Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture
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A key member of Italy’s radical design fraternity from the 1960s onwards, Mendini has
been closely involved in Italian avantgarde architecture and design, and design
journalism since the 1960s. He was a partner in the architectural studio of Marcello
Nizzoli until 1970, the director of Casabella magazine from 1970 to 1976, the director of
Modo magazine from 1977 to 1981, and the director of Domus magazine from 1979 to
1985. He has created a wide range of objects, furniture, environments and installations
with international clients such as Alessi, Zanotta, Elam, Philips and Swatch, and has
collaborated extensively with Studio Alchimia. His designs always challenge the status
quo and suggest new ways forward. Some of his works are held by the Museum of
Modern Art, New York, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. In 1989, together with his
brother Francesco, Mendini opened the Atelier Mendini in Milan which is responsible for
designing, among others, Alessi House, a tower in Hiroshima, the Groningen Museum in
Holland and a theatre in Arezzo.
See also: anti-design
Further reading
Bonito Oliva, A. et al (1989) Alessandro Mendini, Milan: Giancarlo Politi Editore.
PENNY SPARKE
Meneghello, Luigi
b. 1922, Malo, Vicenza
Academic and novelist
After participating in the Resistance movement as a partizan and earning a degree in
philosophy at the University of Padua in 1947, Luigi Meneghello left Italy for England.
At the University of Reading he founded the Italian department and taught Italian
literature for several years. His novels, from Libera nos a malo (Deliver Us From Evil)
(1963) through I piccoli maestri (The Little Teachers) (1964, partially rewritten and
translated into English as The Outlaws in 1967) to Il dispatrio (Leaving the Homeland)
(1993), display his particular interest in language as a flexible tool of communication and
expression. By ingeniously mixing his native Veneto dialect with standard Italian and
English, Meneghello not only revives memories of his own childhood and of the recent
historical past, but also records and comments on the social and cultural changes of Italy
from the Fascist era to the postwar years.
FRANCESCA PARMEGGIANI
Entries A–Z 511
Menichella, Donate
b. 23 January 1896, Biccari, Foggia; d. 23 July 1984, Rome
Banker
As governor of the Bank of Italy (see Banca d’Italia) from 1948 to 1960, Menichella
deeply influenced and often directed economic policy of Italian governments during the
period of reconstruction, thus laying the foundations of the subsequent economic boom.
Fiercely independent of both political parties and economic lobbies, and with a high
sense of his office as a civil servant, he bravely defended the central bank’s autonomy. A
man of extraordinary integrity, he had spent his prewar years at the Bank of Italy and
then at IRI as general manager. Having experienced bank failures and financial disasters
at first hand, he always considered financial stability the safest condition for lasting
economic growth. Although a strong believer in the market economy, he also thought of
currency and credit as public goods to be safeguarded by the state. In 1960, during
Menichella’s last year as governor, the Financial Times proclaimed the Italian lira ‘star
currency of the year’, thus marking both a great historical achievement and the
culmination of a most distinguished career.
See also: economic miracle
STEFANO BATTILOSSI
Menotti, Gian Carlo
b. 7 July 1911, Cadegliano
Composer
In 1927, the sixteen-year-old Menotti, speaking no English, left Italy to begin
compositional studies in America. Less than a decade later he was poised to become one
of the most significant and financially successful composers of his generation.
The sixth of ten children, Menotti demonstrated musical talent from an early age,
writing two operas before his thirteenth birthday As an adolescent he was taken by his
mother to meet Toscanini, a friend of the family, who advised Menotti to travel to
America to study composition with Rosario Scalero at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.
There he was soon befriended by another young student, Samuel Barber. They became
close friends, collaborating musically and living together for many years.
Initially, Menotti’s career was the more illustrious. His first published opera, Amelia al
Ballo (Amelia at the Ball) (1935) was performed in the 1937 season at the Metropolitan
Opera, and Menotti joined a select number of living composers to have their work staged
at the Met. Based on the success of Amelia, the broadcaster NBC commissioned an opera
for radio, The Old Maid and the Thief (1939). Written in the belief that opera should be
as accessible and immediate as a play or film, Menotti’s next two operas, The Medium
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(1946) and The Consul (1950), changed the notion of what opera could mean for
twentieth-century audiences. Against advice from the musical establishment, he sought
financial backing to stage The Medium on Broadway rather than in an opera house. His
instincts proved correct: between 1947–8, it ran for 211 performances and was
enormously successful in both musical and financial terms. The Consul, his first full-
length opera, also had an extended Broadway run and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and
the Drama Critic’s Circle Award. A year later he was commissioned to write the first
opera specifically for television, Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951). Requiring only
modest orchestral forces and a talented boy soprano, it remains one of the most
frequently performed operas in the United States.
Menotti has made significant contributions as a librettist, not only for his own works
but for those of colleagues (he wrote the libretto for Barber’s Vanessa in 1964). He is
also a respected director for stage, television and film. His strong sense of theatre has
often come at the expense of appreciation for his talents as a composer; enormous initial
success has been followed by decades of disinterest and, at times, disdain from the
musical establishment. In 1958, at the height of his fame he founded the Spoleto Festival
of Two Worlds, in Spoleto, Italy. With Menotti’s contacts in the visual arts and ballet, the
Festival quickly became a focus for a stimulating confrontation between the established
and the avant-garde. Artists invited to design their annual poster give an indication of
Festival’s calibre: Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, David Hockney, Leonardo
Cremonini and Henry Moore have each contributed over the years. Nineteen years later
(1977), Menotti founded the sister festival in Charleston, South Carolina. While
internecine tensions resulted in Menotti’s resignation from the Charleston Festival, he
continues to direct the Spoleto Festival in Italy, which in 1997 hosted Luciano Pavarotti,
flamenco dancer Joaquin Cortés and the Dance Theatre of Harlem.
For the past three decades, Menotti has lived to see his work marginalized in favour of
idioms more adventurous and less ingratiating. In the past few years, however, there are
intimations of change. Recent productions of his operas The Saint of Bleecker Street
(1954) and Maria Golovin (1958) have been received with enthusiasm. He was awarded
the Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime achievement in 1984, and in his eightieth year
was chosen ‘Musician of the Year’ by Musical America. In 1993 he was appointed
Director of the Rome Opera, underscoring his distinguished reputation as a director of
both opera and theatre. In 1995 he was invited to contribute a ‘Gloria’ as part of a Mass
to celebrate the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize, and future plans include several new
productions of his operas. The 1998 film of Amahl (the second film version in two
decades, in addition to countless television productions) suggests Menotti is still revising
the relationship between music and image. Indeed, Menotti’s film, kinescope and video
legacy remains one of the most comprehensive of any composer and paves the way for a
systematic reappraisal of his contribution to twentieth-century music at some point in the
future.
See also: opera
Further reading
Ardoin, J. (1985) The Stages of Menotti, New York: Garden City.
Entries A–Z 513
Barnes, J. (1994) ‘Television Opera: A NonHistory’ in J.Tambling (ed.), A Night in at the Opera:
Media Representations of Opera, London: John Libbey.
Gruen, J. (1978) Menotti: A Biography, New York: Macmillan.
JENNIFER BARNES
Merini, Alda
b. 21 March 1931, Milan
Poet and writer
Beginning in the early 1950s, Merini emerged as one of the most interesting lyric voices
in Italian poetry. Her books are characterized by a spiritual and psychological search,
sometimes opposed by, though more often fused with, an openly erotic streak and
expressed in a direct, fervent and powerful style. Merini’s major collections seem to
follow either one or the other of her two lyric themes without a precise chronological
trend. Paura di Dio (Fear of God) (1955), Tu sei Pietro. Anno 1961 (You Are Peter. Year
1961) (1961) and La Terra Santa (The Holy Land) (1983) are anguished religious
explorations, while other collections more clearly reflect her erotic and psychological
quest, as in the case of La presenza di Orfeo (The Presence of Orpheus) (1953), Delirio
amoroso (Delirious Love) (1989) and Il tormento delle figure (The Tormented Figures)
(1990).
Merini was afflicted by a debilitating nervous disease which forced her into long
poetic silences during almost two decades spent in mental institutions; these are
recounted in Diario di una diversa. L’altra verità (Diary of a Different Woman: The
Other Truth) (1986), a powerful book about the feelings, fears and aspirations of an
intellectual forced into an internal exile.
Further reading
Merini, A. (1998) Fiore di poesia: 1951–1997 (Flower of Poetry), Turin: Einaudi (complete
collected poems).
ANDREA CICCARELLI
Merz, Mario
b. 1 January 1925, Milan
Artist and writer
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While his art has a conceptual base and he has worked widely with installations, Merz is
concerned with creating art objects which are ordered, complete and whole. In 1968 he
produced Igloo di Giap (Giap’s Igloo), made of mud brick with a metal frame and
adorned with a neon slogan. This was the first of a series of igloos in various materials,
the igloo striking Merz as an ideal organic form, representing at once both a small
domestic shelter and the whole world. He has also been drawn to the idea that the
mathematical progression of numbers known as the Fibonacci series is a manifestation of
the underlying order of nature. Thus, some installations combine igloos with neon signs
and Fibonacci. With his ethnographic leanings and his search for archetypes, Merz has,
like the German artist Joseph Beuys, proved doggedly eclectic and has given his work a
human element at a time when much other art has seemed mechanical and soulless.
Further reading
Celant, G. (1989) Mario Merz, New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (illustrated
exhibition catalogue).
MAX STAPLES
Messina, Francesco
b. 15 December 1900, Linguaglossa, Catania; d. 13 September 1995, Naples
Sculptor
A traditionalist who was apprenticed to a stonemason at the age of eight, and held his
first exhibition at fifteen, Messina worked in marble, bronze and terracotta, and believed
that a thorough knowledge of one’s material was necessary to arrive at a lasting style. He
produced religious works such as Adam and Eve, a recurring theme, and the Memorial to
Pius XII in the Chapel of Saint Sebastian, in St Peter’s, completed in 1964. He also
created portraits, images of the female form, and horses, notably the Dying Horse outside
the RAI building in Rome.
Stylistically, Messina ignored most of the trends of modernism. His ideal was the
sculpture of the Florentine Renaissance, and he took as the point of departure for his own
experimentation the more expressionist portrait busts and the harrowing Penitent
Magdalen of Donatello. Messina was honoured by the Biennale of Venice with a prize
for sculpture in 1942, and a retrospective in 1956.
See also: sculpture
MAX STAPLES
Entries A–Z 515
Methnani, Salah
b. 1963, Tunisia
Immigrant writer
Methnani came to Italy from Tunisia in 1987 with a university degree and a knowledge
of the Italian language. He discovered that Italians felt threatened by his linguistic ability,
and came to realize that he posed less of a threat if he could be identified solely as an
immigrant, without any individual identity. In Immigrato (Immigrant), cowritten with
Mario Fortunato, Methnani describes the difficulties of retaining a sense of self apart
from the mass of immigrants. His revealing autobiography is unique among the many
testimonies of immigrants to Italy. It recounts his controversial choice of becoming a
drug addict and a friend’s decision to become a male prostitute as ways of acquiring an
identity beyond the imposed role of a cultural and racial alien. Methnani is now a writer
and a translator.
See also: immigrant literature
Further reading
Methnani, S. (1990) Immigrato, Rome and Naples: Theoria.
GRAZIELLA PARATI
Michelucci, Giovanni
b. 2 January 1891, Pistoia; d. 1 January 1991, Florence
Architect
The foremost Tuscan architect of the twentieth century and a renowned architectural
pedagogue, Michelucci began in private practice in 1916. Although his style fluctuated
somewhat during his remarkably long and fruitful career, expressionistic and organic
elements tied together various phases of his work. Michelucci’s Santa Maria Novella
train station in Florence (realized in 1936 with collaborators) is an outstanding work of
Italian rationalism and a stunning piece of modern architecture. Juxtaposed with the
nearby Renais-sance church of Santa Maria Novella, it embodies Michelucci’s recurrent
themes: the relationship of a single element with its larger context, whether urban,
environmental or historical. Active in postwar city reconstruction, he also initiated and
edited the journal La città nuova (The New City) from 1945 to 1956 (see architectural
and design magazines). Always a craftsman, his classic works include the churches of
Larderello, Saint John the Baptist of Arzignano (also known as ‘of the Autostrada’), a
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memorial church piazza at Longarone, postal banks in Pistoia and Florence and
apartments on via Guicciardini in Florence.
GORDANA KOSTICH
Milan Triennale
What became the Milan Triennale, a three-yearly exhibition of design held in Milan,
began life as the Biennale Internazionale dell’Arte Decorativa (International Biennial of
Decorative Art) in Monza in 1923. Its brief was to display the products of the Italian
decorative art industries—ceramics, glass, furniture, metalwork, textiles and so on—
alongside those of other countries. Two more Biennale were held in 1925 and 1927, after
which the exhibition was organized every three years from 1930 onwards. Henceforth it
was known as the Triennale Internazionale dell’Arte Decorativa. In 1933 it was moved to
Milan to occupy a purpose-built building, where it has been held ever since.
Since the 1930s, the Triennale has been the place where Italian innovations in the
decorative leading designers of the day have displayed work arts and design have first
been seen, and all the there. It was particularly famous in the 1950s when design played
such an important role in the cultural regeneration of so many countries. It was at the
Triennale, for instance, that countries such as Germany and Finland first gained a
reputation for innovation in this area. More to the point, however, it was also at this
venue that the Italian designers of the postwar years demonstrated their creative skills and
where companies such as Olivetti made such a mark for the design that they fostered.
The Triennales of 1951, 1954 and 1957 were particularly memorable in this respect.
The Eighth Triennale of 1947 had a strong social emphasis, focusing on the problem of
the postwar home. From 1951 onwards, however, this perspective was less in evidence
and the ‘Form of the Useful’, the name of the display of the Italian goods in the Ninth
Triennale, was overtly aesthetic in nature, showing how beautiful the design of functional
goods could be.
The 1954 Triennale put an even more deliberate emphasis upon the visual rather than
the social impact of design, and this time the display of Italian goods was called ‘The
Production of Art’ to mark this fact. The influence of organic surrealism was in evidence
and, in addition to the evocative nature of the display itself, the objects on display
demonstrated what was called a spirit of ‘abandoned playfulness’. The 1957 exhibition
developed this emphasis, but by the 1960s the impact of the Triennale was becoming less
forceful. The show of 1968 was closed prematurely due to the student uprisings of that
year. Since then the Triennale has continued to take place, but with a significantly lower
profile than it had in the 1950s.
See also: interior design
Entries A–Z 517
Further reading
Pansera, A. (1978) Storia e cronaca delle Triennale (History and Chronicle of the Triennale),
Milan: Longanesi.
PENNY SPARKE
Milani, Don Lorenzo
b. 27 May 1923, Florence; d. 26 June 1967, Florence
Priest and social activist
Don Milani was one of the first priests of the Catholic dissenso (dissent), and his Lettera
a una professoressa (Letter to a Schoolmistress) (1967) became an influential text during
the 1968 student agitations and was translated into many languages. Born into an upper
middle-class family, he was ordained as a priest in 1947. His first parish was an industrial
suburb of Florence, and his experience of the poverty there led him to reject the policies
of the Christian Democrat Party (see DC). In 1958 he was sent to Barbiana, a remote
country parish, where he wrote Experience pastorali (Pastoral Experiences), which was
censured by the Holy Office. In 1965, he was put on trial for his public attack on military
chaplains who opposed conscientious objection. He died prematurely at the age of only
forty-four, and his most important publication remains the Lettera, in he which attacked
the class basis of the Italian school system.
See also: education
Further reading
Fallaci, N. (1977) Dalla parte dell’ultimo. Vita del prete Lorenzo Milani (On the Side of the Last:
The Life of priest Lorenzo Milani), Milan: Libri Edizioni.
Lancesi, M. (1980) Dopo la ‘lettera’. Don Milani e la contestazione studentesca (After the ‘Letter’:
Don Milani and the Student Contestation), Bologna: Cappelli.
JOHN POLLARD
Milva
b. 18 July 1939, Goro, Ferrara
Popular singer
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Seen at the start of her career as a rival to Mina, Maria Ilva Biolcati adopted the
pseudonym ‘Milva’ after an RAI official announced that her name sounded like
‘ploughed earth and agricultural labour’. Her career also saw a move away from her
origins in popular song towards more prestigious activities. After participating in the
Sanremo Festival in the early 1960s, Milva branched out into interpretations of the
songs of Brecht and Weil, engagé singer-songwriters, gospel music and tango,
performing in theatres in Berlin, Paris and London. With her lean, decadent appearance,
mane of red hair and dark husky voice, she mined similar territory to the later Marlene
Dietrich and Ute Lemper. Although she came to be seen as a singer for intellectuals, she
did not cut herself off entirely from the popular market. In the 1980s she made several
rock-oriented albums written and produced by the Sicilian singer-songwriter Franco
Battiato. Her signature tune, ‘La rossa’ (The Redhead), was written for her by Enzo
Jannacci.
Further reading
Manfredi, G. (1982) Mina, Milva, Vanoni e altre storie (Mina, Milva, Vanoni and Others), Rome:
Latoside.
STEPHEN GUNDLE
Mina
b. 25 March 1940, Busto Arsizio, Varese
Popular singer
Mina (the stage name of Anna Maria Mazzini) burst on to the Italian musical scene in
1959 with her first hit song ‘Nessuno’ (Nobody) and remained an important figure into
the 1990s. Although she made her last television appearance in 1974 and was not seen in
public after 1978, the release of her annual album has continued to be regarded as a great
event. Endowed with a rich voice better fitted in some respects to the big band tradition
than to the pop idiom, she has been compared to Barbra Streisand. She established, for
the first time in Italy, the primacy of voice over text; her vocal range was reputed to
extend over eight octaves. Mina scored many hits in the 1960s and 1970s, including ‘Il
cielo in una stanza’ (The Sky in a Room) and ‘Città morta’ (Dead City). A girl of the
1960s who wore a mini-skirt, she appeared regularly on television shows such as Il
Musichiere and Studio Uno. In 1963 she caused a scandal by becoming pregnant by a
married actor, Corrado Pani. Her children, Massimiliano Pani and Nicoletta Mazzini,
who grew up in the public eye, also work in the entertainment industry.
Entries A–Z 519
Further reading
Manfredi, G. (1982) Mina, Milva, Vanoni e altre storie (Mina, Milva, Vanoni and Others), Rome:
Latoside.
STEPHEN GUNDLE
minority languages
Within the Italian nation, one finds a considerable web of minority or alloglot languages,
compounding the already impressive plurilingualism resulting from the wealth of Italian
dialects which continue to flourish side by side with the Italian language. Without taking
into account here the significant number of new immigrant languages (African, Asian,
East European and so on) and their more than one million speakers, across the peninsula
more than 2,800,000 individuals in thirteen administrative regions speak a mother tongue
other than Italian. These figures are approximate, due to factors such as continued
internal and external migrations, and to fear of stigmatization in declaring linguistic
minority status.
Most of the alloglot languages can be traced to historical immigrations. Italy’s
linguistic minorities are found mainly in border areas (Piedmont, Valle d’Aosta, Friuli
and so on), or in scattered enclaves. Sociolinguistic stratification exists in alloglot
communities, and while cultivated people tend to support the preservation of minority
languages, they are also the first to abandon them. In general, little has been done by the
state to stem erosion of these languages, and pluralism tends to be an abstract concept,
long after the intolerance exerted by the Fascist regime. In fact, a law to protect Italian
minority languages was passed in 1991 only by one chamber of Parliament, and the
political debate is ongoing. These factors explain the generally low prestige which
minority languages hold even within their own speech communities, where the standard
languages and local dialects are generally given preferred status (see language
attitudes). An abundant literature has engaged in the debate and study of the extremely
complex situations of minority language groups from different vantage points, political
and geographical, historical and anthropological, sociological and linguistic. Despite
strong fluctuations from one context to the other, the situation of most minority languages
with a lengthy historical tradition tends to be precarious. Still, the demographics can be
impressive. Sardinian is spoken most widely (1,500,000 people), followed by Friulian
(700,000), Provençal and Franco-Provençal (300,000), German dialects (280,000),
Albanian-Italian dialects (100,000) and a sprinkling among the other languages.
If we follow Italy’s minority languages from the north-west to the north-east, the south
and the islands, we come across Provençal in Piedmontese valleys such as the Stura,
Gesso or Grana valleys; with the absence of a roof-language, Provençal functions as the
low register next to Italian. Provençal is also found in Apulia and Calabria due to a
secondary migration of Waldensians to the south in the fourteenth century; despite
religious persecutions and a genocide in 1561, the language is still spoken by several
hundred people living in Guardia Piemontese (province of Cosenza). Franco-Provençal,
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