La vita italiana

There is an obscure story linking the name Antonio Salieri with La Scala opera house in Milan, Italy.  As the story goes, in 1776, when the old opera house had burned to the ground, a new one had to be …

Tuscan people are usually amiable and friendly, but they can also be very competitive and mocking, especially when it comes to horse racing. In several small Italian towns, from northern to southern regions, the typical horse races known as Palio …

There has been a great deal of talk about why Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia was defeated in a primary since he had little support from his own Republican Party. There is even speculation that his different viewpoints on …

The World Cup is like a woman. Valentina Losa, the head of the company that manufactures the World Cup trophy itself, explains in a Vanity Fair interview, “It’s loved, desired, and it travels. Every four years, it travels many kilometers …

One of the largest amphibious invasions ever to take place in world history began on June 6th, 1944. Against all odds American, Canadian and English troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, France and were confronted by a barrage of German …

By some accounts, to say that Salieri and Mozart were professional rivals, is putting it mildly.  A rivalry between Mozart and Salieri was well known and is believed to have originated when Mozart applied to be the voice teacher of …

La Croisette, movie stars, photographers, premieres, parties and a portrait of Marcello Mastroianni from Fellini’s movie 8 ½ looking straight at you from his dark glasses slightly lowered on his nose: Cannes 2014. Looks like Italian cinema is living a …

Wedged between the Regola and Parione districts, Campo de’ Fiori features Rome’s most spectacular flower market. Wassily Kandinsky, the Russian painter whose name adorns an apartment house on nearby Via di San Salvatore, called it “a symphony of color.” Each …

For those unfamiliar with the design world, the name Massimo Vignelli doesn’t mean much. But if shown the logos of American Airlines or Ford, or a shopping bag from Bloomingdale’s, it becomes clear immediately how much Massimo Vignelli’s work is …

So far, I have spent much time describing what I have called the first ‘key’ in finding our immigrant ancestry: how to determine an ancestor’s name as it may have been given in a variety of records.  Having identified the …