1909-2009: A century of Futurism Its legacy and shortcomings

Antonio Benedetto Carpano invented vermouth in 1786. Due to its popularity the Carpano family built a vermouth factory in Lingotto, a suburb of Torino, and during the 20th century Fiat automobiles were made next door. When the vermouth business moved to Milano, Carpano’s factory fell into disrepair and the famous Fiat factory became a spacious shopping mall called Gallery 8, named after Ling(otto). But Carpano still lives. His factory has been beautifully renovated into a labyrinth of gastronome called Eataly, the brainchild of Oscar Farinetti, a wealthy 53 year-old entrepreneur from Alba, the town in Piemonte famous for white truffles and fine red wines.


The vast floor space of 11,000 square metres occupies three levels. When I visited in January 2008 my guide was Simona Milvo, a project manager with the educational section. Entering the building from the street opposite Gallery 8, you’ll note checkout counters on the left and small carts for shopping. On the right an educational area— easy chairs, a library, and further right, a room of apple computers provides access to gastronomic information of all kinds. Directly ahead, centre stage, are placards listing daily menus for the ristorantini (small restaurants) and a large exhibit encouraging the consumer to be prudent in seeking out the freshest produce as well as food that is currently in season.

Walking on the ground floor we encounter speciality areas, there are 10 in all, each one devoted to a particular class of food, Le Verdure (Vegetables), I Salumi e I Formaggi (Salami and Cheese), Il Pesce (Fish) and so on, each area having its own artisanal produce for sale and its own ristorantino, the idea being to combine buying with tasting in a relaxed way. We stopped at La Carne (Meat). Here are pre-packaged meats, a fully stocked butcher and a grill surrounded by a circular counter where customers sit on high-stools and dine informally on traditional meat dishes. I chose carne cruda, raw beef hash with salad accompanied by a full-bodied red wine from Alba. This small meal was light, fresh and delicious. The beef comes from la granda, a farm cooperative located near Cuneo that raises the Piemontese breed of cattle under strict environmental rules.

The ristorantino at La Pizza e La Focaccia serves Pizza da Napoli. The crust uses high-quality flour from Gragnano near Naples, the tomatoes are a sweet Neapolitan variety, and the mozzarella, made south of Naples, is limited in production and costly. Served plain or with prosciutto, this dish is something to remember and fairly priced, as are all dishes at the ristorantini. Nearby, the counter at Il Forno a Legna offers many varieties of crusty bread freshly baked in the custom-built wood-burning oven.

In small red-brick alcoves and in open airy spaces customers can find over 900 artisanal products carefully selected from the best Italian sources, all at reasonable prices— antipasti, balsamic vinegar, soft drinks, spices, kitchen utensils, glass storage vessels, fresh milk from a self-serve dispenser, on and on.


Turning left, through a narrow passage, a small espresso bar serves the best Guatemalan coffee and a tabled anteroom has shelves of Carpano vermouth—yes, he is still here!

A long moving walkway allows descent with shopping cart from the ground floor to the cellars— here are the original arched red-brick rooms where vermouth was once aged. Today there are racks of fine wines with labels too numerous to mention, and table wines for just two euros a litre. Small passages lead to confined cellars where cured meats hang aging and huge rounds of cheese lie calmly waiting for their day to come. In an area called Della Birra you may sample any of hundreds of Italian and imported beers, accompanied by a choice of dishes of the day and Del Vino offers a similar service in wine. Turning a corner we stand before the glass doors of the main ristorante, coincidentally named Guido per Eataly, a place to experience the best in Italian cuisine.

Above the ground floor are offices, tasting rooms, lecture halls, teaching kitchens for cooking classes offered to the public, and the Carpano museum containing chemistry apparatus, vats and many large metal canisters of film housing the dated and often amusing television advertisements for vermouth.

Eataly’s main goals run parallel with those of the international Slow Food movement, the non-profit organization founded by Carlo Petrini. These goals include the preservation and promotion of artisanal food production in Italy and throughout the world, and a fostering of the public’s awareness of the benefits of authentic cuisine. Eataly maintains close ties with Slow Food through the friendship of Petrini and Farinetti, a large number of Eataly’s products are endorsed by Slow Food and designated by the movement’s snail logo, often accompanied by explanatory text about the product. Many of the 200 young employees at Eataly are students of gastronome, some of these attend Slow Food’s private University of Gastronomic Sciences based in Pollenzo near Bra.

Current plans to export Eataly to other locations worldwide include a 3,500 square metre two-floor Eataly at 18 West 48th Street in New York City which opened in the summer of 2008.

In September 2007, the most famous tenor of all time, Luciano Pavarotti, died in Modena at the age of 71. During his remarkable 45 year career, Pavarotti’s accomplishments far surpassed those of other classical artists who had come before him. More than just an acclaimed singer, more than a man with enormous charisma, Pavarotti was an icon, a legend.

He was celebrated around the world, but also denigrated by elitists who never appreciated the methods he used in order to seduce new listeners. To certain critics, he was someone who perverted opera down to the level of pop music. But, to his fans, Pavarotti was someone who brought opera music to those who would never have the opportunity to attend a live opera performance.

Pavarotti was the first classical singer to become popular over the boundaries of lyrical art.

As a matter of fact, many people with no knowledge of opera will recognize not only a photo of the tenor, but also his voice. Nevertheless, this popularity didn’t come overnight and his rise to fame was well planned and had a purpose. Pavarotti wanted to bring opera music to everyone, to enter into their homes, just as Caruso, Gigli and other great tenors had entered his life when he was a young boy. Music played an important role in the Pavarotti home. Throughout his childhood, Luciano discovered music by listening, at his father’s side, to recordings of the great tenors of the day. He later sang in the town choir, but at that point in his life, considered music, like sports, to be just another hobby. Though he once said, after seeing a Mario Lanza movie, that he himself would become a tenor, Luciano never really thought seriously about music until the age of 19, at the end of his studies at the Istituto Magistrale. Luciano took singing lessons from that point on and, without realizing it, slowly began his successful career. Of course, we now think of him as the famous Pavarotti, but unlike most Hollywood stars, he was almost 50 years old when he actually became one. In fact, one of the keys to Pavarotti’s success was that he never missed a step. He studied vocal technique for 6 years before singing in his first opera. He then began performing in small opera houses and slowly sang his way into the opera world. Pavarotti was 34 when he made his first recording and did not have his New York triumph until the age of 39.  

After his success in New York, Pavarotti was in high demand at all great opera houses and enjoyed newfound worldwide acclaim.

But that didn’t seem to be enough. Remembering back a few years earlier to London and the great impact of his first television performance, he began to use all of that new media’s possibilities to bring opera music into living rooms everywhere. From then on, Pavarotti could be seen and, most importantly, heard more and more, presenting increasingly bigger concerts, on television. This new career path led him to experimentation with new kinds of performances and, much like the pop stars of the day; he began presenting popular concerts in parks and stadiums. It was a risky move, but as history shows, a successful one. The natural beauty of Pavarotti’s vocal tone, his fantastic mastery of his instrument and his great musical generosity charmed everyone from opera connoisseur to new listener.

Thanks to Pavarotti, people realized that they didn’t need to have studied music or to understand foreign languages in order to appreciate opera; they simply had to enjoy it.
We could, of course, question the methods Pavarotti employed in order to win over new listeners. Maybe he went too far in his attempt to please and seduce more and more fans, but it is difficult to judge him. He was the first classical artist to attempt what he did, and as with many other pioneers, mistakes were made. But Pavarotti also gave opera back its true root: people. Opera is a complete art, created to reach everyone. It allows you to dream, laugh and cry all in the same evening. There is nothing elitist about opera, and Pavarotti, simply by proving that fact, forced the closed world of opera to rethink itself and its art.

But most of all, we will remember Pavarotti’s voice, his unique voice, recognizable above all others; a voice that has moved and seduced millions of people and will continue to do so for many years to come. If his dear friend, Princess Diana, was the People’s Princess, then Pavarotti was, truly, the People’s Singer.

Few people can transcend linguistic barriers, and capture the hearts of people from across the globe, no matter their mother tongue. Just as Mozart inspired awe with his lyrics, and Picasso with the stroke of his paintbrush, Roberto Benigni does so with his inimitable gestures, whimsical facial expressions, and passionate soliloquies; regardless of whether or not you can understand his language - the language of Dante. Benigni's solo stage act Tutto Dante was first performed in June 2006 in the ancient amphitheatre at Patrasso, Greece. The show then burst into the limelight with a performance at the magnificent Piazza Santa Croce in Florence, right beside the statue of Dante. After touring Italy and with a record breaking broadcast on RAI with over 10 million television viewers, Benigni will now take his act across the ocean performing in numerous cities across North America. We had the opportunity to speak with Benigni concerning his visit to Montreal, where he performed on June 3 and 4. The following telephone interview took place on May 14, 2009.

PI: Briefly explain how your interest for Dante was born.

RB: My interest for Dante is like an interest for any beautiful object, it's like looking at the sea! When I saw the sea for the first time, I liked it and I went back. That's how my interest in the sea was born. When I was young, I read Dante’s Divine Comedy and the words sounded like a melody,like a wonderful chorus. Dante was the only poet that my parents and grandparents - poor peasants- were familiar with. For them the word Dante was synonymous with poet! This man, with his big aquiline nose, was revered even by the poor.


However, there were many details of the Inferno, of animals, monsters, devils, that scared me. Dante explores the human psyche. This type of writing was unprecedented.

PI: In your interpretation of Tutto Dante in Florence your intent is clearly to give relevance to Dante's work for a contemporary public. If today's youth had a professor such as yourself, Dante would be much more loved and appreciated. What do you think?

RB: I thank you for your comment, but I would let the professors do their work. I'm not a professor, nor an intellectual, historian, or even a critic. I am an entertainer. It's my task to entertain, and I do so even with Dante's poem, which is in my opinion one of the greatest texts ever written, a text that has incredible imagery. I am not educating anyone, I am simply putting on a show. The beautiful thing about the Divine Comedy is that it's relevant and yet mysterious, incomprehensible at times. But sometimes we need to be exposed to the obscure, to topics like love, destiny, death, life after death. Nobody addresses these topics as much as Dante, and he constantly reminds us of the significance of these issues.

The first half of my show barely has anything to do with Dante. For the first hour I discuss Berlusconi, I speak about modern issues. I will speak of Canada, of Montreal, of Sarkozy, of many different topics.

PI: How did you go about selecting the cantos from the Divine Comedy to incorporate into your show?

RB: I recite the fifth canto of Inferno, the tragic love story of Paolo and Francesca, which depicts the origin of passion, lust, sexuality. I chose it because it's one of the most popular parts of the Comedy, surely the most appreciated by today's youth. Dante wasn't a priest, he was a man who loved carnally. He wrote this poem because he loved a woman, Beatrice. He had an extreme urge to make passionate love to with her. Yet in Paradiso he placed her beside the Holy Vergin. Dante combines heaven and earth and remains the greatest poet, even today. By writing the Divine Comedy, he changed the way we perceive, desire and glorify women. He remains unsurpassed.

PI: Is your North American tour a possible prelude for an eventual adaptation of Tutto Dante on Broadway?

RB: Oh, they asked me to do a Broadway show a while back, but I'm only doing one show in New York. I'm going to the Manhattan Center, for only one night. Then I'm off to Boston, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Princeton and San Francisco. Tutto Dante is a show that was originally written in Italian.

PI: How important is it for you to export this show to an international audience, in the language of Dante?

RB:Well I attempt to adapt to the audience I am addressing. For example, when I come to Montreal, I'll try to do a bit of the show in French, or in New York, I'll do a bit in English, simply to make the audience happy. However, the final canto is always in Italian, because it is like a song. Dante’s prayer to the Holy Vergin in Paradiso is music. It's like combining Beethoven and Jimmy Hendrix, Bach and Duke Ellington.

PI: Do you think that trough translation, the original meaning of the Divina Commedia is altered?

RB: Yes, as they say in English, it is ‘lost in translation.’ It's the same as having an espresso in the USA. It's not the same as having it in Italy, the taste gets lost in translation! A hamburger in Italy probably won't be as good as one in the USA. But you have to work with what you have.Change a few words here and there, adapt the meaning - eventually the taste, the flavour, the smell, will be close enough. That
being said, there are very good, extraordinary translations of Dante in French and in English, especially in English.

PI: How do you plan on reaching an international audience which probably knows little or close to nothing about Dante's Divine Comedy? Do you not think you might be oversimplifying such a complex piece of literature?

RB: The end of the Comedy is the most beautiful part. Poetry does not only live in the mind or the pen of a writer.It lies primarily in the ears of the listeners. In each and every one of us there is a divine spark of poetry that manifests itself. Dante makes this divine spark come alive, and we become great like him.We feel his poetry. This is
the fascinating part I will try to bring forth.

Ah, Valentino! Is there anyone else in the fashion industry that travels with six lapdogs, collects Picassos and owns a supersized yacht? Never one to hide his lavish spending, Valentino Garavani also maintains one of the most dazzling gardens in France, where he dotes over his roses—one million roses, to be exact—and 280 cherry trees. His dinner guests enjoy meals with over thirty courses. Yet, upon retiring this year, Valentino is afraid of being remembered solely for his opulence. If that’s true, perhaps he shouldn’t have allowed Oprah’s television cameras to follow him around Europe, inspecting his mansions. The gig is up. His lifestyle is an ode to self-indulgence and would we really want it any other way?

We expect nothing less from a man named after screen legend Rudolph Valentino. In his retirement, the designer can fully enjoy his amusements, surrounded by Meissen swans and Andy Warhol paintings. Bravo and well done. Valentino has earned his down time. Most fans don’t know the grueling work it takes to be an haute couture designer like Valentino, who pumped out two main collections a year to fuel the franchise. He lorded over his accessories, fragrances, a men’s line and let’s not forget his bridal collections and one-off wedding gowns for celebrities. Loyal clients require a certain amount of face time, so organizing Valentino’s social calendar is a task best handled by a high-ranking diplomat from the United Nations. With all of these demands on his time, Valentino was never interested in living like a journeyman, too harried to enjoy his accomplishments.

And talk about accomplishments! After the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy turned to Valentino the following year to make her entire wardrobe in black and white as she came out of mourning. Four years later she married Aristotle Onassis wearing an ivory georgette mini dress of his design. “Jackie Kennedy made me famous around the world,” he said, famously. “It was that simple.”

Behind that modesty, of course, is the heft of his talent. Valentino’s reputation as a couture designer is undisputed, but highly defined by feminine elegance. He made dresses that were graceful and flirty in a way that both men and women find flattering. What’s his stance on gold lamé and wild mink? Bring it on! Bows, taffeta, chiffon, décolleté? It’s all good. This sets him apart from designers like Prada, John Galliano and Yves St. Laurent, who push boundaries between art and fashion. Valentino never apologizes for lacking conceptual depth and modern daring in his work. “Sometimes we forget: the lady makes the dress,” he explains, frequently, when asked about his “wearable” clothing. “I love a woman who eats food, who has a body - that is a woman and not a stick.” Spoken like a true Italian.

Valentino was born in Voghera, Lombardy, in 1932. He apprenticed under his Aunt Rosa and local designer Eernestina Salvadeo before heading to Paris at the age of seventeen. After studying at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, he worked under Guy Laroche, among others, until he returned home to Italy to hang out his shingle. His international debut in Florence in 1962 made him an emerging star, and that reputation was cemented in 1966 with his famous all-white collection and the new V logo. By the mid 1960s, he was dressing Elizabeth Taylor, former Persian Empress Farah Diba, and a roster of Euro royals.


Today, Valentino’s command central is an 18th-century palazzo in the centre of Rome, next to the Spanish Steps. A former nobleman’s house, Palazzo Mignanelli serves as his global headquarters and couture studio, the lifeblood of his empire. Here, more than 60 seamstresses—mostly elderly women who have worked meticulously under klieg light for 25 to 30 years—labour for regulars such as Princess Firyal of Jordan, Lady Bamford, Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece and Kate Winslet. The palazzo also houses part of Valentino’s vast dress archive. Hundreds are kept in polythene bags; others are in a giant facility in Valdagno, northern Italy. He makes sure the history of every item lent is logged on a computer and that each creation is tagged.

“You can build a Valentino wardrobe and team it up with something new from season to season,” notes Alexandra Shulman, of British Vogue. “That’s the thing—they’re classic pieces that seem fresh each year.”

Shulman was at Valentino’s last haute couture runway show, held at the Musée Rodin in January 2008. The show followed a blow-out weekend in July in Rome, where there were lavish dinners at the Temple of Venus, the Villa Medici and the Villa Borghese. The weekend celebrated the 45th anniversary of Valentino’s career and the launch of a retrospective exhibit of 300 dresses at the Ara Pacis museum. The highlight of the weekend was a runway show, attended by Uma Therman, Jude Law, Sarah Jessica Parker, Sienna Miller, Eva Mendes, Claire Danes and Elizabeth Hurley (Hollywood was well represented, since Valentino has been as prominent on Oscar night as Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson.) Actors mingled among Mick Jagger, Anna Wintour, Claudia Schiffer, Karl Lagerfeld, Manolo Blahnik and many more design heavy-weights.

Shulman notes that some fashion insiders considered the weekend in Rome to be Valentino’s real goodbye. But the last runway show in Paris was no less important. Not content to rest on his laurels, Valentino created a stunning lineup of pastel daywear: skirt suits in Easter egg shades of pink and purple; shimmering floral prints; a polka dot group in black and white; wool coats with matching gloves; white cashmere trench coats trimmed with satin. Cocktail dresses, worn under a ruffled bolero, were hand painted with irises. Evening gowns were shaped by sunray pleating and his famous ruch-and-drape technique.

For the closing homage to his signature shade of red, 30 models swanned onto the runway wearing identical red gowns to the tune of Annie Lennox’s No More I Love You’s. The standing ovation was thunderous. Nestled between the socialites and royalty in the front row was Alessandra Facchinetti, the former Gucci designer and Valentino’s replacement—a replacement hired by the private equity company that owns his empire, not a replacement hand-groomed by Valentino.

Is Valentino sad to go? One of his final dispatches on the matter in Italy said it all. “The world of fashion has now been ruined,” he declared recently to the newspaper, Il Messaggero. “I got rather bored of continuing in a world which doesn’t say anything to me. There is little creativity and too much business.”