Seeking Sicily by John Keahey

Seeking Sicily: A Cultural Journey Through Myth and Reality in the Heart of the Mediterranean is the title of John Keahey‘s new book, a travel narrative that captures Sicily and its various cultures through his eyes and the eyes of Sicilian authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, most notably Leonardo Sciascia (1921-1989) of Racalmuto, province of Agrigento. As the author travels around the Mediterranean’s largest — and most conquered — island, he will share photos of the places he visits, anecdotes and regional folklore.

The breathtaking sights, unique and mouth-watering smells of Sicily abound in John Keahey’s narrative. His adventures through this historic island will awaken your senses and capture your imagination. Famous for its distinct identity and heritage, as well as its notorious mafia ties, Sicily is the Mediterranean’s largest, and most conquered, island.

I had the chance to meet Mr. Keahey in person in Brooklyn a few weeks ago. He read a few pages of this book in front of an audience of 50 people or so and gained their attention with his gentle and refined manners. When I got the chance to talk to him directly, I was surprised to learn how much he grasped of the Sicilian culture and its real essence during his visit. I am always fascinated by the stories I hear about Sicily when outsiders report them. Mr. Keahey a meticulous observer and writer.

Emerging Sicilian Artists

Giovanni Iudice

Giovanni Viola

Giuseppe Sergi (1841 – 1936), Anthropologist

Giuseppe Sergi (1841–1936) was an influential Italian anthropologist of the early twentieth century, best known for his opposition to Nordicism in his books on the racial identity of ancient Mediterranean peoples. His concept of the Mediterranean race, became important to the modelling of racial difference in the early twentieth century.

Born in Messina, Sicily, Sergi first studied law and then linguistics and philosophy. At the age of 19 he took part in Garibaldi’s expedition to Sicily. He later took courses in physics and anatomy, finally specializing in racial anthropology as a student of Cesare Lombroso.

In 1880 he was appointed as professor of anthropology at the University of Bologna. At this time the discipline of anthropology was still associated with the Literature Faculty. In the following years, thanks to the activity of his Laboratory of Anthropology and Psychology, he helped establish the discipline on a more scientific basis. In 1884 he moved to the University of Rome where he developed a program of research into both psychology and anthropology.

In 1893 he founded the Roman Society of Anthropology, which later evolved into the Italian Anthropological Institute (Istituto Italiano di Antropologia). This grew from part of the university. He was initially assigned temporary premises in the School of Application for Engineers in San Pietro in Vincoli and from 1887 the precursor of the Institute operated from the old building of the Roman college, where Sergi also dedicated part of the space to the creation of an Anthropological museum. On 4 June 1893 the new Society was created.

Internationally renowned for his contributions to anthropology, he succeeded in establishing the International Conference of Psychology in Rome, 1905, under his presidency.

He died at Rome in 1936. His son Sergio Sergi (1878 – 1972), also a noted anthropologist, developed his father’s theories.

Sergi’s initial contribution was to oppose the use of the cephalic index to model population ancestry, arguing that over all cranial morphology was more useful. However, Sergi’s major theoretical achievement was his model of human ancestry, fully articulated in his books Human Variation (Varietà umane. Principio e metodo di classificazione) and The Mediterranean Race (1901), in which he argued that the earliest European peoples arose from original populations in the Horn of Africa, and were related to Hamitic peoples. This primal “Eurafrican race” split into three main groups, the Hamites, the Mediterranean race and the north EuropeanNordic race. Semitic people were closely related to Mediterraneans but constituted a distinct “Afroasian” group^[3]. The four great branches of the Mediterranean stock were the Libyans or Berbers , the Ligurians, the Pelasgians and the Iberians. Ancient Egyptians were considered by Sergi as a branch of the Libyans.

According to Sergi the Mediterranean race, the “greatest race in the world”, was responsible for the great civilisations of ancient times, including those of Egypt,Carthage, Greece and Rome. These Mediterranean peoples were quite distinct from the peoples of northern Europe.

Sergi argued that the Mediterraneans were more creative and imaginative than other peoples, which explained their ancient cultural and intellectual achievements, but that they were by nature volatile and unstable. In his book The Decline of the Latin Nations he argued that Northern Europeans had developed stoicism, tenacity and self-discipline due to the cold climate, and so were better adapted to succeed in modern civic cultures and economies.

Sergi’s initial contribution was to oppose the use of the cephalic index to model population ancestry, arguing that over all cranial morphology was more useful. ^[3]However, Sergi’s major theoretical achievement was his model of human ancestry, fully articulated in his books Human Variation (Varietà umane. Principio e metodo di classificazione) and The Mediterranean Race (1901), in which he argued that the earliest European peoples arose from original populations in the Horn of Africa, and were related to Hamitic peoples. This primal “Eurafrican race” split into three main groups, the Hamites, the Mediterranean race and the north EuropeanNordic race. Semitic people were closely related to Mediterraneans but constituted a distinct “Afroasian” group^[3]. The four great branches of the Mediterranean stock were the Libyans or Berbers , the Ligurians, the Pelasgians and the Iberians. Ancient Egyptians were considered by Sergi as a branch of the Libyans.

These theories were developed in opposition to Nordicism, the claim that the Nordic race was of pure Aryan stock and naturally superior to other Europeans. Sergi ridiculed Nordicists who claimed that the leaders of ancient Greek and Roman civilization were Germanic in origin and argued that the Germanic invasions at the end of the Roman empire had produced “delinquency, vagabondage and ferocity”. Sergi believed that the Aryans were originally “Eurasiatic” barbarians who migrated from the Hindu Kush into Europe. He argued that the Italians had originally spoken a Hamitic language before the Aryan (Indo-European) Italic language spread across the country. Some Aryan influence was detectable in Northern Italy, but, racially speaking, southern Italians were unaffected by Aryan migrants.

Sergi expanded on these theories in later publications. Despite his denigration of Aryans and emphasis on Mediterranean racial identity, he denied that he was motivated by national pride, asserting that his works had the “goal of establishing the veracity of the facts without racial prejudice, without diminishing the value of one human type in order to exalt another one.”

His last book, The Britons (1936) sought to trace the rise of the British Empire to the Mediterranean component of the British population.

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Giovanni Verga (1840 – 1922), Novelist

Giovanni Carmelo Verga (2 September 1840 – 27 January 1922) was an Italian realist (Verismo) writer, best known for his depictions of life in Sicily, and especially for the short story (and later play) Cavalleria Rusticana and the novel I Malavoglia (The House by the Medlar Tree).

The first son of Giovanni Battista Catalano Verga and Caterina Di Mauro, Verga was born into a prosperous family of Catania in Sicily. He began writing in his teens, producing the largely unpublished historical novel Amore e Patria (Love and Country); then, although nominally studying law at the University of Catania, he used money his father had given him to publish his I Carbonari della Montagna (The Carbonari of the Mountain) in 1861 and 1862. This was followed bySulle Lagune (In the Lagoons) in 1863.

Meanwhile, Verga had been serving in the Catania National Guard (1860–64), after which he travelled to Florenceseveral times, settling there in 1869.

He moved to Milan in 1872, where he developed his new approach, characterized by the use of dialogue to develop character, which resulted in his most significant works. In 1880 his story collection Vita dei Campi (Life in the Fields), (including “Fantasticheria”, “La Lupa”, and “Pentolacchia”) most of which were about rural Sicily, came out. It also included “Cavalleria Rusticana”, which he adapted for the theatre and later formed the basis for several opera librettos including Mascagni’sCavalleria rusticana and Gastaldon’s Mala Pasqua!. Verga’s short story, “Malaria”, was one of the first literary depictions of the disease.

He then embarked on a projected series of five novels, but only completed two, I Malavoglia and Mastro-don Gesualdo (1889), the second of which was the last major work of his literary career. Both are widely recognized as masterpieces.

In 1894 Verga moved back to the house he was born in. In 1920 he was elected a senator. He died of a cerebral thrombosis in 1922.

The Teatro Verga in Catania is named after him.

The book Le immagini e le parole dei Malavoglia by Silvia Iannello (Sovera, Roma, 2008), contains passages from Verga’s novel I Malavoglia with commentary and photographs of Aci Trezza and a chapter devoted to Visconti’s 1948 film La terra trema which was based on the novel.

Novels

• Love and homeland (1856–1857)
• Carbonari of the mountain (1861–1862)
• On the lagoons (1862–1863)
• A sinner (1866)
• History of a Capinera (1871)
• Eva (1873)
• Eros (1875)
• Royal tiger (1875)
• I Malavoglia (1881)
• Elena’s husband (1882)
• Novelle rusticane (1883), translated as Little Novels of Sicily by D.H. Lawrence (1925)
• Mastro-don Gesualdo (1889)
• From your to my (1905)

Short stories

• Nedda (1874)

Spring and other story (1877)

• Spring
• The tail of the devil
• X
• Certain subjects
• Rosso Malpelo (1878)
• The stories of the Trezza’s castle

The life of the fields (1880)

• Rustic Chivalry

New York Choral Society Will Embark on a Cultural Ambassadorship to Sicily Next Summer

June 27, 2012 5:00 pm

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July 8, 2012 5:00 pm

We are very proud to announce that the New York Choral Society will embark on a cultural ambassadorship to Sicily next summer. For the 180 member chorus in it’s 53rd year, this will be its 14th International Tour.

The renowned Maestro Alberto Veronesi, who leads the Sinfonica Siciliana, the Opera Orchestra of New York, the Petruzzelli Orchestra di Bari and more, made his Carnegie Hall debut with the Opera Orchestra of New York and the NYCS in Cavalleria Rusticana and La Navarraise last fall and subsequently invited them to sing in a festival he designed.

The New York Choral Society Music Festival, June 27 to July 8 will take place in Cefalù and Taormina. There will be three concerts in each location including the Cathedral in Cefalù and the Teatro Greco in Taormina. The trip is designed to highlight the cultural and historical aspects of Sicily’s heritage and engage with locals along the way. The program will include material from both the upcoming Joyful Noise concert at Carnegie Hall, December 14 and its special American Reflections concert April 20, 2012, marking the last concert for outgoing Musical Director John Daly Goodwin, after 25 years.

For further information and tickets, go to www.nychoral.org.

Lad Live – Music & Care

November 5, 2011
9:00 pm	to	11:00 pm

Lad Live – Music & Care is a musical event organized by Lad which stands for L’Albero dei Desideri to raise funds for the children of  Oncologia Pediatrica del Policlinico di Catania. Among the singers that perform at Teatro Massimo Bellini are Mario Biondi, Carmen Consoli, Luca Madonia and Mario Venuti.

 

 

Francesco Crispi (1819 – 1901), politician

Francesco Crispi (Ribera, October 4, 1819 – Naples, August 11, 1901) was a 19th-century Italian politician of Albanian Arberesh ancestry. He was instrumental in the formation of the united country and was its 17th and 20th Prime Minister from 1887 until 1891 and again from 1893 until 1896.

Crispi’s paternal family came originally from the small agricultural community of Palazzo Adriano, in south-western Sicily. It had been founded in later fifteenth century by Catholic Albanians (later Arbëreshë), who settled in Sicily after the Ottoman occupation of Albania. Crispi himself was born in Ribera, Sicily and baptized in the Italo-Albanian Catholic Church.

He assumed an active role in the Sicilian uprising against the rule of Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies in Palermo in 1848. The uprising ended in failure and the government was restored in May 1849. Unlike many, Crispi was not granted amnesty and was forced to flee the country. He lived next in Piedmont where he worked as a journalist. He was implicated in the Mazzini conspiracy at Milan in 1853 and was expelled from Piedmont. He took refuge first on Malta, then in Paris and, even he had not done so before, met up with Giuseppe Mazzini in London.

In 1860 he, alongside Giuseppe Garibaldi, led the “expedition of the thousand” which disembarked on Sicily on May 11, 1860. On the 13th, Crispi drew up the Proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy. After the fall of Palermo, Crispi was appointed minister of the interior and of finance in the Sicilian provisional government, but was shortly afterwards obliged to resign on account of the struggle between Garibaldi and the emissaries of Count Camillo Benso di Cavour on the question of timing of the annexation of Sicily by Italy.

Appointed secretary to Garibaldi, Crispi secured the resignation of Agostino Depretis, whom Garibaldi had appointed pro-dictator, and would have continued his fierce opposition to Cavour at Naples, where he had been placed by Garibaldi in the foreign office, had not the advent of the Italian regular troops and the annexation of the Two Sicilies to Italy brought about Garibaldi’s withdrawal to Caprera and Crispi’s own resignation.

Entering parliament in 1861 as deputy of the Extreme Left for the Castelvetrano district, Crispi acquired the reputation of being the most aggressive and most impetuous member of the Republican Party. In 1864, however, he announced he was a monarchist, because as he put it in a letter to Mazzini: The monarchy unites us; the republic would divide us.

In 1866 he refused to enter Baron Bettino Ricasoli’s cabinet; in 1867 he worked to impede the Garibaldian invasion of the papal states, foreseeing the French occupation of Rome and the disaster of Mentana. By methods of the same character as those subsequently employed against himself by Felice Cavallotti, he carried on the violent agitation known as the Lobbia affair, in which sundry conservative deputies were, on insufficient grounds, accused of corruption. On the outbreak of the Franco-German War he worked energetically to impede the projected alliance with France, and to drive the Giovanni Lanza cabinet to Rome. The death of Urbano Rattazzi in 1873 induced Crispi’s friends to put forward his candidature to the leadership of the Left; but Crispi, anxious to reassure the crown, secured the election of Depretis.

In 1876 he was elected President of the Chamber. During the autumn of 1877 he went to London, Paris and Berlin on a confidential mission, establishing cordial personal relationships with British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone and Foreign Minister Lord Granville and other English statesmen, and with Otto von Bismarck, by then Chancellor of the German Empire.

In December 1877 he replaced Giovanni Nicotera as minister of the interior in Depretis’s cabinet. Although his short term of office lasted just 70 days, they were instrumental in establishing a unitary monarchy. On January 9, 1878, the death of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy and the accession of King Umberto enabled Crispi to secure the formal establishment of a unitary monarchy, the new monarch taking the title of Umberto I of Italy instead of Umberto IV of Savoy. On the February 9, 1879, the death of Pope Pius IX necessitated a conclave, the first to be held after the unification of Italy. Crispi, helped by Mancini and Cardinal Pecci (afterwards Leo XIII), persuaded the Sacred College to hold the conclave in Rome, establishing the legitimacy of the capital.

Bigamy scandal

The statesmanlike qualities displayed on this occasion were insufficient to avert the storm of indignation of Crispi’s opponents in connection with a charge of bigamy. When he remarried, a woman he had married in 1853 was still living. But a court ruled that Crispi’s 1853 marriage on Malta was invalid because it was contracted while another woman he had married yet earlier was also still alive. By the time of his third marriage, his first wife had died and his marriage to his second wife was legally invalid. Therefore his marriage to his third wife was ruled valid and not bigamous. He was nevertheless compelled to resign office.

For nine years Crispi remained politically under a cloud, but in 1887 returned to office as minister of the interior in the Depretis cabinet. Following Depretis’s death on July 29, 1887 Crispi assumed the premiership of his country.

First term

One of his first acts as premier was a visit to Bismarck, whom he desired to consult upon the working of the Triple Alliance. Basing his foreign policy upon the alliance, as supplemented by the naval entente with Great Britain negotiated by his predecessor, Count Robilant, Crispi assumed a resolute attitude towards France, breaking off the prolonged and unfruitful negotiations for a new Franco-Italian commercial treaty, and refusing the French invitation to organize an Italian section at the Paris Exhibition of 1889. At home Crispi secured the adoption of the Sanitary and Commercial Codes, and reformed the administration of justice. Forsaken by his Radical friends, Crispi governed with the help of the right until he was overthrown by Giovanni Giolitti in 1891.

Return to power and second term

In December 1893 the impotence of the Giolitti cabinet to restore public order, menaced by disturbances in Sicily and in Lunigiana, gave rise to a general demand that Crispi should return to power. Although Giolitti tried to put a halt to the manifestations and protests of the Fasci Siciliani, his measures were relatively mild. It was with the second Crispi regime that the repression of the Fasci turned into outright persecution. The government arrested not just the leaders of the movement, but masses of poor farmers, students, professionals, sympathizers of the Fasci, and even those simply suspected of having sympathized with the movement at some point in time, in many cases without any evidence for the accusations. After the declaration of the state of emergency, condemnations were issued for the paltriest of reasons. Many rioters were incarcerated for having shouted things such as “Viva l’anarchia” or “down with the King”. At Palermo, in April and May 1894, the trials against the central committee of the Fasci took place and this was the final blow that signaled the death knell of the movement of the Fasci Siciliani.

Crispi steadily supported the energetic remedies adopted by Barone Sidney Sonnino, minister of finance, to save Italian credit, which had been severely shaken the financial crisis of 1892–1893.

In 1894 he was threatened with expulsion from the Masonic Grande Oriente d’Italia for being too friendly towards the Catholic Church. He had previously been strongly anticlerical but had become convinced of the need for rapprochement with the Papacy.

Crispi’s uncompromising suppression of disorder, and his refusal to abandon either the Triple Alliance or the Eritrean colony, or to forsake his colleague Sidney Sonnino, caused a breach with the radical leaderFelice Cavallotti. Cavallotti began a pitiless campaign of defamation against him. An unsuccessful attempt upon Crispi’s life by the anarchist Lega brought a momentary truce, but Cavallotti’s attacks were soon renewed more fiercely than ever. They produced little effect and the general election of 1895 gave Crispi a huge majority.

In 1896 the humiliating defeat of the Italian army at Adwa in Ethiopia during First Italo-Ethiopian War, brought about his resignation. The ensuing Antonio di Rudini cabinet lent itself to Cavallotti’s campaign, and at the end of 1897 the judicial authorities applied to the Chamber of Deputies for permission to prosecute Crispi for embezzlement. A parliamentary commission of inquiry discovered only that Crispi, on assuming office in 1893, had found the secret service coffers empty, and had borrowed money from a state bank to fund it, repaying it with the monthly installments granted in regular course by the treasury. The commission, considering this proceeding irregular, proposed, and the Chamber adopted, a vote of censure, but refused to authorize a prosecution. Crispi resigned his seat in parliament, but was re-elected by an overwhelming majority in April 1898 by his Palermo constituents. For some time he took little part in active politics, chiefly on account of his growing blindness. A successful operation for cataract restored his eyesight in June 1900, and notwithstanding his 81 years he resumed to some extent his former political activity. Soon afterward, however, his health began to give way and he died at Naples on August 11, 1901.

Legacy

Crispi was a colourful and intensely patriotic character. Although he began life as a revolutionary and democratic figure, his premiership was authoritarian and he showed disdain for Italian liberals. This has led many historians to see Crispi as being closely correlated with Mussolini.

Collaterali Evidenze

September 23, 2011 6:30 pm

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October 22, 2011 6:30 pm

Collaterali Evidenze is a solo show by artist Annalisa Furnari opening on Friday September 23 at 6:30PM.

Galleria S.A.C.S. c/o Fondazione Brodbeck
Via Gramignani, 93 – 95121 Catania
Complimentary entrance with RSVP
From Tuesday to Saturday
Phone: (+39) 095-7233111
Website: www.fondazionebrodbeck.it

Map

Vincenzo Bellini (1801 – 1835), opera composer

Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (3 November 1801 – 23 September 1835) was an Italian opera composer. His greatest works are I Capuleti ed i Montecchi (1830), La sonnambula (1831), Norma (1831), Beatrice di Tenda (1833), and I puritani (1835). Known for his long-flowing melodic lines, for which he was named “the Swan of Catania,” Bellini was the quintessential composer of bel canto opera.

Born in Catania, Sicily, Bellini was a child prodigy from a highly musical family and legend has it he could sing an aria of Valentino Fioravanti at eighteen months. He began studying music theory at two, the piano at three, and by the age of five could apparently play well. Bellini’s first five pieces were composed when he was just six years old. Regardless of the veracity of these claims, it is certain that Bellini grew up in a musical household and that a career as a musician was never in doubt.

Having learned from his grandfather, Bellini left provincial Catania in June 1819 to study at the conservatory in Naples, with a stipend from the municipal government of Catania. By 1822 he was in the class of the director Nicolò Zingarelli, studying the masters of the Neapolitan school and the orchestral works of Haydn and Mozart. It was the custom at the Conservatory to introduce a promising student to the public with a dramatic work: the result was Bellini’s first opera Adelson e Salvini an opera semiseria that was presented at the Conservatory’s theater. Bellini’s next opera, Bianca e Gernando, met with some success at the Teatro San Carlo, leading to a commission from the impresario Barbaia for an opera at La Scala. Il pirata was a resounding immediate success and began Bellini’s faithful and fruitful collaboration with the librettist and poet Felice Romani, and cemented his friendship with his favored tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini, who had sung in Bianca e Gernando.

Bellini spent the next years, 1827–33 in Milan, where all doors were open to him. Sparking controversy in the press for its new style and its restless harmonic shifts into remote keys, La straniera (1828) was even more successful than Il pirata, and allowed Bellini to support himself solely by his opera commissions. The composer showed the taste for social life and the dandyism that Heinrich Heine emphasized in his literary portrait of Bellini (Florentinische Nächte, 1837). Opening a new theatre in Parma, his Zaira (1829) was a failure at the Teatro Ducale, but Venice welcomed I Capuleti e i Montecchi, which was based on the same Italian source as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

The next five years were triumphant, with major successes with his greatest works, La sonnambula, Norma and I puritani, cut short by Bellini’s premature death.

Bellini died in Puteaux, near Paris of acute inflammation of the intestine, and was buried in the cemetery of Père Lachaise, Paris; his remains were removed to the cathedral of Catania in 1876. The Museo Belliniano housed in the Gravina Cruyllas Palace, in Catania, preserves memorabilia and scores.

Note: This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Metasyntactic variable” and Creative Commons by Commons Deed. This information was accurate when it was posted, but can change without notice.

Tribute to Salvatore Licitra

Salvatore Licitra was a young promising tenor with Sicilian origins. He had an accident while riding his motor scooter in Modica (RG) on September 5, 2011 and died a few days after. Here is a video of him singing “E Lucevan le Stelle” from Tosca.

Video (3:22min)

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