Today is Saint Lucia. In Barcelona,traditionally, on December 13th,
the nativity scene is built and it is time to go to the forest to get
moss, hollyhocks, branches and cork. Since the end of the 18th century,
when the construction of homemade nativity scenes began to become
popular, in some towns cork, moss and branches of greenery were sold for
the nativity scene, mainly in the city of Barcelona during the pre-Christmas fair of Santa Llúcia.
Lucia is a name that comes from the Latin term lux-lucis and means light. It is a very special day for The Grandma,who loves the fair of Santa Llúcia and who especially remembers the time she spent in Napoli studying and working at the Università Federico II.
Napoli is a special city that sticks in your soul and heart. A beautiful city full of history, culture, with an impressive gastronomy and, most importantly, with wonderful people who make you feel at home and who make you always take them with you wherever you go.
Close your eyes, listen to a beautiful tarantella, remember Napoli with the imposing Vesuvius and evoke every moment lived in Sorrento, Capri, Ischia, Ercolano, Pompeii, Procida... and, most importantly, miss the Neapolitan friends who are at a physical distance, but present every day in our lives.
Napoli, me si’ ‘a vita mia.
Santa Lucia is a traditional Neapolitan song. It was translated by Teodoro Cottrau (1827-1879) from Neapolitan into Italian and published by the Cottrau firm, as a barcarola, in Naples in 1849, during the first stage of the Italian unification. Significantly, it is the first Neapolitan song to be translated to Italian lyrics. Its transcriber, who is often miscredited as its composer, was the son of the French-born Italian composer and collector of songs Guillaume Louis Cottrau (1797-1847). Various sources credit A. Longo with the music, 1835.
The original lyrics of Santa Lucia celebrate the picturesque waterfront district Borgo Santa Lucia in the Gulf of Naples, with an invitation (sales pitch) from a boatman to take a ride in his boat to better enjoy the cool evening.
Comme se frícceca la luna chiena! lo mare ride, ll'aria è serena...
Vuje che facite 'mmiezo a la via? Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia! (Repeated twice)
Stu viento frisco fa risciatare: chi vo' spassarse jenno pe mmare?
È pronta e lesta la varca mia Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia!
La tènna è posta pe' fa' 'na cena; e quanno stace la panza chiena
Non c'è la mínema melanconia. Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia!
Perhaps the definitive 20th century recording of the song was that of Enrico Caruso, the great Neapolitan opera singer. Mario Lanza recorded this song in this album Mario Lanza sings Caruso favorites, RCA Victor LSC-2393.
In the United States, an early edition of the song, with an English translation by Thomas Oliphant, was published by M. McCaffrey, Baltimore.
In Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Faroe Islands, and Norway, Santa Lucia has been given various lyrics to accommodate it to the winter-light Saint Lucy's Day, at the darkest time of the year. The three most famous lyrics versions in Swedish are Luciasången, also known by its incipit, Sankta Lucia, ljusklara hägring (Saint Lucy, bright illusion); Natten går tunga fjät (The night walks with heavy steps); and the 1970s kindergarten version, Ute är mörkt och kallt(Outside it’s dark and cold). The more common Norwegian version is Svart senker natten seg (Black the night descends), whereas the version commonly used in Denmark is titled Nu bæres lyset frem (Now light is carried forth). There also exists a Sámi version, Guhkkin Sicilias dolin lei nieida (In faraway Sicily, long ago was a girl).
In the Czech Republic (or former Czechoslovakia), it was made famous with the words Krásná je Neapol (Naples is beautiful) sung by Waldemar Matuška.
In Austria, it is famous under the title Wenn sich der Abend mild. It is sung by Austrian fraternities.
In Thailand, Silpakorn Niyom, in Thai ศิลปากรนิยม, the anthem of Silpakorn University, borrowed the turn of Santa Lucia; the founder of the university, Silpa Bhirasri, was Italian. A Thai translation of Santa Lucia (itself was adapted from Italian version) was composed in 2017 by Professor Chedha Tingsanchali of the university's faculty of Archaeology to mark Bhirasri's 125th birthday anniversary. The translated lyrics was first premiered on 15 September of that year.
Partono 'e bastimente pe' terre assaje luntane... Cantano a buordo: so' Napulitane! Cantano pe' tramente 'o golfo gia scumpare, e 'a luna, 'a miez'o mare, nu poco 'e Napule.
The ships are leaving for far away lands. The Neapolitans sing on board. They sing while in the sunset the bay disappears and the moon, above the sea lets them see a glimpse of Naples.
Today, The Grandma has been seeing some pictures about her travels.
She loves Napoli, and she likes remembering her travels to this wonderful and unforgettable city, capital of Campania, whose opera house, Teatro San Carlo is the oldest in Europe.
The Real Teatro di San Carlo, as originally named by the Bourbon
monarchy but today known simply as the Teatro (di) San Carlo, is an opera house
in Naples, Campania,connected to the Royal Palace and adjacent to the Piazza del
Plebiscito.
It is the oldest continuously active venue for opera in the world, having opened in 1737, decades before either Milan's La Scala or Venice's La Fenice.
The opera season runs from late January to May, with the ballet season taking place from April to early June. The house once had a seating capacity of 3,285, but has now been reduced to 1,386 seats. Given its size, structure and antiquity, it was the model for theatres that were later built in Europe.
Commissioned by the Bourbon King Charles III of Naples, Carlo III in Italian, Charles wanted to endow Naples with a new and larger theatre to replace the old, dilapidated, and too-small Teatro San Bartolomeo of 1621, which had served the city well, especially after Scarlatti had moved there in 1682 and had begun to create an important opera centre which existed well into the 1700s.
Thus, the San Carlo was inaugurated on 4 November 1737, the king's name day, with the performance of the opera Domenico Sarro's Achille in Sciro, which was based on the 1736 libretto by Metastasio which had been set to music that year by Antonio Caldara. As was customary, the role of Achilles was played by a woman, Vittoria Tesi, called Moretta; the opera also featured soprano Anna Peruzzi, called the Parrucchierina and tenor Angelo Amorevoli. Sarro also conducted the orchestra in two ballets as intermezzi, created by Gaetano Grossatesta, with scenes designed by Pietro Righini. The first seasons highlighted the royal preference for dance numbers, and featured among the performers famous castrati.
In the late 18th century, Christoph Willibald Gluck was called to Naples by the impresario Tufarelli to direct his 1752 Clemenza di Tito at the theatre, and Johann Christian Bach in 1761-62 brought two operas, Catone in Utica and Alessandro nell'Indie.
The new opera house was designed by Giovanni Antonio Medrano, a military architect, and Angelo Carasale, the former director of the San Bartolomeo.
The horseshoe-shaped auditorium is the oldest in the world. It was built at a cost of 75,000 ducats. The hall was 28.6 meters long and 22.5 meters wide, with 184 boxes, including those of proscenium, arranged in six orders, plus a royal box capable of accommodating ten people, for a total of 1,379 seats. Including standing room, the theatre could hold over 3,000 people.
Much admired for its architecture, its gold decorations, and the sumptuous blue upholstery, the San Carlo was now the biggest opera house in the world.
In relation to the power of the existing Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Beauvert notes that the design of the house, with its 184 boxes lacking any curtains, was so that no one could avoid the scrutiny by the sovereign who had his private access from the Royal Palace.
In 1809 Domenico Barbaia was appointed manager of the royal opera houses in Naples and remained in charge until 1841. He soon established a reputation for innovative and dazzling productions, which attracted both the public and leading singers to the opera house.
On 13 February 1816 a fire broke out during a dress-rehearsal for a ballet performance and quickly spread to destroy a part of the building.
On the orders of King Ferdinand IV, another Bourbon monarch and son of Charles III, who used the services of Antonio Niccolini, Barbaia was able to rebuild theopera house within ten months.
It was rebuilt as a traditional horseshoe-shaped auditorium with 1,444 seats, and a proscenium, 33.5 m wide and 30 m high. The stage was 34.5 m deep. Niccolini embellished in the inner of the bas-relief depicting Time and the Hour.
The central frescoed ceiling painting of Apollo presenting to Minerva the greatest poets of the world was painted by Antonio, Giuseppe e Giovanni Cammarano.
In 1844, the opera house was re-decorated under Niccolini, his son Fausto, and Francesco Maria dei Giudice. The main result was the change in appearance of the interior to the now-traditional red and gold.
Apart from the creation of the orchestra pit, suggested by Verdi in 1872, the installation of electricity in 1890, the subsequent abolition of the central chandelier, and the construction of the new foyer and a new wing for dressing rooms, the theatre underwent no substantial changes until repair of the bombing damage in 1943.
During World War II, the opera house was damaged by bombs. Following the liberation of Naples in October 1943, Peter Francis of the Royal Artillery organized repairs to the damaged foyer and, three weeks later, reopened the building with a musical revue.
With the building in a fit state for performances, more musicians and singers made themselves available and the first opera performance was held on 26 December 1943, a matinée presentation of Puccini's La bohème. Francis stayed on for another two years, producing 30 operas.
On 9 July 1946 the American baritone Lawrence Tibbett sand the title role in Rigoletto before an audience that included senior military figures of the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations, and troops of the Allied Forces.
By the start of the twenty-first century, the opera house was showing its age with outmoded stage machinery, inadequate visitor facilities, and lack of air conditioning. In response, the Campania regional government funded a €67 million renovation over six months in 2008 and six months in 2009 which included restoration of the décor and the creation of a new rehearsal hall.
At the time, the Neapolitan School of opera enjoyed great success all overEurope, not only in the field of opera buffa but also in that of opera seria.
The Neapolitan school of opera composers included Feo, Porpora, Traetta, Piccinni, Vinci, Anfossi, Durante, Jommelli, Cimarosa, Paisiello, Zingarelli, and Gazzaniga.
Naples became the capital of European music, and even foreign composers considered the performance of their compositions at the San Carlo theatre as the goal of their career.
These composers included Hasse, who later settled in Naples, Haydn, Johann Christian Bach and Gluck.
Similarly, the most prominent singers performed and consolidated their fame at the San Carlo. These included Lucrezia Anguiari, called La Cocchetta, the renowned castrati Giovanni Manzuoli, Caffarelli (Gaetano Majorano), Farinelli (Carlo Broschi), Gizziello (Gioacchino Conti) and Gian Battista Velluti, the last castrato. Caffarelli, Farinelli, and Gizziello were products of the local conservatories of Naples.
Today, The Grandma has received interesting news from Joseph de Ca'th Lon, one of her closest friends.
Joseph is in Naples visiting the Ciampate del Diavolo, where an article in Nature identifies fossilized hominid footprints preserved in pyroclastic flow deposits that dated to around 350,000 years ago on a day like today in 2003.
The Ciampate del Diavolo, in Neapolitan Devil's Footprints or Devil's Trails, is a locality near the extinct Roccamonfinavolcano in northern Campania, Italy.
It is named after fossilized hominid footprints preserved in pyroclastic flow deposits that have been dated to around 350,000 years ago.
They have been attributed to bipedal hominids, possibly Homo heidelbergensis,which is known to have inhabited the region at the time.
The footprints comprise three sets of tracks indicating that three hominids made their way down a steep slope on the flank of the volcano, away from the crater. The tracks were preserved under a layer of volcanic ash and were revealed by erosion, probably in the late 18th to early 19th century. Local people attributed the prints to the Devil as they regarded him as the only being capable of walking on lava without harm.
They were identified as hominid footprints after archaeologists examined them in 2002 and are the second oldest set of hominid footprints known outside Africa, after the Happisburgh footprints.
The area in which the tracks appear is an eroded layer of rock covering about 2,000 m², tilted at an angle of about 45°, in a forest on the side of the volcano. The footprints consist of three sets of tracks which descend a steep slope created by a pyroclastic flow.
The first, identified as Trackway A, measures 13.4 metres and consists of 27 prints from left and right feet descending 4.26 metres vertically along a Z-shaped course. It testifies to a careful descent down a steep and probably unstable slope.
Trackway B is 8.6 metres long and descends 2.91 metres vertically along a single curved route. Less care was taken with this part of the descent, as slips and irregularities indicating stumbles are visible. Finally, the less well-preserved
Trackway C measures 9.98 metres along a single straight line which descends 2.56 metres vertically.
Occasional handprints are visible where the track-maker sought support on the steep slope, and a couple of animal paw marks made by a big dog or wolf are also visible.
Until the discovery of the Happisburgh footprints in England in 2013, they were the oldest known hominid footprints outside Africa. The tracks were originally dated to between 385,000 and 325,000 years ago, but subsequent studies using argon-argon dating placed the date more precisely as around 349-350,000 years ago.
The pyroclastic deposits in which the footprints were imprinted were laid down around 349,000 years ago (±3,000 years), while the layer of volcanic ash which subsequently covered and preserved them was deposited around 350,000 years ago (±3,000 years). The footprints are thought to have been exposed by erosion caused by heavy precipitation and landslides in the early 19th century, when the name Ciampate del Diavolo was first recorded.
The track-makers are estimated to have been about 1.56 metres tall and to have been travelling at a speed of 1.09 metres per second. Based on the age of the tracks, they have been tentatively ascribed to the hominid Homoheidelbergensis, a probable ancestor of the Neanderthals. As the tracks point away from the volcano's crater, it is possible that they were made while the track-makers were trying to escape an eruption. There was certainly an eruption following the track-makers' passage, as the tracks were buried under a subsequently erupted layer of volcanic ash which preserved them to the present day.
Based on the small stature of the individuals, it has been suggested that the prints were made by children.
The tracks were known locally for many years, as they are situated near a trail that was established in the 18th century between the villages of Tuoro/Foresta and Piccilli. Local people attributed them to the Devil, the only being considered capable of walking on lava without burning his feet, but despite this the site was not considered cursed or threatening.
In 1986 a writer suggested that the footprints might have been created in historic times by a human. It was not until 2002 that they were first brought to scientific attention by two amateur archaeologists who noticed them and informed archaeologists at the University of Padua.
A cattle path through the forest formerly crossed the fossil tracks and caused accelerated erosion at that point, but since 2001 the vegetation around the tracks has been cleared away and the exposed rock protected by fencing. The tracks were initially thought to have been made by prehistoric elephants but when Paolo Mietto and two other researchers from the University of Padua investigated them, they were surprised to find that the tracks were of hominid origin.
It is very rare to find preserved hominid footprints in open-air environments, where they are vulnerable to erosion; most examples are found in enclosed and thus better protected environments such as caves.
Today, The Grandma has been taking off Christmas ornaments. The festivity has finished and it is time to continue with working life. While she was putting some objects in a box, she has found a piece of newspaper that talked about France Gall, the French singer who won representing Luxembourg in the Eurovision Song Contest 1965 singing her popular song Poupée de cire, poupée de son.
France Gall died on a day like today only two years ago and The Grandma wants to homage her talking about her career.
Isabelle Geneviève Marie Anne Gall (9 October 1947-7 January 2018), better known by her stage name France Gall, was a French yé-yé singer. In 1965, aged 17, she won the Eurovision Song Contest.Between 1973 and 1992, she collaborated with singer-songwriter Michel Berger.
Gall was born in Paris on 9 October 1947, to a highly musical family. Her father, the lyricist Robert Gall, wrote songs for Édith Piaf and Charles Aznavour. Her mother, Cécileh Berthier, was a singer as well and the daughter of Paul Berthier, the co-founder of Les Petits Chanteurs à la Croix de Bois. The only daughter of her family, she had two brothers: Patrice and Claude.
In spring 1963, Robert
Gall encouraged his daughter to record songs and send the demos to the
music publisher Denis Bourgeois. That July, she auditioned for Bourgeois
at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, after which Bourgeois
wanted to sign her immediately. France was subsequently signed to
Philips.
At the time, Bourgeois was working for the label as artistic director for Serge Gainsbourg and assumed this role for Gall as well. He encouraged her to record four tracks with the French jazz musician, arranger and composer Alain Goraguer.
The first airplay of France's first single Ne sois pas si bête, occurred on her 16th birthday. It was released in November and became a hit, selling 200,000 copies. Gainsbourg, who had released several albums and written songs for singers including Michèle Arnaud and Juliette Gréco, was asked by Bourgeois to write songs for Gall. Gainsbourg's N'écoute pas les idoles was Gall's second single; it reached the top of the French charts in March 1964 and stayed there for three weeks.
At the same time, Gall
made her live debut, opening for Sacha Distel in Belgium. She teamed up
with Distel's business manager, Maurice Tézé, a lyricist, which allowed
her to create an original repertoire, unlike the majority of her
contemporaries who sang adaptations of Anglophone hits. Elaborate
orchestrations by Alain Goraguer blended styles, permitting her to
navigate between jazz, children's songs, and anything in between.
France Gall
Examples of this mixed-genre style included Jazz à gogo by Alain Goraguer and Robert Gall and Mes premières vraies vacances by Jacques Datin and Maurice Vidalin.
Gall and Gainsbourg's association produced many popular singles, continuing through the summer of 1964 with the hit song Laissetomberles filles followed by Christiansen by Datin-Vidalin. Gainsbourg also secretly recorded Gall's laughter to use on Pauvre Lola, a track on his 1964 album Gainsbourg Percussions.
Having previously resisted, Gall gave in to her managers at the end of 1964 and recorded a single intended for children. The song Sacré Charlemagne, written by her father, and set to the music of George Liferman, was a hit in 1965, peaking at number two in France and number five in Turkey.
Gall was then
selected to represent Luxembourg in the Eurovision Song Contest 1965.
From the ten songs proposed to her, she chose Gainsbourg's Poupée de
cire, poupée de son.
On 20 March 1965, Gainsbourg, Gall, and Goraguer
attended the finals of the song contest in Naples, where the song was allegedly booed in rehearsals for straying so far from the sort of song
usually heard in the Contest at this point.
Although the delivery during the live show may not have been Gall's strongest performance -one critic wrote that Gall's performance was far from perfect- another noted that her voice was out of tune and her complexion pale, and when Gall called Claude François, her lover at the time, immediately after the performance, he shouted at her, You sang off key. You were terrible! -the song impressed the jury and it took the Grand Prix.
Success
at Eurovision ensured that Gall became even more known outside Europe
and she recorded Poupée de cire, poupée de son in French, German,
Italian and Japanese. There appears to be no English version released by
France Gall, although there was an English cover version by the English
1960s star Twinkle.
France Gall
In
1965, Gall toured France for several months with Le Grand Cirque de
France, a combination of radio show and live circus. Her singles
continued to chart successfully, including the Gainsbourg-penned Attends ou va-t'en and Nous ne sommes pas des anges. She also had a
hit with the song L'Amérique by Eddy Marnay and Guy Magenta.
After a TV film directed by Jean-Christophe Averty and dedicated to the songs of Gall was distributed in the United States in 1965, Gall was sought by Walt Disney to appear as Alice in a musical film version of Alice in Wonderland, after having already made Alice into a cartoon in 1951. Although Gall had insisted she did not want to become involved in film work, this was the only project which appealed to her. The project was cancelled after Disney's death in 1966.
In 1966, Gall appeared
in the television film Viva Morandi, made in the same psychoanalytical
mould as the (1965) Federico Fellini film Giulietta degli Spiriti. She
played La Grâce alongside Christine Lebail, who played La Pureté,
both singing Les Sucettes in a segment which was prominently labelled Fantasy, in a clear reference to the song's sexual undertones.
She considered appearing
on screen in 1993 for a cinematographic collaboration with her best
friend, screenwriter Telsche Boorman. This planned project was never
completed due to Boorman's death in 1996. In a feature film, Gainsbourg
Vie héroïque, released in France in January 2010, based on the graphic
novel by writer-director Joann Sfar, Gall was portrayed by Sara
Forestier.
In 1966, her children's song Les Leçons particulières was the subject of public
notoriety and displeasure; the same occurred when Jean-Christophe
Averty choreographed a troupe of men on all fours to illustrate another
of her children's songs, J'ai retrouvé mon chien, on his television
programme, Les Raisins verts.
Although struggling in
her home country, Gall regularly recorded in Germany from 1966 to 1972,
in particular with the composer and orchestrator Werner Müller. She had a
successful German career with songs by Horst Buchholz and Giorgio
Moroder.
France Gall
Gall had several other releases in France in 1968, none of which aroused any great interest. At the end of 1968, on reaching the age of 21, Gall separated from Denis Bourgeois and spread her wings upon the expiration of her contract with Philips.
She moved to a new record label, La Compagnie, in 1969, with whom her father Robert signed a contract, where she made a number of recordings, but did not succeed in finding a coherent style with Norbert Saada as artistic director.
She went her own way in 1969 with two adaptations: one Italian and the other British: L'Orage/La Pioggia which she sang with Gigliola Cinquetti at the 1969 Sanremo Music Festival, and Les Années folles, created by Barbara Ruskin. Her songs Des gens bien élevés, La Manille et la révolution, Zozoï and Éléphants were largely ignored. La Compagnie went bankrupt within three years of its creation, co-founder and singer Hugues Aufray blaming the failure entirely on Norbert Saada.
The early seventies continued to be a barren period for Gall. Although she was the first artist to be recorded in France for Atlantic Records in 1971, her singles C'est cela l'amour (1971) and Chasse neige (1971), faltered in the charts.
In 1972, Gall, for the last time, recorded songs by Gainsbourg, Frankenstein and Les Petits ballons, but these also failed to chart. The results of her collaboration with Jean-Michel Rivat as artistic director, La Quatrieme chose (1972), Par plaisir and Plus haut que moi (1973) all failed to meet with commercial success. Gainsbourg invited France Gall on television to sing a medley of old songs from their time together, which included Poupee de cire, Poupee de son.
From the 1970s onwards, Gall started regularly visiting Senegal. She bought a hideaway there on the island of N'Gor, close to Dakar in 1990.
In 1985, Gall joined Chanteurs Sans Frontières, on the initiative of Valérie Lagrange. She also worked for S.O.S Ethiopie for the benefit of Ethiopia under the aegis of Renaud. At the same time, she gave a successful series of concerts lasting three weeks at the new venue Le Zénith in Paris, where she performed new songs like Débranche, Hong-Kong Star, and gave solid acoustic performances of Plus haut, Diego libre dans sa tête and Cézanne peint.
In 1985 and 1986, Gall worked with Berger, Richard Berry, Daniel Balavoine and Lionel Rotcage for the benefit of Action Écoles, an organisation of schoolboy volunteers which collects essential food products in France for African countries where famine and drought prevail.
On 14 January 1986, during a trip to Africa, Balavoine tragically perished in a helicopter crash.
In 1987, the song Évidemment, written by Berger and sung by Gall, was a moving homage to their lost friend. The song appeared on the album Babacar. Gall topped the pop charts in many countries in 1987 and 1988 with another song from the Babacar album, Ella, elle l'a, a Berger tribute to Ella Fitzgerald.
In 1996, Gall asked Jean-Luc Godard to produce the video clip of her song Plus haut, taken from her album France. Godard initially refused, but later agreed, and directed a dreamy, picturesque video titled Plus Oh! near his residence in Rolle, Switzerland.
A long-term breast cancer survivor, Gall died, aged 70, of an infection after a two-year battle with a cancer of undisclosed primary origin, at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine on 7 January 2018.
Today, The Grandma has been seeing her Neapolitan photos. The Grandma loves Napoli (Naples) and the Campania. She was living some years in this amazing city and she was in love with its people. Neapolitan are loyal, passionate and strong people who have survived terrific events during the 20th century -World Wars, emigration, earthquakes and the last eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Near Napoli, there is Pozzuoli. This city is well-known by suffering the effects of a terrible earthquake in but also by being the residence of one of the most popular Italian actresses, Sophia Loren, the diva who was born on a day like today in 1934.
Pozzuoli began as the Greek colony of Dicaearchia, in Greek: Δικαιαρχία. The Roman colony was established in 194 BC, and took the name Puteoli which it has his roots from puteus, meaning well, also used by sibyls to predict the future, and osco fistulus (cave). An alternative etymology of Puteoli from the Latin puteo (to stink), referring to the sulfuric smell in the area, most notably from Solfatara. This is because Pozzuoli lies in the centre of the Campi Flegrei, a volcanic caldera.
Before talking about Sofia Loren, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Ms. Excel course.
Sofia Villani Scicolone (born 20 September 1934), known professionally as Sophia Loren, is an Italian film actress and singer. She is one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Encouraged to enroll in acting lessons after entering a beauty pageant, Loren began her film career at age 16 in 1950. She appeared in several bit parts and minor roles in the early part of the decade, until her five-picture contract with Paramount in 1956 launched her international career. Notable film appearances around this time include The Pride and the Passion, Houseboat, and It Started in Naples.
Her talents as an actress were not recognized until her performance as Cesira in Vittorio De Sica's Two Women in 1960; Loren's performance earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1962 and made her the first actress to win an Oscar for a foreign-language performance.
Sophia Loren
She holds the record for
having earned six David di Donatello Awards for Best Actress: Two
Women; Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963); Marriage Italian Style
(1964) for which she was nominated for a second Oscar; Sunflower (1970);
The Voyage (1974); and A Special Day(1977).
After starting a family
in the early 1970s, Loren chose to make only occasional film
appearances. Most recently, she has appeared in American films such as
Grumpier Old Men (1995) and Nine (2009). Aside from the Academy Award, she has won a Grammy Award, five special Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award), a BAFTA Award, a Laurel Award, the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival, the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival and the Honorary Academy Award in 1991.
In 1995, she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievements, one of many such awards.
In 1999, Loren was named by the American Film Institute the 21st greatest female star of Classic Hollywood Cinema, and she is currently the only living actress on the list.
Sofia Villani Scicolone was born on 20 September 1934 in the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome, Italy, the daughter of Romilda Villani (1910–1991) and Riccardo Scicolone, a construction engineer of noble descent.
Loren's parents had another child together, her sister Maria, in 1938. Loren has two younger paternal half-brothers, Giuliano and Giuseppe. Romilda, Sofia, and Maria lived with Loren's grandmother in Pozzuoli, near Naples.
During the Second World War, the harbour and munitions plant in Pozzuoli was a frequent bombing target of the Allies. During one raid, as Loren ran to the shelter, she was struck by shrapnel and wounded in the chin. After that, the family moved to Naples, where they were taken in by distant relatives. After the war, Loren and her family returned to Pozzuoli. Loren's grandmother Luisa opened a pub in their living room, selling homemade cherry liquor. Romilda Villani played the piano, Maria sang, and Loren waited on tables and washed dishes. The place was popular with the American GIs stationed nearby.
Sophia Loren
At age 15, Loren as Sofia Lazzaro entered the Miss Italia 1950 beauty pageant and was assigned as Candidate #2, being one to the four sharing contestants representing the Lazio region.
At age 17, as Sofia Lazzaro, she enrolled in acting class and was selected as an uncredited extra in Mervyn LeRoy's 1951 film Quo Vadis (1951), filmed when she was 17 years old. That same year, she appeared in Italian film Era lui... sì! sì!, where she played an odalisque, and was credited as SofiaLazzaro. She appeared in several bit parts and minor roles in the early part of the decade, including the La Favorita (1952).
Carlo Ponti changed her name and public image to appeal to a wider audience as Sophia Loren, being a twist on the name of the Swedish actress Märta Torén and suggested by Goffredo Lombardo. Her first starring role was in Aida (1953), for which she received critical acclaim. After playing the lead role in Two Nights with Cleopatra (1953), her breakthrough role was in The Gold of Naples (1954), directed by Vittorio De Sica. Too Bad She's Bad, also released in 1954, and (La Bella Mugnaia) (1955) became the first of many films in which Loren co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni.
Over the next three years, she acted in many films, including Scandal in Sorrento, Lucky to Be a Woman, Boy on a Dolphin, Legend of the Lost and The Pride and the Passion.
Loren became an international film star following her five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures in 1958. Among her films at this time were Desire Under the Elms with Anthony Perkins, based upon the Eugene O'Neill play; Houseboat, a romantic comedy co-starring Cary Grant; and George Cukor's Heller in Pink Tights, in which she appeared as a blonde for the first time.
In 1960, she starred in Vittorio De Sica's Two Women, a stark, gritty story of a mother who is trying to protect her 12-year-old daughter in war-torn Italy. Loren's performance earned her many awards, including the Cannes Film Festival's best performance prize, and an Academy Award for Best Actress,the first major Academy Award for a non-English-language performance or to an Italian actress.
During the 1960s, Loren
was one of the most popular actresses in the world, and continued to
make films in the United States and Europe, starring with prominent
leading men.
Sophia Loren
In 1964, her career reached its pinnacle when she received $1 million to appear in The Fall of the Roman Empire. In 1965, she received a second Academy Award nomination for her performance in Marriage Italian-Style.
Among Loren's best-known films of this period are Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid (1961) with Charlton Heston, The Millionairess (1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples (1960) with Clark Gable, Vittorio De Sica's triptych Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) with Marcello Mastroianni, Peter Ustinov's Lady L (1965) with Paul Newman, the 1966 classic Arabesque with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando.
Loren received four Golden Globe Awards between 1964 and 1977 as World Film Favorite-Female.
Loren
worked less after becoming a mother. During the next decade, most of
her roles were in Italian features. During the 1970s, she was paired
with Richard Burton in the last De Sica-directed film, The Voyage
(1974), and a remake of the film Brief Encounter (1974).
Other
movies of this decade were Academy award nominee Sunflower (1970),
which was a critical success, and Arthur Hiller's Man of La Mancha
(1972), which was a critical and commercial failure despite being
nominated for several awards, including two Golden Globes. O'Toole and
James Coco were nominated for two NBR awards, in addition the NBR listed
Man of La Mancha in its best ten pictures of 1972 list.
In 1982, while in Italy, she made headlines after serving an 18-day prison sentence on tax evasion charges -a fact that failed to hamper her popularity or career.
In 1991, Loren received the Academy Honorary Award for her contributions to world cinema and was declared one of the world cinema's treasures. In 1995, she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award.
In Grumpier Old Men (1995), Loren played a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, and Ann-Margret. The film was a box-office success and became Loren's biggest US hit in years.
Loren is a Roman Catholic. Her primary residence has been in Geneva, Switzerland, since late 2006. She also owns homes in Naples and Rome.
Loren is an ardent fan of the football club S.S.C. Napoli. In May 2007, when the team was third in Serie B, she (then age 72) told the Gazzetta dello Sport that she would do a striptease if the team won.
Today, The Grandma has continued reading the Joseph's guide about the Neapolitan city of Baia. It's so exciting that she has been also seeing the photos that Joseph took there.
Among the most significant and remarkable remains are several dome-like structures such as the great so-called Temple of Mercury, the Temple of Venus, and the Temple of Diana, which were traditionally credited to some of the more famous residents of the town's villas, although they were not temples but parts of thermal baths.
This colossal ogival dome, today half collapsed, originally collected vapours coming from the ground below and was used for thermal baths. It was decorated with marble friezes depicting hunting scenes.
The Temple of Mercury consists of an enormous 21.5 m diameter dome, a miracle of engineering and the largest in the world prior to the construction of Rome's Pantheon in AD 128. The dome has a central hole or oculus and was made with large tuff blocks.
It was, and is still today, used to enclose the frigidarium or cold pool of the public baths. From eighteenth century descriptions it appeared to have had six niches of which four were semicircular.
A Joseph's selfie in the Archaeological Park of Baia
The Temple of Venus is another octagonal building, sunken 3 metres in the ground, had eight large arched windows and a balcony inside overlooking the pool. It owes its name to Scipione Mazzella who claimed to have found the statue of the goddess there.
Overlooking the sea is the Villa of the Ambulatio with a series of six terraces connected to each other by a complex of staircases of which the last leads to the sector of Mercury. It is named after the 'ambulatio', the long corridor with two longitudinal naves on the second terrace, intended to be a covered walk with large openings with a magnificent panorama of the gulf below. Traces of precious stucco can be seen on the brick structure of the central pillars.
On the upper terrace were the residential areas, once richly decorated with several rooms dedicated to leisure. The third terrace is now transformed into a tree-lined garden. The fourth terrace was for service areas. On the fifth terrace are several rooms probably used as places to stay and rest, open to the sea and to the last terrace below that once was occupied by a garden, as today, perhaps surrounded by a colonnade.
Founded by two parallel staircases is the sector or Temple of Sosandra from the name of the statue found in 1953 and now located in the National Museum of Naples.
The complexity of this
sector on four terraces does not allow its intended use to be identified
but it was either a spa, a villa, a hospitalia, a sort of hotel for
visitors to the nearby spa, or even a meeting place of Nero for the entertainment of sailors of the nearby Classis Misenensis, the Miseno fleet.
Joseph at Il Tempio di Venere, the Temple of Venus
On the highest terrace are service areas and a small balneum with rich stucco decorations on the ceiling. The next level has a large terrace open to the sea and bordered on three sides by a portico. In the garden are four parallel walls that perhaps delimited three triclinia in the open.
Above the peristyle are several residential rooms, once richly finished, particularly the original precious mosaic floors representing theatrical masks inside geometric frames. Below this level there is a semicircular building surmounted by five vaulted rooms once hidden by a façade decorated with niches and columns, overall making an impressive composition.
On the axis of the
complex is a room perhaps used as a nymphaeum from which flowed the
water that fed an existing large external circular tank. On the
peristyle of the lower terrace are paintings from two successive
periods: those with an egyptian taste, characters and symbols of the
cult of Isis, from the middle of the 1st century AD; these are
largely covered by paintings of the 2nd century, which depict male and
female figures within architectural schemes.
Completely submerged by the waters is the nymphaeum of Emperor Claudius whose sculptures have been transferred to the town's archaeological museum, the Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei or Phlegraean Fields Archaeological Museum which also contains other items excavated on the site.
The public and private baths of Baiae were filled with warm mineral water directed to their pools from underground hot springs, as many still are today. Roman engineers were also able to construct a complex system of chambers that channelled underground heat into facilities that acted as saunas. In addition to their recreational function, the baths were used in Roman medicine to treat various illnesses and physicians would attend their patients at the springs.
Baiae was supplied with fresh drinking water from a branch of the AquaAugusta aqueduct, a cross-section of which can be seen nearby.
Today, The Grandma has been reading an archaeologic guide about Baia, in Naples, that Joseph de Ca'th Lon brought her some days ago.
Joseph has been in Baia practising one of his favourite sports, diving. He was able to enjoy the great chance of diving between ancient ruins under the sea and discover the past of these lands thanks to its monuments.
Baiae, in Neapolitan Baia, was an ancient Roman town situated on the northwest shore of the Gulf of Naples, and now in the comune of Bacoli. It was a fashionable resort for centuries in antiquity, particularly towards the end of the Roman Republic, when it was reckoned as superior to Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Capri by the super-rich who built luxurious villas here from 100 BC to 500 AD. It was notorious for its hedonistic offerings and the attendant rumours of corruption and scandal.
The lower part of the town later became submerged in the sea due to local volcanic, bradyseismic activity which raised or lowered the land, and recent underwater archaeology has revealed many of the fine buildings now protected in the submerged archaeological park.
Many impressive buildings from the upper town can be seen in the ParcoArcheologico delle Terme di Baia.
Baiae was said to have been named after Baius in Greek Βαῖος, Baîos, the helmsman of Odysseus's ship in Homer's Odyssey, who was supposedly buried nearby.
Parco Sommerso di Baiae, Naples
The adjacent Baian Gulf, in Latin Sinus Baianus was named after the town. It now forms the western part of the Gulf of Pozzuoli.
The settlement was also mentioned in 178 BC under the name Aquae Cumanae, Cumaean Waters.
Baiae was built on the Cumaean Peninsula in the Phlegraean Fields, an active volcanic area. It was perhaps originally developed as the port for Cumae.
Baiae was particularly fashionable towards the end of the Roman Republic. Marius, Lucullus, and Pompey all frequented it. Julius Caesar had a villa there, and much of the town became imperial property under Augustus. Nero had a notable villa constructed in the middle of the 1st century and Hadrian died at his villa in AD 138. It was also a favourite spot of the emperor SeptimiusSeverus.
The resorts sometimes capitalised on their imperial associations: Suetonius mentions in his history that the cloak, brooch, and gold bulla given to the young Tiberius by Pompey's daughter Pompeia Magna were still on display around AD 120.
According to Suetonius, in AD 39, Baiae was the location for a stunt by the eccentric emperor Caligula to answer the astrologer Thrasyllus's prediction that he had no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding a horse across the Gulf of Baiae. Caligula ordered a 3-mile-long pontoon bridge to be built from impounded ships of the area, fastened together and weighted with sand, stretching from Baiae to the neighbouring port of Puteoli. Clad in a gold cloak, he then crossed it upon a horse.
Parco Sommerso di Baiae, Naples
Cassius Dio's Roman History also includes the event, with the detail that the emperor ordered resting places and lodging rooms with potable water erected at intervals along the bridge.
As late as the 18th century, scattered fragments were still being shown to tourists as the Bridge of Caligula. Malloch has argued that Suetonius's account was likely coloured by his bias against Caligula; instead, he claims that the act of bridging the Bay of Naples was an excellent, and safe, means by which to lay the foundation for [Caligula’s] military glory.”
Baiae was notorious for the hedonistic lifestyle of its residents and guests. In 56 BC, the prominent socialite Clodia was condemned by the defence at the trial of Marcus Caelius Rufus as living as a harlot in Rome and at the crowded resort of Baiae, indulging in beach parties and long drinking sessions.
An elegy by Sextus Propertius written in the Augustan Age describes it as a den of licentiousness and vice. In the 1st century, Baiae and Vice formed one of the moral epistles written by Seneca the Younger; he described it as a vortex of luxury and a harbour of vice where girls went to play at being girls, old women as girls and some men as girls according to a first century BC wag.
It never attained municipal status, being administered throughout by nearby Cumae.
From 36BC, Baiae included Portus Julius, the base of the western fleet of the Roman Navy before it was abandoned because of the silting up of Lake Lucrinus, from which a short channel led to Lake Avernus, for the two harbours at Cape Misenum 4 miles south.
Parco Sommerso di Baiae, Naples
Baiae was sacked during the barbarian invasions and again by Muslim raiders in the 8th century.
It was deserted owing to recurrent malaria by 1500, but Pedro de Toledo erected a castle, Castello di Baja, in the 16th century.
The site had occasionally revealed Roman sculptures. The Aphrodite of Baiae, a variant of the Venus de Medici, was supposedly excavated there sometime before 1803, when the English antiquary Thomas Hope began displaying it in his gallery on Duchess Street in London.
The important archaeological remains were intensively excavated from 1941, revealing layers of buildings, villas and thermal complexes belonging to periods from the late Republican age, the Augustan, Hadrianic to the late empire.
The lowering of the ground below sea level, due to bradyseism, seems to have occurred in two phases: between the third and fifth centuries, still in the late Imperial era, followed by a more substantial submersion a century later. The lower part of Baiae was largely submerged by the sea by the 8th century.
A cache of plaster casts of Hellenistic sculptures was discovered in the cellar of the Baths of Sosandra at Baiae; they are now displayed at the town's archaeological museum. The collection includes parts of several famous sculptures, including Athens's Harmodius and Aristogeiton and the Athena of Velletri. It suggests that the area had a workshop mass-producing marble or bronze copies of Greek art for the Italian market.
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