AN INCREDIBLE SUCCESS. Roberto Cicutto was appointed President of La Biennale di Venezia on February 2020, overseeing the city’s prestigious art and architecture biennials as well as the film, dance, theatre and music festivals. Cicutto is a native Venetian and a film...
GUARDIAN OF AN IMMENSE HERITAGE. Salvatore Nastasi is Secretary General of the Italian Ministry of Culture. He has been at what used to be called the Ministry for Cultural Property and Activities since 2000, with a brief interruption when he was Deputy Secretary...
THE IMPORTANCE OF A CLASSICAL LEGACY. The writer Marina Valensise was recently appointed CEO of the Italian National Institute of Ancient Drama (Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico, INDA) which manages the ancient Greek Theatre of Syracuse. Valensise was formerly...
A DESTINATION POINT IN NEW YORK. I am at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York in the office of the Director, Professor Fabio Finotti, a distinguished Italianist. He is professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and the author of...
PAINTING WITH THE POETS. Born in Donaueschingen, Germany, the artist Anselm Kiefer has lived in France since 1992. He lives in Paris and Barjac, near Avignon, where he has created his foundation. He works in Croissy, outside of Paris, where this interview took place....
THE SECRETIVE JEWELLER. Attilio Codognato served his apprenticeship in his father’s, grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s profession and is the current head of the Casa Codognato. Codognato jewellers has been a Venice landmark for over a century. He remains faithful...
RE-IMAGINING A LANDMARK. Laurent Le Bon is the recently appointed president of the Centre Pompidou, the very important Paris institution focused on modern and contemporary art. He was previously the president of Musée Picasso-Paris.This interview is available to...
GUARDIAN OF THE PATRIMONY OF A SUPERMAN. Giordano Bruno Guerri is an Italian writer, journalist, and historian. He is an important scholar of twentieth-century Italy, in particular of the Fascist period and the relationship between Italians and the Catholic Church. He...
AUDACIOUS, ORIGINAL, SCULPTURAL. Frank Gehry is a Canadian American architect and designer whose exciting work has won him worldwide renown.You are Canadian? Yes. I am American as well. Since 1962 you built your life in Santa Monica, a coastal city in Los Angeles, and...
HER OWN WOMAN. Giovanna Buzzi is a costume designer and fabricator. She is the owner of SlowCostume workshop for the creation of costumes for the theatre, cinema and television with her partners, Odino Artioli, Silvia Aymonino and Massimo Pieroni. They have done...
AT HOME IN TANGIER. Nicolò Castellini Baldissera is an interior designer, aesthete, and garden dilettante whose recent book “Inside Tangier: Houses and Gardens of Tangier” with photographer Guido Taroni was published by Vendome Press. Born in Milano, he was raised...
BUILDING NEW BRIDGES. Katia Pizzi is Director of the Italian Institute of Culture in London and 2021 is a year of Dante celebrations and many more.Katia Pizzi, before becoming Director of the Institute you were Senior Lecturer in Italian at the Institute of Modern...
A MAN WITH A MISSION. The conductor Alvise Casellati was born in Padova in 1973. He is creator and Music Director of “Opera Italiana is in the Air”, a free open air event whose debut was in Central Park, New York.This interview is also available to listen to as a...
THE STORY OF VAUX-LE-VICOMTE. Alexandre de Vogüé and his two brothers, Jean-Charles and Ascanio, own and run the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, one of the greatest Historical Monuments in France.A podcast of this interview is available to listen to here. Alexandre de...
CREATING A NEW PROGRAMME AFTER FOUR MONTHS OF COVID. French theatre director Stéphane Lissner is the current Superintendent and Artistic Director of the San Carlo Theatre in Naples, which was established in 1737. Stéphane Lissner, you were Superintendent and Artistic...
THE MULTI-AWARD WINNING IMAGININGS OF DANTE FERRETTI, the Italian production designer, set decorator and art director who has worked with acclaimed directors throughout his career. A protégé of Federico Fellini, he worked closely with Pier Paolo Pasolini and latterly...
AN EYE FOR THE REAL. The London based photographer, filmmaker and author Mary McCartney’s photographs have been shown at leading international institutions and galleries. Mary’s editorial work has featured in GQ, Vogue, and the Sunday Times, and she has been a guest...
PRODUCTIONS FOR PRISONERS. Wasfi Kani OBE is the founder and CEO of Grange Park Opera and Pimlico Opera, through which she enriches the lives of British prisoners and primary school children by exposure to music. Pimlico Opera has presented co-productions with prisons...
CREATING WORLD HERITAGE. Count Luigi Donà dalle Rose is a Venetian who has spent fifty years making the marine village of Porto Rotondo in Sardinia beautiful and fascinating. Over time he has transformed Porto Rotondo into a glamorous and celebrated residential...
FROM ACROPOLIS TO AGORA. Tania Coen-Uzzielli is Director of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (TAMA). She was previously Head of Curatorial Services at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem where she curated exhibitions on Jewish art and the “Synagogue Route” exhibition, one of the...
In ARTISTS I STEAL FROM the 36 year old artist Alvaro Barrington and Julia Peyton-Jones, the very well appreciated contemporary art curator, bring together works by 49 artists who influence Alvaro’s work. The exhibition is at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in London from 5th...
WITHOUT EMOTIONS THERE IS NO MUSIC. The internationally acclaimed conductor Daniel Oren was born in Jaffa, Israel in 1955. He came to prominence in 1975 when he won first prize in the Herbert von Karajan International Competition for Conductors in Berlin. Since then...
THE JOY OF CONSERVATION. Monsignor Alberto Rocca is a fellow at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana library in Milan, as well as being the director of the Pinacoteca (painting gallery), and director of the Class of Borromean Studies.As director of the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana,...
THE CONDUCTOR WHO DOESN'T LIKE POWER. Oleg Caetani, one of the greatest conductors of his generation, works freelance and loves both symphonic and opera repertoire. Shostakovich’s music has a central role in his work, and Caetani has a particularly close relationship...
LONDON'S HIDDEN GEM. Dr Xavier Bray is the Director of the Wallace Collection, an internationally outstanding museum in central London which contains unsurpassed masterpieces of paintings, sculpture, furniture, arms and armour and porcelain.Dr Bray, you are a renowned...
THE ARTISTS' HOTEL IN ROME. I meet with Caterina Valente at the Hotel Locarno, a five-star hotel in the historic centre of Rome. She is the owner and the soul of this hotel, which has a very strong bond with the world of art and culture; over the years it has offered...
REINVENTING LONDON'S LEGENDARY LUXURY HOSPITALITY. International entrepreneur Paddy McKillen has a passion for the hospitality business and property development. In 2004 he was part of a group that bought four of London’s 5 star hotels: Claridge’s, The Berkeley, The...
AN ENDLESS SEARCH FOR BEAUTY. Axel Vervoordt is a Belgian designer, collector and curator with a global clientele. He has a deep respect for everything that is authentic. His two sons head five distinctive family businesses: Boris leads arts and antiques, the...
SHAPING HIS UNIVERSITY TO MEET THE NEEDS OF TOMORROW’S WORLD. Joseph Klafter has been the President of Tel Aviv University (TAU) since 2009, and he is also the Chair of the Committee of University Heads in Israel. He is a professor of chemical physics and served as...
FOLLOWING THE GYPSY FAERIE QUEENE. My interview with Marianne took place in her flat on the Boulevard du Montparnasse in Paris on a lovely autumn day. Can you tell me something about your new record, Negative Capability? I always write about what’s going at the time,...
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Money Must Stay in the Family
The plot of Money Must Stay in the Family, unfolds around the family matriarch’s last will and traces the story of an upper class Jewish family from Turin, the fictional Ottolenghis. The multigenerational saga begins with the flight from Mussolini’s Racial Laws of 1938 and continues with the arrival in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and the dispersion from New York to Rome, Paris, Tuscany, South America, and Jerusalem.
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