“Once we’re dead, we’re dead. I don’t want a Japanese designer to start designing Dolce & Gabbana,” Gabbana, 55, said in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
Dolce, 59, added that the pair had refused “every offer to buy the brand”.
“You can have all the money in the world, but if you are not free, what do you do? You don’t go to the grave with a coffin stuffed with money,” he said.
Source: ‘Once we’re dead, we’re dead’: Dolce and Gabbana say label will die with them
In 1948, the United States worried Italians would vote socialist in the country’s upcoming election. Thousands of Central New York Italian-Americans wrote letters to their native home urging them not to.
With the Cold War heating up, both the United States and the Soviet Union sent bags of money to the Italian political party they favored. (By its own admission, the CIA gave $1 million to Italy’s “center parties.”)
American agencies funded the publishing of books, made numerous short-wave radio broadcasts and wrote millions of letters to help influence the election.
Source: Vintage election meddling: Italian-Americans urge relatives to vote against communism in 1948
Palermo’s Teatro Massimo is the biggest opera house in Italy and a symbol of the mafia’s disgrace in Sicily. It also starred in “The Godfather: Part III.”
Yes, Milan’s La Scala may have more seats, and La Fenice in la Venezia is more venerable by a century, but Palermo’s Teatro Massimo is easily the biggest in Italy, a sprawling, 83,000-square-foot, neo-romantic edifice that dominates the Sicilian capital’s antique skyline. In Europe, only L’Opéra in Paris and the State Opera in Vienna are bigger.
Source: Not Just a Pretty Facade, Palermo’s Opera Is an Anti-Mafia Symbol
L’Ambasciatore d’Italia negli USA, Armando Varricchio, ha appena concluso una missione nello Stato del Texas a Dallas, Wichita Falls e Austin. Le varie tappe del viaggio hanno confermato l’eccellenza dei rapporti tra gli Stati Uniti – il Texas in particolare – e l’Italia. “La cooperazione in ambito militare e di sicurezza, quella nel settore culturale ed i strettissimi legami economici, testimoniati anche dalla presenza di società e startup italiane alla fiera SXSW di Austin, sono i pilastri di un rapporto solido, vivace ed in continua crescita” ha affermato l’Ambasciatore.
A Dallas, Varricchio ha partecipato quale guest speaker ad un evento organizzato dal World Affairs Council di Dallas/Fort Worth, visitato alcune istituzioni artistiche e culturali della città, tra cui la Bush Presidential Library and Museum, il Dallas Museum of Arts che ha recentemente rinnovato un prestito di opere d’arte dall’Italia, tra cui anche alcuni manufatti di epoca etrusca, e il 6th Floor Museum. In città l’Ambasciatore ha incontrato Doug Parker, 
Amministratore Delegato di American Airlines, compagnia aerea che collega gli USA all’Italia con numerosi voli diretti da diverse città americane, inclusa Dallas.
A Wichita Falls, accompagnato dall’Addetto Militare dell’Ambasciata, Gen. Luca Goretti, l’Ambasciatore ha visitato la base dell’Aeronautica USA Sheppard dove è di stanza un contingente di piloti italiani che partecipa al programma Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training Program.
A Austin, l’Ambasciatore ha visitato lo stand italiano alla fiera SXSW, la manifestazione più seguita negli USA dedicata al mondo della musica, del cinema e delle start-up che ogni anno vede confluire nella capitale texana oltre 100.000 visitatori da 75 Paesi. Per l’Italia erano presenti, tra le altre, le start-up Adam’s Hand, Digital Mosaic e Tactile Robots, mentre la Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana (FIMI) ha selezionato 15 gruppi per partecipare all’evento. “Anche negli Stati Uniti, culla dell’innovazione scientifica e tecnologica, la presenza di società e start-up italiane, qualificate e competitive, conferma l’eccellenza e la vitalità dell’imprenditoria del nostro Paese” – ha affermato l’Ambasciatore Varricchio.
Christian Democracy, Fascism, Eurocommunism (“communism with a human face”) and a Trump-anticipating rule by a randy property-and-media mogul, Silvio Berlusconi, were all wholly or largely developed in Italy. The two forces now vying for the country’s leadership, the Five Star Movement and the Lega (“League”) are, in turn, the first party formed and run on the internet with a comedian-turned political blogger in charge of its ideology; and a party which created a non-existent region—Padania—in the north of
Source: The Impossibility of Italian Politics – The American Interest
Populist parties have gained ground at the expense of establishment voices in Italy’s parliamentary elections, which produced no clear winner as votes were being counted in the early hours of Monday.
The anti-establishment Five Star Movement is projected to have gained the most votes by a single party, while a center-right coalition looks set to hold the most seats in the country’s senate.
Comedian John Oliver’s now trending video mocks not only the upcoming Italian elections, the Italian political parties and their candidates, but also all Italians. It is a sad commentary on how Italian politics is viewed abroad. Note that profane language is used in the video.
Ultimi due giorni per votare per gli italiani residenti all’estero. I voti dei connazionali, infatti, dovranno arrivare nei Consolati entro le 16.00 (ora locale) di giovedì 1° marzo. Le schede votate saranno quindi inviate in Italia, dove saranno scrutinate – insieme ai voti degli italiani in Italia – domenica sera a partire dalle 23.00 alla chiusura dei seggi.
Source: Ultime ore per votare dall’estero per elezioni politiche italiane
I love my country, but I have no patriotic spirit and no national pride. What’s more, I digest pizza poorly, I eat very little spaghetti, I don’t speak in a loud voice, I don’t gesticulate, I hate all mafias, I don’t exclaim “Mamma mia!” National characteristics are simplifications that should be contested. Being Italian, for me, begins and ends with the fact that I speak and write in the Italian language.
Here, vines heavy with chardonnay, pinot nero, and pinot bianco grapes yield Italy’s most delicate sparkling wine, the namesake Franciacorta. With a second fermentation process similar to that of Champagne, Franciacorta is drier, yeastier, and more complex than Italy’s better-known bubbly, prosecco. Yet unlike France’s Champagne or Italy’s own Tuscany, the Franciacorta region is, in wine years, young; the first bottle of sparkler was corked in 1961. Perhaps because of its relative new-kid status, there’s a refreshing casualness to its wineries.
Source: A Guide to Franciacorta, Italy’s Most Chill Wine Region
In 2014, throughout Italy the summer never quite got up to speed. Instead of grape-ripening sun, northern vineyards especially were covered in clouds and rain, a lack of light and warmth that hit red wine places like Veneto’s Valpolicella hard. With the cool dampness came vine damage, destructive downy mildew and flavor-changing botrytis, the “noble rot” that’s a boon to nutty, honey’d wines like Sauternes and to be avoided for most makers of Valpolicella’s best known wine, hearty Amarone — a fermentation not of fresh grapes but of ones that undergo appassimento, the Italian winemaking technique of months-long air-drying harvested grapes that dates back to at least Roman times.
Source: Amarone Is Italy’s Great Meditation Wine: Its New Release Is For Thinking Livelier
Because the Italians like to keep things interesting (read: confusing), this year’s election will take place with a never before tested electoral law (legge elettorale). It’s called ‘Rosatellum‘, taking its name from Ettore Rosato, who leads the Democratic Party in the Lower House and drafted an early version of the law. This replaced an old electoral law, which was called ‘Italicum‘, and was only valid for the Chamber of Deputies.
The system is anything but simple: it’s a mixed voting system with some seats allocated proportionally (using ‘un sistema proporzionale‘) and the others using first-past-the-post (uninominale secco). Another key bit of vocab is the ‘soglia di sbarramento‘ or ‘election threshold’: the minimum share of the vote every party and coalition must achieve in order to get any seats.
Source: The political Italian vocabulary you should know ahead of the 2018 election
