Vincenzo Bellini

Bellini, Vincenzo (b Catania, Sicily, 1801; d Puteaux, nr. Paris, 1835). It. composer. Educated San Sebastiano Cons., Naples, where he studied under Zingarelli. Perf. of his first opera, Adelson e Salvini, at cons. in 1825 led to commission for opera for San Carlo, Naples; and this in its turn led to a commission from La Scala which resulted in Il ...

Leonardo da Vinci

The illegitimate son of a 25-year-old notary, Ser Piero, and a peasant girl, Caterina, Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, in Vinci, Italy, just outside Florence. His father took custody of the little fellow shortly after his birth, while his mother married someone else and moved to a neighboring town. They kept on having kids, although not with e ...

Antonio Meucci

An invention none of us could live without, a tool of modern communications so basic that many of today's business and social activities would be inconceivable in its absence, the telephone, is at the center of a series of events so strange as to amount to a "whodunit."

Most of us were brought up on the story of Alexan ...

Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Monteverdi was born in Cremona, Italy, in 1567. He was a boy chorister at the Cremona Cathedral, where he studied music with Marc' Antonio Ingegneri, and published his volume of three-voice motets. He had issued a volume of three-part canzonettas and his first three volumes of madrigals from 1587 to 1592. In 1589 he travelled to Milan in ho ...

Marcello Mastroianni

La Dolce Vita, 8 ½ and Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow are only a few of the more than 170 films to capture the style, truthfulness, and character of Marcello Mastroianni. Mastroianni made it a point throughout his career to never perform or accept a role that he felt unable to live up to in real life. Therefore, he steered clear of the typical hero ...