This talk will seek to explain Italian wartime policies in the Aegean islands, and the impact on the population of the occupation of Syros and the Cyclades. The famine which decimated Greece from early 1941 was particularly severe on Syros, leaving its mark on public memory. In official Greek discourse the occupation can only be seen as negative. Famine and fascist brutality cannot be forgotten. In addition, complex local religious, political and social factors have been a source of controversy, while the extent to which shadows of the past remain serves as a trigger to examine the lingering ghosts of postwar history. The political clamp-down in postwar Greece distorted historical analysis, and gave rise to myths which have not been questioned fully. Italians themselves also struggle with different interpretations of the occupiers’ policies and behaviour. Conflicting memories of their own self-image have yet to be unravelled.
Dr Lecouer will illustrate the talk with episodes from her film The forgotten Greek famine, in which moving testimonies of survivors bring this period to life.
Dr Sheila Lecoeur, BA Hons (University of Westminster), MA (LSE), PhD (Birkbeck College, London University), has been Co-ordinator of Italian at Imperial College, London since 1990. She teaches 20th Century post-war European history.
Book: Mussolini’s Greek Island. Publisher IB Tauris 2009. Second edition in paperback 2015. Greek translation: Alexandria Publications 2013.
Documentary film: The Forgotten Greek Famine. Licenced to Fox TV Australia.
Current Projects: Research for publication of articles on Italian Occupation of Greece.
The preparation of a documentary film about the current economic crisis in Greece.
Future Project: A documentary film on ‘Acts of Reconciliation’ in World War 2.
Drinks will follow the talk
The event is in collaboration with the Institute of Modern Languages Research and the Friends of Italian at the IMLR
Please join us for a wonderful recital, providing a flavour of two centuries of Italian music.
This evening’s recital will range across a wide variety of Italian opera and song music, including Verdi, that great Italian patriot, through to Tosti, who, while being Italian through and through, ended his days in London as a British citizen, Professor at the Royal Academy of Music with a knighthood and friend to Edward VII, and on to Cardillo, who was an American citizen when he died in New York.
So, we promise you a varied and stimulating evening of beautiful music from two exceptionally talented performers. All you have to do is sit back and enjoy it! Please do come – and bring your friends. The evening’s full updated programme will be:
Verdi, Rigoletto Questa o quella
Tosti Marechiare
Verdi, Rigoletto Ella mi fu rapita
Tosti Ideale
Verdi, La Traviata Lunge da lei
Buzzi-Peccia Lolita: serenata spagnola
Interval
Verdi, Macbeth Ah la paterna mano
Tosti Non t’amo piu –
Verdi, Il Corsaro Tutto parrea sorridere –
Cardillo Core ngrato
Cilea, L’Arlesiana Federico’s Lament
Performers
Freddie De Tommaso is a British tenor. He made his Royal Opera debut in the 2016/17 Season as Apprentice (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg).
Freddie completed his BMus course at the Royal Academy of Music in 2017, where he studied with Mark Wildman and Iain Ledingham. He has also worked at the RAM with Richard Berkeley-Steele and Dennis O’Neill. He was a Drake Calleja scholar for 2016–17. In summer 2016 he sang in the chorus for Opera Holland Park, performing in Iris (also singing the role of Rag Merchant), La Bohème and The Queen of Spades.
In September 2017 Freddie joined the Opera Course at the Royal Academy of Music.
Michael Pandya is a versatile young pianist, specialising in song and chamber music, and performing with Graham Johnson, Jonathan Lemalu, Anna Huntley, Robin Tritschler and Eamonn Dougan. His recital schedule has taken him across the UK and Europe. He recently won the prestigious Brenda Webb Award for Accompaniment at the Royal Academy of Music.
Michael has received numerous other prizes, including the Joan Chissells/Rex Stephens Schumann Lieder Prize, the Vivian Langrish Piano Prize and the Pianist Prize at the Rosenblatt North London Singing Competition. Recent performing engagements include appearances at the Wigmore Hall, KlavierFestRuhr in Germany, Newbury Spring Festival, Leeds Lieder Festival, the Royal Overseas-League London, the House of Bob Boas and a live performance on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune programme. In 2017 he was the recipient of the Graham Johnson Fellowship at SongFest, Los Angeles.
Michael graduated from Queen’s College, Oxford with First Class Honours in 2015. There he directed student operas by Albinoni, Haydn and Michael Nyman, and worked as a repetiteur with New Chamber Opera for two years. He was also Accompanist in Residence for the Oxford Lieder Festival.
Michael now studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Drinks will follow the recital
We are sorry that Wagner Moreira, who was previously scheduled to perform at this event, has had to withdraw for health reasons. We are delighted however that acclaimed young tenor, Freddie De Tommaso, has agreed to replace him.
The British-Italian Society invites you for a celebration of Neapolitan porcelain and music
on Tuesday 5 December 2017, 5.15pm to 8pm
5.15pm – Private view of the ‘Collezione Fiordalisi’ of Neapolitan Porcelain
6pm – Champagne reception and canapés, Neapolitan music by duo ‘Settembre Music’
7pm – Lecture by Angela Caròla-Perrotti: The beauty of Neapolitan Porcelain
Entry: £20 per person (admission by ticket only)
Tickets must be purchased by 27 November: they will not be sold at the door
The British-Italian Society are jointly hosting this special event with the Directors of Bonhams and with the French Porcelain Society.
We are grateful to Kirker Holidays for their sponsorship.
THE EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED
PLEASE E-MAIL elisabetta@www.british-italian.org IF YOU WISH TO BE ADDED ON THE WAITING LIST
This lecture will focus on the place of Italy and the Adriatic as the bridge, but also the dividing line, between the two Europes that emerged from the collapse of Roman power in the West in the Fifth Century AD. It will illustrate the many influences of the surviving Roman empire centred at Constantinople (Istanbul) still visible in Italy, notably in Rome and Ravenna and in those places, which imitated the mosaic art of the old European superpower, such as Venice and Norman Sicily.
It will note the progressive alienation between the two Europes, in language, religion, politics, custom, art and trade, which were accompanied by the creation of a rival new concept of ‘Europe’ under Charlemagne; the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches arising from Rome’s claim to primacy; the military attacks launched by Latin Europe from Italian bases against Eastern Christians, most notably the shameful Fourth Crusade of 1204; and the annexation of the Byzantine Eastern Mediterranean trade and Byzantine territory by the Italian mercantile powers, such as Genoa and Venice.
Although Italy became a refuge for many after the Fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 and the centre of the printing of Orthodox liturgical works, and although Italian colonies, mainly Venetian, existed in Greece and the Aegean until the 18th Century, the Enlightenment reinforced the already existing contempt for the perceived decadence of Byzantium.
The lecture will conclude briefly by noting that past links with the former Byzantine East contributed to luring Italy into eastern adventures after the disappointments of the Vienna Treaty of 1815 and the Treaties of London, Versailles and Rapallo ended the Italian link across the Adriatic. It will ask, more widely, if a perception of the inferiority of eastern Christian culture still distorts modern attitudes to the countries of the Orthodox world and, indeed, geopolitics as a whole, in the light of Russia’s historic claim to be the protector of that world. What is the role of Italy in the wider Mediterranean and the Orthodox world in the 21st Century; and can a relationship of mutual respect be established between East and West?
Lord True has been an active member of the House of Lords since 2011. He was, until July 2017, the Leader of Richmond Borough Council in South West London. He has held many political posts, including four years in Downing Street, as Deputy Head of the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit. He was Private Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition. He was also Director of the Opposition Whips’ Office in the upper House from 1997-2010.
Nicholas True took a Double First in Classics and History at Cambridge, where he studied Byzantine history and is widely travelled in the former Byzantine world, of which he has been a lifelong student. He has been a part-time resident in Italy since 1980.
THE EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED
Although he continues to be universally hailed as an inspiring global moral leader in an increasingly destabilized, cruel world, a sense of ambiguity and puzzlement still prevails about how Pope Francis will go down in history.
Is he a true revolutionary and a reformer? Or has he just sown confusion among the Catholic faithful with his off-the-cuff remarks and his tendency, annoying to some aides, to put aside prepared speeches and to speak straight from his heart without getting his doctrinal statements fact-checked?
Will he eventually be declared a saint for stretching out a helping hand instead of wagging a threatening finger at Catholic couples who have divorced and remarried?
Will future Popes judge his lapidary question about gays in the church— “Who am I to judge?”—a cop-out? Or could his reformist pontificate exactly five centuries after Martin Luther nailed his protests to a church door in Wittenberg, sparking the Protestant Reformation, lead to a new twenty-first-century counter-reformation papacy with conservative traditionalists once more in command in Rome?
These are some of the questions David Willey will attempt to answer in his talk to the British Italian Society.
David Willey has reported for the BBC from Rome since 1971 under five Popes: Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. He is their longest serving foreign correspondent. He also broadcasts about the Vatican for NPR, CBC, ABC in Australia, Deutsche Welle Radio and TV in Berlin, and Swiss and Austrian Radio.
His articles have appeared in The Tablet, The Observer (London), and the Sunday Telegraph. In 2003 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to broadcast journalism.
Since it was founded in 1941, the British-Italian Society has worked to promote knowledge and understanding in the UK of Italian culture, including Italy’s history, institutions, way of life, language and wider contribution to civilisation.
The British-Italian Society
86-90 Paul Street
London EC2A 4NE