelieves she (or maybe daddy) could be somebody worth keeping "on side".
Remember when Italian films used to win Oscars?
Where have all the Italian Oscar-winning films gone? As Colin Firth, Natalie Portman et al celebrated their Oscar triumphs last Sunday, it was sobering to reflect that the last Italian film to win an Oscar was Roberto Benigni's La Vita È Bellain 1999.
Far gone are the days when Italian films such as Fellini's La Strada(1957) and 8½(1964), De Sica's Ieri, Oggi, Domani(1965) or his Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini(1972) would regularly pick up Oscars. Before you rush to suggest that the golden era of Italian cinema has long passed, we would humbly like to point out that many excellent Italian films continue to be made even if, for various reasons, they do not win Oscars.
Take Gomorra, the film adaptation of Roberto Saviano's blood-chilling, all-too-realistic analysis of the Neapolitan camorra. Gomorra was a candidate in 2009 but, perhaps because it fails to correspond to a North American movie mindset that insists on seeing organised crime as funny (note the success of The SopranosTV series), it won few friends across the big sea.
Then, too, Italian cinema creates its own problems. For example, Marco Bellocchio's Vincere, a brilliant 2009 film that casts a less than flattering light on Mussolini, his womanising and his time, missed out on the foreign-film category this year for technical reasons related to its distribution. Furthermore, in the recent past, other possible candidates have fallen foul of vicious in-fighting and have not been selected to represent their country.
Ruby goes to the ball
At this point, you would have to say she has a soft spot for older men. Karima “Ruby” El Mahroug, the 18-year-old Moroccan at the centre of the Rubygate sex scandal involving the Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, was in Vienna this week to attend the city’s annual debs’ ball, as the guest of 78-year-old construction entrepreneur Richard Lugner, a man who apparently loves to book a different celebrity every year.
Needless to say, not everyone welcomed Ruby with open arms. The ball’s organiser, Desiree Treichl-Stuergkh, was widely quoted this week as saying that El Mahroug’s arrival would be horrible and represented a major gaffe on the part of Lugner.
In the meantime, El Mahroug, who told reporters she hoped the truth would come out during the Berlusconi’s trial, is alleged to have been paid €35,000, provided with a private plane and lodged in a five-star hotel for her troubles.
No chance Italy will copy Germany’s example
The news that German defence minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg (below) had tendered his resignation after allegations that he had plagiarised his university doctoral thesis prompted a variety of wry commentary in Rome this week. For a start there were those who immediately made an appeal to our “German friends”: “Please send us your (ex) Minister, who copies, and take in exchange our Ignazio, who does not copy.”
“Our Ignazio” is Italian defence minister and Berlusconi ultra-enthusiast Ignazio La Russo. The idea that someone should resign because they had copied is about as foreign to the Italian mindset as the idea that you might wear a kilt and eat salty porridge for your breakfast.
A couple of years ago, the current Ferrari chief executive, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, addressed the students at Rome’s elite business university, the Luiss. To the delight of many, he assured the students that he had as a student been a wizard “copier”. Whether by stuffing his sleeves with little notes or by positioning himself at the desk next to the class genius, the man who ran the 1990 World Cup in Italy always found himself a helping hand, he said.
Following his remarks, the Milan daily Corriere Della Seracarried out an opinion poll that came up with some interesting results. Of 7,802 people consulted, 31.8 per cent confessed they had on occasion copied; 25.6 per cent said they did it regularly, because in so doing, they "learned something"; another 25.4 per cent said they were proud to have copied. Only 14.4 per cent said they had never copied because they consider it "cheating"; just 2.9 per cent claimed they felt remorseful about copying.
Such statistics may not surprise those who know anything about Italian universities, but they certainly indicate why, for some, the idea of resignation is hard to understand.
As for ministerial resignation, well let’s not start . . . Suffice it to say that a certain fellow around here has been accused of Mafia collusion, money laundering, tax evasion, bribing the judiciary, fraud, embezzlement, exploitation of underage prostitution and abuse of office. And the idea of resignation has never even crossed his mind.
The Gadafys’ Italian visits
HOW MANY young (and indeed not so young) readers have dreamed of a magical metamorphosis that sees them play, just the once, in a top-level professional football game? Well, if your daddy is Muammar Gadafy, you can.
In a week when Italian minds are greatly and understandably concentrated on the violent events just across the Mediterranean in Libya, some of us have not forgotten the Italian football exploits of Al-Sa’adi Gadafy, third son of the colonel.
In May 2004, your correspondent was present at the Renato Curi stadium in Perugia for a legendary Perugia versus Juventus Serie A game, distinguished by a remarkably unimpressive 15-minute appearance for Perugia by Al-Sa’adi. Given that Perugia registered a 1-0 win, the home fans were kind to Al-Sa’adi but in reality, it required no huge football expertise to see the guy was not on the same level as those around him.
Even though Al-Sa’adi was captain of the Libyan national team, most Italian commentators simply took it for granted that his appearance in the Perugia team that day (and one other subsequent Serie A outing with Udinese) owed everything to Gadafy investments in Italian football and little to Al-Sa’adi’s abilities. For the full range of Libyan investment in Italy includes a 2 per cent holding in the auto giant Fiat; 7.1 per cent in Unicredit, Italy’s largest bank; 0.15 per cent in the energy giant ENI; and stakes in both the fashion and construction industries – with the crowning glory of a 7.5 per cent holding in Fiat-controlled Juventus.
Libya’s sporting ties with Italy were further underlined by the decision of the football federation to play the Italian SuperCup (equivalent of the Community Shield) in Tripoli in 2002. Furthermore, in recent years, 37-year-old Al-Sa’adi has been regularly quoted as intent on buying the Roman Serie A team Lazio, a club with which he trained during his footballing days.
If some in Italian football feel just a little perplexed when they think back to the cosy nature of their relationship with the Gadafy family, their embarrassment is as nothing compared with that of the Berlusconi government, which, in the name of “Italian interests”, paid an exaggerated homage to the Libyan dictator on two recent state visits to Italy. Guards of honour, state dinners, a 30-horse Berber cavalry ride-past and sessions in parliament were all invoked to celebrate the 2008 Italy-Libya Friendship Treaty.
Asked about the widespread criticism of the visit and the way it was handled, the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, was dismissive: “They [the critics] are people who understand neither foreign policy nor Italy’s interests.” Frattini was speaking just six months ago.
Perhaps the most colourful protest during last summer’s visit came from Carmelo Briguglio, a deputy in the Italy of Values party led by former investigating magistrate Antonio Di Pietro. Mimicking Muammar Gadafy, who had insisted on receiving various dignitaries in his Bedouin tent, brought to Rome for the purpose, the deputy set up a camping tent across the road from the Libyan embassy in Rome, with a poster reading: “Gadafy and Berlusconi: Convert to Democracy!”
This was a reference to the proselytising sessions with “hostesses” (who all happened to be tall, lithe and good-looking) convened by Gadafy during his Rome visits. Inviting his young women guests to convert to Islam, the colonel assured them: “Women are more respected in Libya than in Europe or the United States.” Sure, we believe you.