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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.
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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.
The exhibition Opera: Passion, Power and Politics, in collaboration with The Royal Opera House, will open on 30 September 2017 and will run until 25 February 2018 at The Victoria and Albert Museum. It will immerse visitors in some key moments of the history of European opera from its roots in Renaissance Italy to its present-day form, by focusing on seven operatic premieres in seven cities. It will reveal how opera brings together multiple art forms to create a multi-sensory work of art, and show how social, political, artistic and economic factors interact with great moments in the history of opera to tell a story of Europe over hundreds of years.
The exhibition is curated by the V&A’s Kate Bailey, Senior Curator of Design and Scenography.
Kate Bailey will talk to the BIS about the creation of the exhibition with particular focus on two Italian cities:
– Venice with Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, 1642. The narrative of the exhibition will begin in Venice, a Renaissance centre of entertainment, gambling and disguise, with a sumptuous painting of composer Barbara Strozzi depicted as a courtesan. The original surviving manuscript score of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea – an opera exploring scandal and ambition, which premiered in Venice’s Carnival season in 1642-3 – represents opera’s transition from private court entertainment to the public realm.
– Milan with Verdi’s Nabucco, 1842. The growing importance of the chorus is explored through Giuseppe Verdi’s Nabucco which premiered in Milan in 1842. The opera’s ‘Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves’ (Va pensiero) became an unofficial national anthem for Italy after the events of the Risorgimento led to the country’s unification.
A glass of wine will be offered after the talk
Villa Wolkonsky is not an obviously Roman name. The story of how it came to be there and of how and why it became the Residence of the British Ambassador to Italy is not widely known. With its Roman aqueduct and extensive gardens behind high walls it has an air of romance, deliberately fostered by its creator, the emigrée Russian princess Zenaïde Wolkonsky, who bought it in 1830. Assumptions have been made, but little has been known about the construction and extension of the main house. The mystery hanging over it was deepened by the unsavoury reputation it acquired during the German occupation of Rome in 1943/4. Such as it is, the conventional wisdom on this, as on many other aspects of the Villa’s story, is unreliable, as research into official and legal archives in Rome, Berlin and London is showing.
John Shepherd lived for much of his formative years in Rome, though he was educated in the UK and the USA. He spent over 38 years in the UK Diplomatic Service, mainly in Europe and the Middle East, including two spells in Rome: 1970-1973 as a junior Commercial Officer, and 2000-2003 as Ambassador. After “retiring” he became the first Secretary-General of the Global Leadership Foundation, established by F W de Klerk, of which he remains a board member, and has served on the boards of several charities involved in music and the arts. He is not a trained historian, but is greatly enjoying this foray into historical research.
In conjunction with the Exhibition WAR IN THE SUNSHINE: THE BRITISH IN ITALY 1917-18
A guided tour and talk by Dr Jonathan Black, Curator
The Estorick Collection, one of the world’s greatest collections of 20th Century Italian art, has reopened after extensive refurbishment with a major exhibition of paintings and photographs, which were rediscovered by Jonathan Black in the archives of the Imperial War Museum. The images by official British war artists and photographers highlight a forgotten aspect of Britain’s involvement in the Austro-Italian conflict during World War 1. With shimmering Alpine landscapes and intimate portraits of Italian peasant women, the images show the powerful impact Italy, and the Veneto, made on the artists and on the British troops fighting there. The exhibition has received outstanding reviews.
Sydney Carline (1888-1929) was born in north London into a highly artistic family – both his parents were accomplished painters. Sydney displayed a precocious talent for working in watercolour while studying at Repton School and at the Slade School of Art. He emerged as a talented landscape artist, a gifted topographical etcher and a skilled designer of medals. Deeply torn as to whether he should volunteer for war service – his family was inclined to pacifism – Sydney finally volunteered in 1916 to become a pilot with the Royal Flying Corps, and was posted to a fighter-bomber squadron in France. He was shot down and seriously wounded on his third mission, and had to spend nearly a year recuperating. In February 1918 he was posted to a Sopwith Camel Squadron based near Vicenza. This was part of the British Expeditionary Force to Italy, which had arrived in the Veneto in November 1917. Sydney served as a fighter pilot for five months, during which he shot down three Austro-Hungarian aircraft and twice crashed after being hit by anti-aircraft fire. In July 1918 he was appointed as an official British war artist with a brief to record the exploits of the RAF squadrons based in Italy. He sketched from the cockpit of his Sopwith Camel and from the rear cockpit of a Bristol fighter-bomber. He also drove over the battlefields of the Piave and the Asiago Plateau in 1918 in his motorcycle and sidecar.
Dr Jonathan Black will give a guided tour and a talk on Carline’s works in the exhibition, focusing on the artist’s experiences as a fighter pilot in the Italian skies, his images of dramatic Italian landscapes below, his perception of the Italian people (as combatants and refugees) and of the Austro-Hungarian enemy, whom the British regarded as a mysterious, unknown quantity. Sydney fell in love with Italy. He took his first post-war holiday in 1920 in central/southern Italy (his father George actually died in Assisi during that trip), and visited Italy almost every year in the 1920’s. He was planning a trip to Tuscany, when he fell ill and died in 1929.
Dr Black is the Curator of, and originally conceived the idea for, this exhibition. He studied History at St John’s College, Cambridge, and History of Art at University College, London. His publications include: The Face of Courage: Eric Kennington, Portraiture and the Second World War (London 2011); Abstraction and Reality: The Sculpture of Ivor Roberts-Jones (with Sara Ayres, London 2013) and The Complete Prints of C R W Nevinson (London 2014). He has also contributed essays to the exhibition catalogue. His next book is The Titan with Many Faces: Winston Churchill in British Art c. 1900 to the Present Day (March 2017).
Dr Black is currently Senior Research Fellow in History of Art at Kingston University focusing on the period 1900 – the 1940’s and particularly on the work of official and informal war artists.
Drinks will be served