Your Flight Crew Board would first like to thank you all for you generous giving through donations to The Flight Crew. Since we started this option in order to pay for the keepsake Book (‘Love, From The Flight Crew’), you have continued to be generous, and even more so since we were thinking of closing this website.
On a quick side note, thank you again for being so supportive in your comments and to all of the volunteers who are able to help us keep our doors open to IlVolovers everywhere. You all play a part, whether you give monetarily, volunteer in the work or if you read and tell everyone you know about us and Il Volo, and we love you for it!
But back to my original point: thank you for your donations! And because of your generosity, we are able to plan another gift for Il Volo to welcome them back to the US.
It is our plan to send a gift to their dressing room at their Detroit concert since many of our Flight Crew readers will be there that night. We will give the final details in an upcoming post.
Remember your Flight Crew Badge when you go to your concerts! Wearing it is a good way to instantly connect with other Flight Crew members, and The Guys recognize them. Don’t have one? Print yours for free with this link:Flight Crew Badge
Today Il Volo was on the television show L’Arena. Click on the link below to watch Il Volo. Slide the counter on the bottom of the video to 1:59 where Il Volo’s interview begins.
Daniela was kind enough to send a translation as follows:
“Giletti has always been a friend of IL VOLO and after the presentation of duty, makes them sit down and begin a familiar interview. He asks if all three work the same and they make clear that they split the roles, everyone follows certain things, but Ignazio says that Piero’s what good or evil always puts his face.
Giletti then introduces their band that accompanied them in three cycles of concerts and calls for non-prepared performances, as it does sometimes in the house of friends.
Ignazio begins with a piece of Pino Daniele “O’ Scarrafone”.
The atmosphere is very informal, even Giletti tries to sing.
Then we speak of the Sanremo victory and passes a short video of the winner Gabbani this year. Gianluca says it’s a good song, but he sided with Ermal Meta, his friend, who was third.
Giletti ago revise Sanremo victory of IL VOLO and is always exciting, even Ignazio says there still seems true. They admit that their notoriety from Sanremo in Italy has changed. Ignazio also said to have been shown to not only kids but people who have much to give beyond music.
Piero sings a song by Cocciante “A mano a mano” . Is introduced to the subject of their “refusal to Trump” and Piero insists that a singer must have the right of choice.
Then it was the turn of Gianluca who plays a song by De Gregori, “Sempre per sempre.”
Remember the tour dates both Italian and American as well as all of the IL VOLO collaborations with great artists. They end with a performance of Gianluca while Ignazio and Piero and Giletti dance with the girls in the audience.”
For those that love the song A Mano A Mano, Daniela was kind enough to send the translated version of this beautiful song:
Gradually you realize that the wind
He blows on the face and steals a smile
The summer is almost over
He blows on heart and steals your love
Gradually it dissolves in tears
That sweet faded memory by time
Of when you lived with me in a room
There was no money but a lot of hope
And you lose a hand to hand and lose you
And what was it seems more absurd
When the night it was ever true
And not like now in Saturday night
But, give me your hand and back close
It can grow a flower in our garden
That even the winter will never freeze
It can grow a flower from my love for you
And gradually you will see with time
There, on his face the same smile
That the cruel wind had stolen
Returning faithful
Love is back
But, give me your hand and back close
It can grow a flower in our garden
That even the winter will never freeze
It can grow a flower from my love for you
Thank you again, Daniela, for translating these wonderful videos and beautiful songs!
I wanted to give a quick update on our e-mail situation.
Everyone that responded to the test should have gotten an e-mail reply from me. If you didn’t, please comment below. I found that we had problems with people’s e-mails going directly to the Junk folder, for one thing, and some email addresses were on the Blocked list for another. I have no idea how that happened, but we hope we have corrected it, and I apologize.
Going forward, all e-mails that come to our In Box should receive an automated response that lets you know it was received and that someone will be responding to you shortly. Sandi and Angelica will be monitoring the e-mails and will get a formal response to you as soon as they are able.
If you do not get an automated response to your e-mail, that is an indication that that we did not receive the e-mail at all. Please reach out to us in a comment here on the website if that happens, as Dee and Marion will be monitoring those, and they can get in touch with me or Marie personally.
On a second issue, several of you have mentioned that you are not getting the email notifications from the website as you have in the past. I spoke with WordPress today, and on the particular examples I gave them, those individuals were not listed among our e-mail subscribers. Again, I don’t know how that happened, and I apologize. If you have gotten e-mails in the past and are no longer receiving them, please sign up again. You will then receive a confirmation e-mail from WordPress (please look in your Spam/Junk folder if it doesn’t come to your In Box). In the e-mail will be a link that you have to click to confirm that you want to receive e-mails from us.
If you sign up and get a message stating that you are already, please check your Spam/Junk folder to see if our e-mails are going in there. If they are, you can use the settings within your e-mail account to change that. If you get a message that you are signed up and the messages are not going to your Spam/Junk folder, please e-mail us, and I will ask WordPress to look into your case individually.
Thanks for being patient, and I hope this works for everyone.
‘Amore’: Italian-American Singers In The 20th Century
American singer and actor Frank Sinatra sits at the piano. Getty Images
Apparently, Dean Martin didn’t much like the song “That’s Amore,” but in 1953 it became one of his biggest hits. It’s a song that seems to capture a moment in pop history when nearly every hit was performed by an Italian-American singer. The story of “That’s Amore” and the songs made famous by Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and others is told in a new book called Amore. Weekend All Things Considered host Guy Raz recently spoke with the author, Mark Rotella, about Italian singers in 20th-century America.
“That’s Amore” came from a movie called The Caddy, starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis; it’s about an Italian man who plays a golf pro and is followed by a faithful caddy. In the movie, when the two return to Italy and are greeted by their Italian family, they break into this song. When we hear it today, it sounds like a caricature of Italian culture. But, Rotella says, it served as an introduction to Italian culture for many Americans.
“It was one of the more obvious ones,” he says. “There were Italian singers before, but this led to other kitschy songs, like Rosemary Clooney’s ‘Mambo Italiano,’ and so many other songs that came after that were kind of kitschy but were also really pop and kind of fun.”
Rotella’s book isn’t just about Italian-American singers. It’s also about a turning point in 20th-century America when Italian entertainers started to be seen as American entertainers. Rotella says that there was a Golden Age of entertainment that started around 1947.
“This is when second- and third-generation Americans of Italian decent were coming of age,” he says. “This is post-war; it was a time of optimism. This era was basically the end of the big band and the beginning of the solo voice, and this lasted through the ’50s, up until I’d say 1964, with The Beatles.”
This was happening during a period when there was a great deal of discrimination against Italians in America. For example, this excerpt was taken from a profile on Joe DiMaggio from Life Magazine in 1939.
“Although he learned Italian first, Joe now speaks English without an accent. … Instead of olive oil or smelly bear grease, he keeps his hair slicked with water. He never reeks of garlic and prefers chicken chow mein to spaghetti.”
These kinds of comments were acceptable in mainstream dialogue, and yet a few years later, Italian singers would dominate the pop charts.
“This is the time when so many singers were now seen on TV,” Rotella says. “They were good-looking. They had a certain sensibility, a certain attitude that was open and charming.”
Rotella says that nearly every singer he interviewed named Enrico Caruso as an influence. Caruso was the first pop artist to sell a million copies of his music, offering his recordings on flat discs for the RCA Victor Vitrolas of the time. Rotella says that this shaped the way music was sold for years to come.
“They sold so much, this really defined how music was recorded and on what medium,” Rotella says. “It was going to be Victor on the flat plastic records.”
One of the singers Rotella includes in his book is none other than the king of the golden age of Italian-American music, Frank Sinatra. Rotella calls Sinatra’s song “Fly Me to the Moon” a metaphor for all of the breakthroughs that Italian singers achieved.
“When you hear the song, it’s optimistic,” he says. “It’s kind of dreamy, forward-thinking, but it’s tough. He says, ‘fly me to the moon,’ but it’s almost as if he’s there already. This is coming at a time when music was going to change. It’s the tail-end of the success of the Rat Pack. It was at this time that almost total assimilation of Italians had happened. In ways, I feel like after this [song], there were so many Italians that followed him. Not necessarily performing Italian music; we wouldn’t necessarily know them as Italians today. This song of reaching the moon seemed to me to be every immigrant’s dream of assimilating.
(Note: videos were added to this article ~Marie)
Descendants from Sicilian village keep their heritage alive in America
People from Sciacca, Agrigento congregating outside the local church before leaving for America.
Between 1880 and 1920 over four million Italians were recorded as entering the United States. About three-fourths of these immigrants went through the Ellis Island immigration station with the majority being males between the ages of 24 and 45.
The island of Sicily and the region around Naples, both in the south, accounted for over half the Italians who moved to the U.S. looking for a better life.
According to manifest documents from the ships, so many Sicilians reported ‘Sciacca in Agrigento’ as their home village that immigration inspectors used “ditto” marks to record this information.
Many of these Italians settled in Little Italy neighborhoods all over the country, the most famous being in New York.
Discrimination between Italians in Little Italy was rampant.
Being fiercely provincial and proud of their own regions, the Italians from Naples, Calabria and Bari looked down on Sicilians, particularly those from Sciacca.
Given their humble beginnings, their descendants were taught to be proud of their Sicilian heritage.
Baseball legend Mike Piazza’s father’s family comes from Sciacca, and though he doesn’t speak Italian, the former Mets catcher is fiercely proud of his roots.
“I feel a strong tie to Sicily, since my heritage is there. My grandfather Rosario came from Sciacca, to the United States and my father grew me up following the Italian tradition. I think it’s in our DNA to strive to work hard and persevere,” Piazza said.
“One thing that was present in me was my father’s distinct love of his Italian heritage and Sicilian ancestry.
I can’t tell you how many times my father would say “Amuni a monjare, beddu”, and “mezza mortu”.
He would also take a strong stand against negative Italian American stereotypes saying that they “don’t represent the real Italians”.
Piazza also said he travels to Sciacca regularly. “It’s something I have great pride in knowing how proud my father and grandfather would be if they could see me here.”
Mike Piazza: A proud descendent of Sciacca.
Musician Jon Bon Jovi is another who is descended from emigrants from Siacca. In 2013, Bongiovi Sr. gladly shared his family’s pasta sauces – the recipes for which originated in Sciacca and were passed down through three generations.
Cartoon artist, director and producer Joseph Barbera, who formed Hanna-Barbera with William Hanna, is another who is descended from emigrants from Sciacca. Both his parents were born in Sciacca and he grew up speaking Italian.
Alicia Keys is another who has found out about her large extended Italian family. Her great-grandfather Michiele was from Sciacca.
Mike Marino, most famous for his hilarious segment about an Italian president from New Jersey, is another who is descended from emigrants from Sciacca.
As his grandfather once said: “YOU MAY LEAVE SICILY – BUT SICILY NEVER LEAVES YOU.”
How Sciacca looks today
Four Presidents, a Mountain and an Italian Chief Carver: the Long Forgotten History of Luigi del Bianco
Everyone knows Mount Rushmore, with its iconic representations of four of the most important presidents of US history: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, F.D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. As a child, I remember being fascinated by their stoney, gigantic faces and I often wondered how someone could have made them look so perfect and lifelike; as you would expect from a 5 year old, I thought a single sculptor spent his entire life carving the mountain on his own, with his scalpel in one hand and a hammer in the other, failing to understand that a project of such a magnitude had very likely involved hundreds of people through a number of years.
Even if I had known that then, I certainly would not have been aware of the essential role of Italy in the creation of the Mount Rushmore Memorial, because its recognition came only in very recent times, when a previously unknown Friuli Venezia-Giulia migrant, Luigi del Bianco, was recognised as chief carver of the monument.
Bringing justice to Luigi
History tells us that, between the 4th of October 1927 and the 31st of October 1941, 400 people worked on the sculpting and carving of Mount Rushmore. They were led by Gutzon Borglum and his son, sculptors and artists of Danish descent.
Among those 400 workers, in 1935 made his appearance Luigi del Bianco, from Meduno, in the north eastern region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, who had studied carving in Venice and Vienna before trying his luck on the other side of the ocean and emigrating to the United States. Del Bianco’s name became known among historians and specialists of Mount Rushmore when his own grandson, Lou del Bianco, and his late uncle Caesar, began a strenuous campaign to have the role of their own ancestor in the making of the Mount Rushmore Memorial recognised.
It was the Italian Luigi del Bianco the artist who gave to America’s timeless stone presidents their life-like features and immortal gaze.
Because Caesar and Lou both believed Luigi had been more than a simple worker at the site, they set on a quest: demonstrating it to the world. It was Caesar, son of Luigi, who started the amazing adventure in the late 1980s, when Rex Allen Smith published “The Carving of Mount Rushmore:” here, the name of his father never appeared. Caesar was gutted.
More than 20 years later D.J. Gladstone, the author of the ultimate work on del Bianco, “Carving a Niche for Himself” (2014), would say that talking about Mount Rushmore without mentioning Luigi del Bianco was the equivalent of talking about the Yankees without mentioning Joe DiMaggio: but how much research, work and perseverance was behind such a statement. The research, work and perseverance of Caesar and his nephew Lou, who explored libraries, unearthed documents and campaigned for recognition, refusing to let their relative fall into oblivion.
After Caesar’s death in 2009, Lou took up his mission in full and it’s also thanks to his relentless efforts that Cameron Sholly, current director of the Midwest region for the National Park Services, accepted to reassess Luigi del Bianco’s role in the inception and creation of Mount Rushmore. Shelley came to the conclusion that del Bianco’s grandson was right: Luigi had been, indeed, the main carver at the site, the artist who gave to America’s timeless stone presidents their life-like features and immortal gaze.
Who was Luigi del Bianco?
Chief carver at Mount Rushmore, of course, but his life held much more than that. He was born in 1892 aboard a ship near Le Havre, in France, while his parents had been returning to Italy from the United States. The family, as said, settled in the North East of Italy and it’s there that 11 year old Luigi started studying carving and understood how talented he was. Still an adolescent, he had travelled to the US for the first time and settled with relatives in Vermont: there, he became known as a skilful carver. After returning to Italy to serve his country during the First World War, he was in Vermont once more and then settled in Port Chester, where his family still resides today.
While in Port Chester, del Bianco met Borglum, with whom he began to work: it was the beginning of the collaboration who was to bring him to South Dakota and to Mount Rushmore where, as chief carver, he became responsible of refining the presidents’ facial expressions. According to The Times, he spent a particularly long time sculpting Lincoln’s face and his eyes, whose pupils were made more vibrant by inserting wedges of granite in them. He worked at Mount Rushmore from 1935 to 1941, when he returned to Port Chester. Here he died in 1969, at the age of 78, because of silicosis, a disease caused, tragically, by the same thing that gave him so much joy in life: stone.
“[Il Volo] visited the Lardini tailoring, which is based in Filottrano, a town in the Marche region. It ‘a tailoring brand that is exported around the world. The boys spent a pleasant day deciding combinations and fabrics, ate at the table
of the house and chose the clothes they will wear in the next tour.” ~~ Daniela
I can’t think of a more enjoyable afternoon then discussing clothing patterns with The Guys.
