Becoming Italian Word by Word

LA PASSIONE in a Tuscan Hilltown

Two years ago I’d never even heard of Castiglion Fiorentino, a postcard-pretty town near Cortona, but when I arrived for my first visit, everyone seemed to know my name.  Posters featuring the cover of LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World dotted the streets.  

“Is that the American writer” a girl asked her mother as we walked by. “The one who wrote about San Filippino?”

A chapter in LA PASSIONE entitled “The Greatest Love Story Ever Told” highlights the story of  Rita Morgan Richardson, an Italian-American spearheading a campaign to rescue an abandoned baroque chapel in Castiglion Fiorentino. The Friends of San Filippino, the nonprofit organization that she created, has garnered support from Italophiles across the United States. But the response of the townspeople themselves has been even more dramatic.

Earlier this year teachers and administrators at the local middle school were so moved by the Save San Filippino project that they launched an initiative called “Only Steps Away: Discovering Nearby Treasures.” Students learned about their town’s cultural riches by studying the twelve churches within Castiglion Fiorentino’s medieval walls.

Classe Seconda Effe (2F) focused on San Filippino, dedicated to St. Filippo Neri, the patron saint of joy. Inspired by both the saint and the sad state of the endangered chapel,  they decided to “adopt” it.  On their own, the students  banded together to create artworks based on images from  San Filippino, which they sold to raise funds to preserve and restore the small church.

During the presentation of LA PASSIONE in Castiglion Fiorentino, five of the students read the story of the Save San Filippino campaign, translated into Italian from my book by Silena Faralli, a teacher at their school. I was deeply touched to hear them bring my words to life before a standing-room-only crowd of local residents in the splendid setting of the San Letucce chapel.

Also inspiring were the remarks of Mariarita Signorini, president of Italia Nostra, an Italian non-profit dedicated to preserving Italy’s cultural patrimony, and of the town’s Mayor Mario Agnelli, who invites visitors to come to Castiglion Fiorentino and discover its charms and history.

After the formal presentation, the padlocked doors of the chapel were opened for viewing.  Just like the town’s residents, my family and I were captivated by San Filippino’s still-splendid frescoes, cherubs and coffered ceiling.

During my visit, I met a local woman whose parents were the last couple to be married in San FIlippino in 1947. She radiated the newly re-ignited pride the people of Castiglion FIorentine feel for the architectural, cultural and spiritual jewel just “steps away” from their homes.

I extend heartfelt thanks to Rita Richardson and the Friends of San Filippino, to Italia Nostra, which co-sponsored the day’s events, to  Alfeo Tanganelli  of the charming Residence Le Santucce, to  Alberto Nocentini, owner of Nocentini bookstore,  and to the residents of  Castiglion Fiorentino, who embody la passione italiana.

 

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered and LA PASSIONE: How Italy  Seduced the World. For more information,  visit diannehales.com.

 

A World Without Italy

Imagine a world without Italy: Painting without Leonardo. Sculpture without Michelangelo. Literature without Dante. No Verdi choruses or Puccini arias. No Fellini films or Ferrari roar. Heavens uncharted, vines unplanted, tables bereft of pasta, pizza, and a Sicilian cake so divine that its bakers swore it could make the dead breathe again.

Western civilization would surely have sprouted elsewhere, but the planet would have been a paler place, a rainbow stripped of its most vibrant hues: Raphael’s luminous blue, Valentino’s luscious red, espresso’s inky black. More than a country, Italy embodies a culture that has transformed art and architecture, language and music, food and fashion.

Its borders contain more of UNESCO’s designated cultural treasures than any other nation. Its inhabitants created the first universities, banks, public libraries, and law and medical schools; mapped the moon (in 1651); split the atom; produced the first modern histories, satires, sonnets, and travelogues; invented the first working compass, battery, barometer, microscope, radio, and thermometer; garnered twenty Nobel Prizes; and bestowed upon the world the eternal gift of music.

Humanity, Mussolini bragged, is indebted to Italians “for the majority of its accomplishments.” For once, he wasn’t exaggerating.

Alone among nations, Italy has conquered the world—not once, not twice, but three times. The Roman Empire extended its might over territories spanning a quarter of the globe. Christianity, with Rome as its capital and Italy its cradle, planted the seeds of a religion that now counts 2.3 billion members—about one of every three people on the planet. The Italian Renaissance transformed art, architecture, and philosophy in an explosion of creativity that ushered in the modern age.

Italy has so profoundly permeated our collective unconscious that even if you have never set foot on its soil, you’ve touched and been touched by its heritage. Musicians everywhere play the do-re-mi notes invented by an Italian monk. Italian paintings, sculptures, and buildings adorn cities on every continent. Italy’s food, arguably everybody’s favorite, nourishes souls as well as bodies. Its wines soothe and stimulate. Its films, cars, and fashions transport us above the mundane and the mediocre. Leonardo’s Mona Lisaoutranks all other masterpieces as the world’s most famous painting. Ferrari’s Cavallino Rampante (Prancing Horse) outshines other brands as the most recognized logo.

But why Italy? How did a scrawny peninsula smaller than California, home to less than 1 percent of the world’s population, leave such an outsize imprint on Western culture?  What sparked endless innovations and inspired a multitude of masterpieces? Was it a miracle? Serendipity? Luck? Destiny?

After decades of up-close but admittedly unscientific observation, I credit la passione italiana. This fierce drive, three millennia in the making, stems from an insatiable hunger to explore, discover, create, pursue beauty, feel deeply, love and live with every fiber of one’s being. It blazes to life in the Sistine Chapel, surges through a Rossini aria, preens in Bulgari jewels[ Jon: or “on a Milan catwalk”], deepens a vintage Brunello, spices a tangy penne all’arrabbiata(pasta with an “angry” sauce seasoned with chile peppers).

Discover more Italian passions in LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World.  Dianne Hales is also the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language and MONA LISA: A Life Discovered. For more information, visit diannehales.com.

 

 

 

The Power of a Passion for Italy

My little book on the Italian language had taken a beating.

The couple who brought the tattered, battered copy of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language to the Italian Cultural and Community Center in Houstonexplained what had happened: They had trekked with it to every city, site, church, museum and restaurant mentioned in the book. They are planning to do the same with my new book, LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World—but that’s not all. They are moving to Italy next year. “Your books changed our lives,” they told me.

I was deeply touched, but I also recognized the underlying force that had possessed them: la passione italiana. For years I’ve felt the same insatiable hunger to explore, discover, create, pursue beauty, love and live with every fiber of one’s being. The most gratifying aspect of my recent book tour has been discovering how this passion  has touched and even transformed other lives.

At the Eagle Eye Bookshop in Atlanta, a woman shared a journal she kept during her travel in Italy. It literally overflowed with photos, postcards, ticket stubs, hand-written notes, dozens of other reminders of special times in special places. I could feel the passion captured in its pages.

At the American Italian Cultural Center in New Orleans, several Italian-Americans described how my books have rekindled their pride in and passion for their ethnic roots.  Some have taken Italian courses and  become fluent in Italian; a few have applied for dual citizenship.  Two proud parents were bringing LA PASSIONE  to their daughter, an opera singer in Milan.

“Let yourself be inspired,” I encouraged everyone who came to our events. Rita Richardson, an Italian-American from Nashville, offered personal testimony as she recounted the back story of her passion to save an abandoned Baroque chapel in the Tuscan town of Castiglion Fiorentino.

At each stop in our tour, when Rita showed images of the chapel, audiences gasped to see the beautiful frescoes, statues and coffered ceiling hidden inside the little church and applauded the ongoing efforts of the Friends of San Filippino to preserve this architectural and spiritual jewel.

The “Passion for Joy” tour continues next month in Italy. The town of Castiglion Fiorentino has organized a special celebration on Sunday, June 9. In addition to my presentation and and Rita’s update on progress being made on the chapel project, children of the local middle school will be displaying artworks to sell to raise funds for the restoration.  Others are translating my account of the “Save San Filippino” campaign in LA PASSIONE into Italian to read aloud. And, of course, there will be music and food and great fun. Please come if you’re in the area.

Rita and I will also be presenting in Florence at the  IBS Bookstore on Tuesday, June 11, at 6:00 p.m. and at the British Institute on Wednesday, June 12, at 6:00 p.m. I look forward to meeting you. Come celebrate the power of la passione with us!

I’d also like to extend heartfelt thanks to the Italian Cultural and Community Center of Houston, the American Italian Cultural Center of New Orleans,Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Octavia Books in New Orleans and Eagle Eye Bookshop in Atlanta, three of the independent book sellers who are the heroes of authors everywhere.

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered and  LA PASSIONE: How Italy  Seduced the World. For more information on her and her upcoming events, visit diannehales.com.

An Italian Passion for Joy

 

Two years ago a woman I didn’t know contacted me about an abandoned chapel dedicated to a saint I had never heard of in a Tuscan town I had never visited. Now her story is in LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World, and she and I are going on a “Passion for Joy” book tour.

The woman is Rita Morgan Richardson, a French teacher in Nashville. The saint is Philip Neri, patron saint of joy, whose followers built places for the faithful to worship and sing together. The chapel in Castiglion Fiorentino, a hilltop village of about 13,000 people near Cortona, had been falling into ruin for decades.

Then Rita Richardson came to town. Her ties to Italy run deep. While serving in the military in Italy, her American father met and married a lovely local woman and brought her to the United States. Although Rita grew up in Georgia, her staunchly Italian mother imparted a strong sense of her Italian heritage.

In 2010, during a visit to their son while he was studying in Cortona, Rita and her husband Tim ventured to nearby Castiglion Fiorentino. Taken by its picturesque charm, they bought a small home and returned several times a year.

Every day they would walk by a boarded-up church on their pedestrian-only lane. Curious, they discovered that it once housed a group of friars belonging to the Congregation of the Oratory, a religious order founded by Saint Philip Neri.

“I’m Catholic, but I had never heard of him,” says Rita. Neither have many others. Born in Florence in 1515, Philip began studying and then preaching in Rome. His friendly nature and ebullient sense of humor won so many converts that he became known as Rome’s “third Apostle,” after Saints Peter and Paul. According to legend, his heart grew so big with God’s love that people could see it pounding in his chest.

To attract more converts, Philip devised a form of religious theater, with performers reproducing biblical scenes set to music. Soon people were flocking to the entertaining shows that took the name of the hospital prayer hall used for the first performances—oratorio.

The oratorio built by his followers in Castiglion Fiorentino became a bustling community center, “a place where ordinary people experienced extraordinary things,” says Rita. “Tim and I wondered why someone wasn’t doing something to save a building so rich in history. When we asked, we always heard the same thing: ‘Crisi. Niente soldi.’ Economic crisis. No money.”

Then an unexpected passion seized Rita. “One day I just knew that the ‘someone’ to save San Filippino was me—even though I had never attempted anything like this.” With the permission of the local archbishop, she and Tim got their first glimpse of the chapel’s interior. Inside they found beautifully sculpted cherubs, a hand-painted balcony for the choir, and a wooden coffered ceiling of cobalt blue and gold.

“We were blown away,” Rita recalls. Launching a one-woman campaign, she formed the Friends of San Filippino, an official American nonprofit, and reached out to Italian American organizations and Italophiles. Their generosity, along with Rita’s passion and perseverance, so impressed the townspeople that they have wholeheartedly embraced the project.

“Sometimes we need foreigners to wake us from our torpor and make us look at things with the eyes of another,” says a local teacher. Community members have donated their artworks and auctioned off dinners and stays at local bed-and-breakfasts to raise funds. School children, like Nicole Chirila of Dante Alighieri Middle School in Castiglion Fiorentino (above), are creating and selling art works inspired by the chapel. The ongoing campaign has rekindled a pride in the past and a passion to keep the spirit of San Filippino alive.

“You can feel the love of San Filippino in Castiglion Fiorentino,” says Rita. “The world may be full of special places that deserve to be saved, but it’s also full of people with an inexplicable passion to do good works that they never knew they had.”

Rita and I are carrying this joyful message to Houston, New Orleans and Atlanta in our Spring ‘Passion of Joy” book tour.  If you can come to any of these events, we’d love to meet you!

Tuesday, May 7, 7:00 p.m.
Italian Cultural & Community Center
1101 Milford Street
Houston, TX

Wednesday, May 8, 6:00 p.m.
American Italian Cultural Center
537 S Peters Street
New Orleans, LA

Thursday, May 9, 7:00 p.m.
Eagle Eye Book Shop
2076 N Decatur Rd
Atlanta, GA

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered, and  LA PASSIONE: How Italy  Seduced the World. For more information on her and her Spring book tour, visit her website: diannehales.com.

Happy 10th Birthday to LA BELLA LINGUA!

Whether you're a parent or an author, your first born always remains close to your heart.

This month marks a landmark birthday for my first book on Italy and its culture: LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language. My publisher is celebrating with a not-to-be-missed offer: a digital copy for just $1.99 — less than the price of, well, almost everything —downloadable here or at other online book retailers until May 5.

A book that keeps selling long after publication is said to “have legs." I like to think that LA BELLA LINGUA sprouted wings that continue to carry it to new readers and to bring wonderful new people into my life. In its eventful first decade, LA BELLA LINGUA became a best-seller in the United States, Canada and Australia, the subject of an acrostic (as well as a best-seller) in the New York Times, and the topic of several dissertations by Italian graduate students. In 2011 the President of Italy awarded me the highest recognition the government can bestow on a foreigner: a knighthood, with the title of Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana (Knight of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity) for the contributions LA BELLA LINGUA has made in promoting the Italian language. It is currently being translated into Italian—and Chinese!

Most gratifying to me has been the response of readers--from Vancouver to Paris to Sydney to Singapore. An artist who lives on a remote ranch in South Africa wrote that LA BELLA LINGUA  inspired her  lush paintings of Italian fountains and gardens.  A humanities professor in New York confessed that for two months he kept LA BELLA LINGUA in his  car, “bringing it out when I stopped at a wine bar for a drink or a bite to eat. And now that I have finished--what am I to do?”

A college student recalled choosing LA BELLA LINGUA from all the titles in a bookstore as a middle-schooler, reading it every year since, and learning Italian—first on her own, then in class. She based her college admissions essay on LA BELLA LINGUA’s being her favorite book and won a full scholarship to Northwestern. Still “wildly in love with languages," she wrote to say, “You changed my life irrevocably," and signed her note, "A grateful student."

LA BELLA LINGUA changed my life too. Through Italians I met while researching it, I discovered the largely unknown story of the real woman in Leonardo’s famous painting and wrote MONA LISA: A Life Discovered. This immersion in Renaissance Florence led to my most recent adventure: a quest for the secrets and sources of the fierce creative Italian  drive that has produced so many master works of art, music, crafts, food, wine, literature, cinema, fashion, and design. Just released, LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World  has been hailed as an " effervescent love letter to all things Italian” and a “delightful excursion into the heart of Italian culture.”

Whether you are Italian by birth or affinity, have visited or plan to visit Italy, are an armchair adventurer, or simply love pizza, pasta, or Prosecco, I invite you to get to know my literary “children.” But be forewarned: Like me and many of my readers, you might be swept away by la passione Italiana!

 

Why Travelers Fall in Love with Italy

This article originally appeared in forbes.com. Click here to read the complete post.

by Irene Levine

Most travelers who visit Italy return changed in some way, either subtly embracing one or more aspects of Italian culture (perhaps, food or style) or more fundamentally, by re-thinking their approach to life.

Dianne Hales’ just-released book, La Passione: How Italy Seduced the World (Crown Archetype, 2019), masterfully examines the multitude of reasons why so many people fall in love with Italy and the Italian lifestyle. In this book, she weaves a rich tapestry of legends and historical references coupled with interviews and first-person experiences to explain this phenomenon. She focuses on some of the most seductive aspects of Italian culture: its history, food and wine, art, music, cinema, cars and fashion and style.

Dianne previously authored two other seminal books about Italian life: La Bella Lingua, a New York Times bestseller and Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered, which was named an Amazon best book of the year and translated into six languages. Prior to this Italian trilogy, she authored more than forty trade and textbooks on a variety of topics.

Forbes.com spoke to Dianne about her latest book and solicited her advice for travelers bound for Italy:

Can you briefly explain what you mean by La Passione?

Dianne Hales: English speakers think of passion as an intense feeling. La passione italiana is much, much more. Almost 2000 years ago, the early Christians in Rome fashioned the word “passio”
from the Latin for “suffer” to describe the torture and crucifixion of Jesus. Over the centuries Italian wordsmiths expanded its meaning to irresistible romantic love or any single-minded pursuit that combines challenge and rebirth. La passione italiana can transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, the banal into the beautiful, food into feasts, sounds into songs, moments into movies.

Thanks to this fierce drive to discover and create, a scrawny peninsula smaller than California has touched every aspect of Western culture, blazing to life in the Sistine Chapel, surging through a Verdi chorus, preening in Valentino red, deepening a vintage Brunello, spicing a tangy penne all’arrabbiata. The world would be a far paler place without it.

When did you realize that you had been seduced by Italian culture? How did it happen?
DH: Italians talk about being struck by un colpo di fulmine (a lightning bolt) when they fall head over heels in love. That happened on my first trip to Italy—an unplanned detour after I gave a talk in Switzerland. I never expected to swoon for a country where I knew no one and could not speak the language, but I did.

Italy seduced me, as it has millions of visitors. Michelangelo’s David set the synapses in my brain on fire. Puccini’s arias stirred my soul. With a bite into homemade pasta in a silky sauce, taste buds I never knew existed sprang to life. My ears overflowed with sounds—choirs, Vespas, street musicians, children laughing.

I knew I was a goner the moment I left—and immediately started thinking about when I could return.

How did your two prior books lead to this one?
DH: I so wanted to communicate with the Italians I had met that I immersed myself in Italian and became enraptured by the music in its words. When my agent suggested I write a book on Italian “because you light up when you talk about it,” I discovered its wonderful backstory—full of poets, princes and a rowdy group of young Florentines who compiled the first dictionary, made up of what they considered “the most beautiful flowers” in the “vulgar” or common language.

While in Florence, I became friends with an art historian who lived in the palazzo where Mona Lisa’s mother grew up. I was so taken by the notion of Leonardo’s muse as an actual Renaissance woman that I set out to reconstruct her story in Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered. At a reading for that book, a man asked, “So are you done with Italy?”  The question struck me as absurd. Italy wasn’t done with me.

In a sense, La Passione is also a tour guide to Italy. Can you offer any suggestions on how first-timers should approach travel to Italy if they only have a week or two abroad?

DH: Pick a passion and a place. Since Italy offers everything, focus on what attracts you and make that your starting point: Florence for Renaissance art, Piedmont for wine, Sicily for ancient ruins (and Inspector Montalbano), Rome for, well, Rome. Because of Italy’s rich history, every town offers a range of other treasures for you to explore.

If you can visit only a major city or two, I recommend hiring a local, English-speaking guide (check the Internet) who can provide an overview and background. Then download or carry a map, and explore an intriguing neighborhood on foot—ideally early in the day or later in the evening when you can feel yourself walking back in time.

For those who have already been to Italy’s iconic cities one or more times, what do you suggest next?
DH: Choose a region that appeals to you—mountains or seaside, city or hill town—and make yourself at home. Rentals are available in every price range (always read reviews and fine print carefully). Go to markets, restaurants, parks, and festivals. You’ll soon start living by a new rhythm, savoring your interactions with locals and enjoying Italy’s greatest gift: its way of life.

How should travelers prepare for a trip to Italy? Is it necessary? How much knowledge of the Italian language is essential for most leisure travelers?
DH: Open your senses. Open your mind. Above all, open your heart.

Learn enough Italian to be polite (please, thank you, etc.) and handle necessities (e.g. where is…my hotel, a bathroom, etc.). Listen to online conversation lessons (my personal favorite: ItalyMadeEasy.com). Stream Italian videos (available online with English subtitles) to accustom your ear to Italian sounds. Download a translation app, and don’t hesitate to use it.

I’d also recommend my books. La Bella Lingua doesn’t teach grammar or vocabulary but you’ll learn (painlessly, I promise) why Italians cherish their language. La Passione taps into something deeper—the zest for living that makes every trip to Italy memorable.

Is there one city (or region) in Italy to which you always yearn to return? If so, why?
DH: In 1990 my husband and I arrived at Il Pellicano, then a rustic inn by the sea in Porto Ercole. “I want to come back here every year for the rest of my life,” I declared. And we have—staying at least a few nights at what is now a world-class luxury resort and then renting places nearby. I’ve written drafts of my three Italian books in hillside houses overlooking the Tuscan coast. We also share food and laughter with friends, go swimming and boating, and delight in dolce far niente— the sweetness of doing nothing.

Is your relationship with Italy monogamous? Where else do you travel for pleasure?
DH: I’ve been married 40 years so I may be monogamous by nature. However, my husband and have had flings with other European countries, New Zealand, Australia, the South Pacific. Most recently we’ve loved exploring the San Juan Islands in the Northwest. And since we live in Bodega Bay, we have the magnificent California coast in our front yard and the Wine Country in our backyard for quick getaways.

How do you cope with re-entry after leaving the place you love so much? How do you manage to bring a little bit of Italy back home with you?
DH: That’s the true gift of la passione italiana: it becomes part of you. In many ways, we live an Italian lifestyle in the U.S. We eat Italian dishes, drink espresso and Prosecco, and listen to Italian opera. But more importantly, we’ve absorbed its deeper lessons: Appreciate your senses. Cultivate compassion. Hold family and friends close. Choose the bello over the brutto. Love without limits. Let the human spirit soar.

What could be more seductive than that?

7 Reasons to Discover La Passione!

I am thrilled to announce the publication of my new book: LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World.

Like any author, I’m eager for people to read my book. But with more than 8 million titles on Amazon alone, why choose mine? Let me offer seven reasons, based on my discoveries as I traveled through Italy in search of la passione italiana.

1.The places you’ll go:
The Aeolian islands, where I learned the danger of angering ancient gods. The food markets of Bologna in the “fat belly” of Italy. The rolling hills of Piedmont, home to Barolo and Barbaresco, the king and queen of Italian wines. The atelier of the Italian sisters who dressed the movies’ great beauties when Rome was “Hollywood on the Tiber.”

2. The people you’ll meet:
Venice’s premiere “erotic glass artist,” who breathes passion into molten glass. An archaeologist who has excavated through almost three millennia of ruins to the first settlement in Rome. The “flying baroness” who roared to international celebrity as Italy’s first female race car driver. The poor boy from Southern Italy whose passion for feet inspired him to become “shoemaker to the stars.”

3. The stories you'll hear:
The lace-makers of Burano who saved their island from starvation, stitch by stitch. The ghost of the young Florentine who escaped from her tomb to “live twice” with her true love. The history of Neapolitan pizza. The singers, castrated as boys to preserve their high voices, who sublimated passion into song.

4. The tastes you’ll enjoy (vicariously):
Wine from a vineyard on an Umbrian hillside cultivated since centuries before Christ’s birth. Hand-made chocolate confections invented in Perugia by clandestine lovers. Balsamic vinegar aged in Modena for more than sixty years and drizzled over gelato. Passatelli, a pasta of cheese and breadcrumbs that I learned to make in a Bologna kitchen.

5. The experiences you’ll share:
A pre-Carnevale parade on the oldest canal in Venice. A 24-hour Good Friday processions of mammoth altars crafted centuries ago and carried through the streets of a Sicilian town. Lunch of traditional bagna cauda with young wine-makers in the Langhe. A stroll through Cinecittà, the fabled “Factory of Dreams” that still inspires all who  “have cinema in their blood.”

6.The joy you’ll find:
An Italian-American woman’s inspiring campaign to save an abandoned chapel in the Tuscan town of Castiglion Fiorentino. Sleek road rockets and the roar of their engines at the Ferrari museum in Modena. Heart-shaped balloons on Valentine’s Day in Verona, home to Shakespeare’s Juliet and her Romeo.  Moonlight in Venice and fireworks over the Bay of Naples.

7. For the lessons you may learn:
La passione italiana imparts simple but profound life lessons: Hold family close. Appreciate your senses. Cultivate compassion.  Share food and laughter with friends. Honor the sacred. Choose the bello over the brutto. Love without limits. Let the human spirit soar.

Whether or not you are Italian by blood or aspiration, have visited or dream of visiting Italy, love pasta and pizza (and who doesn’t?), let yourself by seduced by a passion that resonates in all our souls.

I look forward to sharing my Passione with you!

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered  and  LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World. For more information on her and her Spring book tours, visit her website: diannehales.com. 

As of the end of April, I will not be posting at “Becoming Italian Word by Word.” Instead, I am debuting a new blog, "A Passion for Italy," which will be available on my website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts. To subscribe, click HERE, and  go to the top of the sidebar. If you are already subscribed via e-mail to my Typepad blog, your subscription will automatically transfer to the new blog. However, if you subscribed via RSS, you will need to do so again, using the same link as above.

 

How Italy Seduced the World

Italy has been seducing foreigners since its history began. Century after century, in peace and war, over perilous passes, stormy seas, and rutted roads, they have come—explorers, adventurers, traders, sailors, soldiers, writers, musicians, poets, painters, sculptors, penitents, pilgrims of every sort—to the promised land of their imagination.

For a veritable Who’s Who of Western civilization, Italy served as the essential finishing school, a required destination for any person of refinement. Yet even cultural acolytes who came to learn from dead Italians found themselves enchanted by living ones—and infected with la passione italiana. “At last—for the first time—I live!” Henry James wrote in his diary when he arrived in Italy in 1869. “Who has been in Italy can forget all other regions,” the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol gushed. “Who has been in Heaven does not desire the Earth.” The bequally besotted Robert Browning declared, “Open my heart and you will see / Graved inside of it, ‘Italy.'”

Even if you have never set foot on its soil, Italy has so profoundly permeated our collective unconscious that you’ve touched and been touched by its heritage. Musicians everywhere play the do-re-mi notes invented by an Italian monk. Italian paintings, sculptures, and buildings adorn cities on every continent. Leonardo’s Mona Lisa outranks all other masterpieces as the world’s most famous painting. Ferrari’s Cavallino Rampante (Prancing Horse) outshines other brands as the most recognized logo. Italian itself has become trendy, ranking as the world’s fourth-most-studied languag

From Boston to Berlin, Sydney to Singapore, people nibble on biscotti, sip capuccino, drive Fiats, stream Italian films, and zip up Diesel jeans. The Mediterranean diet—practically a synonym for the cooking of southern Italy—has won over legions of fans and foodies. Even mainstream supermarket chains stock Italian pasta, olive oil, Parmesan cheese, and peeled tomatoes. Italian fashions have become just as ubiquitous. The upscale salons of big-name designers line the chicest shopping streets of major cities on every continent. The “Made in Italy” label lures millions of customers with a sophistication that blends elegance with exuberance.

Yet “Italy fever” reflects more than the popularity of Italian products. “People around the world are attracted to what’s inside these objects– to the universe of values that they sense,” observes the distinguished author Federico Rampini, US bureau chief for La Repubblica. “Wherever I’ve traveled, I’ve met people who aspire to live like Italians. What seduces them is the culture of knowing how to live that Italy has raised to a level of perfection.”

At the heart of this culture pulses la passione italiana –- especially when it comes to matters of the heart. Imbued with its fire, we might all become as brave as Italy’s gladiators, as eloquent as its poets, as alluring as its beauties, as beguiling as its suitors. At the very least we can savor more fully the greatest of Italian passions—for life itself.

What could be more seductive? Read more in my new book: LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World,available to preorder here or on sale everywhere April 16.

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered and the upcoming LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World. For more information on her and her Spring book tours, visit her website: diannehales.com.

As of the end of April, I will not be posting at “Becoming Italian Word by Word.” Instead, I am debuting a new blog, "A Passion for Italy," which will be available on my website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts. To subscribe, click HERE and  go to the top of the sidebar. If you are already subscribed via e-mail to my Typepad blog, your subscription will automatically transfer to the new blog. However, if you subscribed via RSS, you will need to do so again, using the same link as above.

 

A Passion for Italy

A New Blog for a New Book

I didn’t have a clue. I had never set up a website, written a blog, created a Facebook group, or composed a single tweet. All that changed ten years ago when I prepared to launch my first Italy-themed book.

La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language attracted readers around the world, earned for me the great honor of being knighted by the President of Italy, and garnered a spot on the New York Times best-seller list and as the subject of a Times acrostic. The companion blog that I created — "Becoming Italian Word by Word" — also took on a life of its own, attracting almost two million visitors and winning a “blogger of the year” award for “Best Arts and Cultural Blog” from Italy magazine.

Over the last decade readers have come from just about every country -- Italy, England, Ireland, Poland, China, India, Japan, Australia, Samoa, Russia, Morocco, Germany, Brazil, Chile. A woman on a ranch in South Africa wrote to say my blog had inspired a series of paintings of Italian gardens. A group of nuns doing missionary work followed it regularly. Many teachers used the blog to spark conversation in class. One woman translated and read  each post to her blind elderly brother, who had been born in Naples.

To all my readers and followers, grazie di cuore. I thank you from my heart. But after a decade of focusing on words and expressions in la bella lingua, I am changing gears. As of the end of April, I will not be posting at “Becoming Italian Word by Word.” Instead, I am debuting a new blog, "A Passion for Italy," which will be available on my website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts. To subscribe, click HERE and  go to the top of the sidebar. If you are already subscribed via e-mail to my Typepad blog, your subscription will automatically transfer to the new blog. However, if you subscribed via RSS, you will need to do so again, using the same link as above.

My new blog will go beyond the pages of LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World  to present more interviews with passionate Italians and more descriptions as well as photographs of the people I met and the places I visited.  I am excited about sharing the backstories of my research with you, and I hope you enjoy discovering more about  the Italian passions that seduced the world.

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered, and the upcoming LA PASSIONE: How Italy  Seduced the World. For more information on her and her Spring book tours, visit her website: diannehales.com.

March News from Dianne

“Imagine a world without Italy: Painting without Leonardo. Sculpture without Michelangelo. Literature without Dante. No Verdi choruses or Puccini arias. No Fellini films or Ferrari roar. Heavens uncharted, vines unplanted, tables bereft of pasta, pizza, and a Sicilian cake so divine that its bakers swore it could make the dead breathe again.”,

This is how LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World begins.

Western culture is indeed unimaginable without Italy. Its borders contain more  of UNESCO’s designated cultural treasures than any other nation. Its inhabitants created the first universities, banks, public libraries, and law and medical schools; mapped the moon (in 1651); split the atom; produced the first modern histories, satires, sonnets, and travelogues; invented the first working compass, battery, barometer, microscope, radio, and thermometer; garnered twenty Nobel Prizes; and bestowed upon the world the eternal gift of music.

But why Italy? How did a scrawny peninsula smaller than California  leave such an outsize imprint on Western culture?

After  decades of searching for answers,  I credit la passione italiana. My new book, available now for pre-order and on sale wherever books are sold on April 16, explores this primal force and its impact on food, wine,  romance, literature, art, music, religion, film, fashion--and very fast cars.

I’m excited about sharing the story of how la passione italiana seduced the world—in print and in person. Here is the initial list of places where I’ll be speaking this spring.  You can find details on the Events page of my website, which will be updated as we firm up additional dates for the summer and fall.

San Francisco:

Italian Cultural Institute, 6:30 p.m., April 17 (with Frances Mayes)

Libreria Pino, 6:30 p.m., April 24 (with Lisa Engelken)

Il Cenacolo (members and guests), noon, May 16

Marin County

Book Passage, Corte Madera, 4:00 p.m., April 28

East Bay

Stanford Women’s Book Club (private), morning, May 2

Orinda Books, 2:00 p.m., May 2

Houston

Italian Cultural & Community Center, 7:00 p.m., May 7 (with Rita Richardson of Friends of San Filippino)

New Orleans

American Italian Cultural Center, 6:00 p.m., May 8 (with Rita Richardson)

Atlanta

Ciancia Conversation Club, 7:00 p.m., May 9 (with Rita Richardson)

If you’re in Italy this June, I’ll be presenting my book at an event sponsored by the Friends of San Filippino  on Sunday, June 9, in the lovely Tuscan town of Castiglion Fiorentino and in a lecture at the British Institute in Florence on Wednesday, June 12.

I look forward to meeting many of you in my travels. Come and discover la passione italiana!

                                                                                                                                                A presto,

                                                                                                                                                Dianne

Please note: I will be moving my blog to my new website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts.  Click here  to subscribe (top of sidebar).  If you are already subscribed (via e-mail) to my Typepad blog, your subscription will automatically transfer to the new blog.  However, if you subscribed via RSS, you will need to do so again (using the same link as above).  Thank you!