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Italian Art

Italian Design

Italian Fashion

Italian Cinema

Italian Cuisine

Italian Wine

Italian Opera

Italian Art
From the outstanding Byzantine mosaics in the churches of Ravenna to the Greek temples of Sicily and Roman amphitheatres in a number of cities, Italian art in all its forms of expression spans the passing of the centuries, from the Roman Empire to the present day, in a continual succession of visual surprises for visitors to enjoy. Italy is the land of Donatello, Tintoretto, Titian and Giorgione, all painters of extraordinary calibre who produced vast quantities of works.

Italian Design
For industrial, furniture and car design, Italian style stands out for its blend of imagination and precision planning. The reason for this is that Italy is full of excellent training institutes, avant-garde design schools and university faculties and exhibitions abound as do centres for communication and shows. The scenario today is immensely varied and dynamic with distribution and production systems that are high on flexibility and a great many companies behind the new names in young and talented designers.
Italian design combines functionality with irony, focussing also on materials formerly regarded as waste or makeshift products allowing objects to be successfully reinvented. Italian design is pleasing and fluid yet complex as well, being charged with emotion and filled with suggestiveness and unrest reflecting concerns expressed through the the media and world communication. So apart from being functional. many objects also contain a highly humane and emotional element, and indeed this type of design is classified as “emotional design”.

Italian Fashion
Italian fashion industry in the world, with revenues for 48 billion euro, 70.000 companies and 700.000 people employed, makes Italy the most active in the world, in terms of quantity, second only to China, and holds leadership in the prêt-à-porter, despite Italy not being favoured by the richness of raw materials or the cost of labour force. And, if Italy does not start with privileged market premises, the secret of 'made in Italy' fashion's success is to be found in the creativity and the technological skill Italian companies are rich in: a human and professional patrimony representing the strategic factor for the prestige of Italian fashion in the world.Armani, Versace, Prada, Ferretti are only the most famous between many.


Italian Cinema
The first film ever to be made in Italy was Umberto and Margherita of Savoy Walking in a Park, by Vittorio Calcina, of 1896. This and all other early films were short films documenting reality. Very soon though it was not just reality being projected; predictably, a need developed to narrate full-blown stories. The cinema then was obliged to embark on a quest that left very little choice but to take subject matter for its story lines from other art forms, drawing on the centuries of material that contained the fruits of the whole of human creativity and imagination. So it was that from a very early stage in the history of the cinema, literature became a primary source of inspiration.  
In 1930 the first Italian sound film was made, called The Song of Love, inspired by a novel by Pirandello and made by Gennaro Righelli. But it was with Neo-realism that Italian cinema truly became master of its own expressive capabilities and was able to communicate with the rest of the world.
De Sica, Rossellini and Visconti made masterpieces of universal subject matter in a modern vein that were very strong on recognisable story content. Films such as Rome, the Open City and Paisà have become cult works in the collective memory, appealing to generations of audiences. Critical observation of society, new language and popolarity were the three key elements that made Italian cinema work, from Neo-realism onwards, and those same elements became the mainstay of Italian drama in the decade that followed, at least in the works of great directors such as Mario Monicelli, Pietro Germi, Antonio Pietrangeli and Dino Risi.
But during the Sixties Italian cinema also became experimental with directors such as Michelangelo Antonioni, in the avant-garde works of Mario Bava and Sergio Leone, and the poetic worlds of Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini. La dolce vita was an extraordinary phenomenon, with lasting effects on society as well; representations of a hard and violent reality – as shown through Neorealism – was superimposed with images of a dazzling world of luxury, empty and deprived of any form of ideals. The image of Anita Ekberg in her seductive evening gown, stepping into the Trevi Fountain, made its way into the history of cinema to become a legend. Also unforgettable are works of literary cinema by Luchino Visconti and controversial, political films by Bellocchio and Ferreri, all of whom are film makers who continue to have a strong influence on directors all around the world. To conclude with Roberto Benigni whose "Life is Beautiful" is the only foregneir film to have won an Academy Award for the Best Film category.

Italian Cuisine
Cuisine is an important aspect of Italian culture. Italian food is highly famed: greatly loved and tirelessly imitated the world over.  Italian cookery is exceptionally varied, nutritious and healthy (the famous strict nutritionist Gillian Mc Keith recently said, after a journey through Europe, that the Italian Food is the healthiest); traditions have been handed down from one family to the next over the centuries, and are associated mainly with country life in that dishes are directly linked to what the Earth produces over the changing seasons: in other words, wholesome cooking whose goodness depends on all-natural ingredients. Italian cooking is full of marvellous single pasta dishes made with all types of vegetables and pulses. These are also the prime ingredients for many local specialities though countless types of meat dishes abound, as well as fine fish from the plentiful seas around the peninsula, fragrant cheeses and exceptional desserts.

Italian Wine
Wine as a product is almost as old as civilisation and has always been a part of Italy’s farming production. Italy today produces great quantities of wine: fine and often excellent whites and reds. Entire regions aggressively compete on the quality wine market. A revival of ancient grapevine species is now under way, and of traditional grape picking by hand, combined with the use of modern enological techniques and new winemaking practices. 
    
Italian Opera
Over the centuries, many different musical influences reached Italy by way of generations of peoples coming to settle there, but in the late XVIth cent. melodrama was invented, and was the most complete expression of musical civilisation ever produced in Italy.
Italian musical theatre began life in the XVIIth cent at the court of the Medici in Florence. Euridice, by Jacopo Peri, was staged at the Pitti Palace for the marriage of Maria de’ Medici to Henry IVth of France. But only a few courtesans could enjoy the show, staged as it was to mark a special event thanks to the sponsorship of the Prince, and once over, the work was soon forgotten. It would be 1637 before operatic theatre was properly begun in Venice. To curb high costs, it became necessary to stage the same show many times for the public and this soon transpired when it became fashionable to go to the theatre; above all, opera came into its own as entertainment at Carnival time. Librettists and composers of the time drew on classical mythology for their themes though poems of chivalry by Ariosto and Tasso also provided plentiful inspiration as well as erotic stories from the worlds of Virgil and Homer. “Everything in life is a farce” is a maxim from Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi, composed in 1893 for a libretto by Arrigo Boito. In the world of opera itself everything is exaggerated, perhaps even a farce. On the other hand lyrical opera has been defined as being a literary genre in which, if a character is stabbed in the back he doesn’t fall but just starts singing heartily!!
The most famous Italian opera writers are Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Puccini and Verdi, who all successfully gave voice to the feelings and anxieties of Italian society of their day. And it was above all through opera that those feelings were expressed: for example the discontent that pervaded Italy after the Unification was more magnificently encapsulated in Don Carlos by Verdi than in any other literary genre.
Opera singers of the highest repute include Luciano Pavarotti, Mirella Freni and Renata Scotto and on the current international scene are emerging new names such as Barbara Frittoli, Sonia Ganassi and Michele Pertusi.