Volume 20. Number V. 2011

05- Pres 03

Social Journal 5

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La Scuola d’Italia Annual Gala at Cipriani’s [justified_image_grid ng_gallery=34 ng_lightbox_gallery=yes ng_description=yes] IAF Concert Celebrates Italy’s 150th Birthday [justified_image_grid ng_gallery=37 ng_lightbox_gallery=yes ng_description=yes] President Giorgio Napolitano Visits New York [justified_image_grid ng_gallery=35 ng_lightbox_gallery=yes ng_description=yes] IAF and the International Culture Festival of Bergamo [justified_image_grid ng_gallery=36 ng_lightbox_gallery=yes ng_description=yes]

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Making Italy: How the Disparate North and South tried giving “Italy” a try

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by Don H. DOYLE

Italy began its modern national existence as the newly united Kingdom of Italy in the same troubled spring of 1861 that witnessed the break up of what some Europeans began calling the “dis- United States.” The Italians called their struggle for national independence and unification the Risorgimento, implying that modern Italy was to be a “resurgence” of something that came before, something destined to live again once foreign intruders were cast off. America won independence from British rule, and then, by way of treaties, wars, and expulsion, between the 1780s and 1840s the new nation wrested control of the hinterland from Spain, France, Britain, Native Americans, and Mexicans. The Italians had to dislodge several different “foreign” rulers between 1859 and 1870: Austrians in the North, Spanish Bourbons in the South, and finally the French troops defending Rome and the Papal States in central Italy.

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Italy in Bocca: The origin and nature of what we call Italian food

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by John MARIANI

Simply put, there was no Italian food before there was an Italy. There was Tuscan food and Ligurian food and Sicilian food and Sardinian food, but for 2,000 years there was no Italian food. Not until 1861, when most of its 20 regions were unified as a kingdom under Victor Emmanuel II, was there a country called Italy. Even then, city states like Venice and Rome, which was declared the new capital, and part of the Papal States, remained separate from the new country. Before 1861 and for a century afterwards, what people ate in Rome had little to do with what they ate in Bari, and when Florentines dined, it was not on the same food and wine enjoyed by Neapolitans or Venetians. There was regional food, but for 2,000 years there was no Italian food. Especially in the kitchen, Italians have always resisted being mere Italians.

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Transcending the Appenine Divide: Italy’s mountainous terrain affects its socio-political history

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by Daniel B. GALLAGHER

American high-school students often come away from a basic course in European geography believing that the Alps are the only major topographical feature to note in Italy’s landscape. Having studied the epic crossings of Hannibal and Napoleon, they are left with the impression that it is “all downhill from there.” I was reminded of this recently while helping some friends arrange a road trip from Rome to San Giovanni Rotondo. Much to their chagrin, they discovered that there is no “direct route” from point A to point B since a mountain range – namely the Apennines – runs down the middle of the country.

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Music for a Revolution – C. 1860: The natural role of opera and composer Verdi during the age of the Risorgimento

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by Giovanni BIETTI

As many scholars have pointed out, before being politically united, Italy had already been musically unified by opera. Nothing could be truer: it is enough to scroll through the list of the main theatres active in the first half of the 19th century (La Scala in Milan, La Fenice in Venice, San Carlo in Naples, just to mention the three most famous ones, but also the Roman theatres, such as Valle, Argentina, or the now closed Apollo Theatre, as well as the opera houses of Bologna, Florence, Genoa, and so on) to realize that operas circulated throughout the Italian peninsula, constantly crossing the borders between the various States.

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