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      Nino Castelnuovo, ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’ Star, Dies at 84

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      Mr. Castelnuovo, who brought an incandescent charm to the screen, became famous during a golden age of Italian cinema. But his breakthrough role was in a French film.Nino Castelnuovo, a popular Italian film and television actor who found success beyond his home country when he starred alongside Catherine Deneuve in the soaringly sentimental French New Wave musical “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” died on Sept. 6 in Rome. He was 84.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his representative, Simone Oppi.Mr. Castelnuovo, who brought an incandescent charm to the screen, became a star during a golden age of Italian cinema. He collaborated with leading directors like Luchino Visconti and Vittorio De Sica and acted alongside greats like Alberto Sordi and Claudia Cardinale.If he achieved international notice with “Umbrellas,” he did not truly attain fame in Italy until 1967, for his role as Renzo in a television series based on Alessandro Manzoni’s 1827 literary epic, “The Betrothed,” which takes place during a plague in the 17th century. Such was that show’s popularity, Mr. Castelnuovo once said, that Pope Paul VI became a fan and requested to meet him. (“Castelnuovo, I wish you to be as good, wise and respectable as your Renzo,” he recalled the pope telling him — to which he said he replied, “Likewise.”)Mr. Castelnuovo became a fixture in Italian living rooms in the 1980s as the athletic middle-aged spokesman for Olio Cuore, a brand of corn oil. In television commercials for the product, he vaulted over a fence to display his good health.“He’s one of the excellent underrated Italian actors,” Antonio Monda, who teaches a course on Italian cinema at New York University and is the artistic director of the Rome Film Festival, said in a phone interview. “He was praised abroad, especially in France, but was somewhat overlooked in Italy. His curse was doing that infamous oil commercial.”Mr. Castelnuovo secured his place in the international film canon for his performance in “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” Jacques Demy’s 1964 New Wave romance in which all the dialogue was sung, almost as though it were a cinematic opera. (Michel Legrand wrote the music; Mr. Castelnuovo’s voice was dubbed.) The movie was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and received five Academy Award nominations, including one for best foreign-language film and one for the song “I Will Wait for You.”“The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” set in a Normandy port town, recounts the youthful love affair between a garage mechanic named Guy, played by Mr. Castelnuovo, and Geneviève, the daughter of an umbrella shop owner, played by Ms. Deneuve. Their romance ends when Guy is drafted into the Algerian war. Geneviève soon discovers she is pregnant with Guy’s child. When they finally meet again, they have married other people, and their love is a bittersweet memory.Revisiting the film in 2011, The New York Times critic A.O. Scott called it “one of the most romantic films ever made.” “The romance between these young lovers was not meant to be,” he added, “but our romance with this incomparable film will last forever.”Mr. Castelnuovo in Paris in 1966 with Christine Delaroche, his co-star in the Vittorio De Sica film “A New World.”Keystone/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesFrancesco Castelnuovo was born on Oct. 28, 1936, in Lecco, Italy. His father, Camillo, worked in a button factory. His mother, Emilia Paola (Sala) Castelnuovo, was a maid.Growing up, Francesco held jobs as a mechanic and a house painter to support himself. He often found refuge in the darkness of movie theaters and idolized Fred Astaire, whose films inspired him to become a gymnast and a dancer in his teens.In 1955, he moved to Milan to study at the Piccolo Teatro repertory theater. He also found work as a mime on a children’s television show about a magician named Zurli. He made his film debut in 1959 with a small part in Pietro Germi’s crime thriller “The Facts of Murder,” and he appeared the next year in Visconti’s acclaimed “Rocco and His Brothers.”Among Mr. Castelnuovo’s other films were “The Hunchback of Rome” (1960), which was notable for featuring the director Pier Paolo Pasolini in an acting role, and De Sica’s 1966 drama, “A New World.” He appeared in Jean-Luc Godard’s segment of “Amore e Rabbia” (1969), a series of short stories directed by various cinema luminaries. He reunited with Deneuve in Agnès Varda’s film “The Creatures” in 1966.He is survived by his wife, Maria Cristina Di Nicola; his son, Lorenzo; and his sister, Marinella.In 1996, at the age of 60, Mr. Castelnuovo played the archaeologist D’Agostino in Anthony Minghella’s “The English Patient.” He continued acting into his 70s, performing in productions of works by the Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni and playing a judge on the television series “Tuscan Passion” from 2013 to 2015. He also worked to raise awareness of glaucoma, from which he had long suffered.In interviews, Mr. Castelnuovo often reflected on the glorious era of Italian cinema that he had witnessed firsthand. He sometimes complained that Italian films had become less, well, Italian.“I come from a cinema that is very different from now,” he said in a Roman television interview in 1999. “It was a time when Italian film was the most respected cinema in the world.”“We’ve decided to follow the Americans and other big nations,” he continued. “We’ve lost sight of just how much talent we Italians have.“We’re a country of marvelous people. Marvelous in the sense that, without our imaginations, we cannot live. We’re not very good realists, which makes us very imaginative people.” More

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      The Enduring Appeal of Italian Composers’ Dramatic ‘Library Music’

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      Compositions made from the 1960s through the ’80s to soundtrack films and ads have found new homes on hip-hop tracks and compilations. New artists have been inspired, too.One day in the summer of 2011, Lorenzo Fabrizi rode with a friend to an abandoned warehouse far outside of Rome. The custodian of the building, who said he had bought it for around $100, let them inside to look at its contents: 10,000 vinyl LPs, by Fabrizi’s estimate. They were welcome to take as many they wanted, the owner said; he was brewing beer in the space and had no use for them. More

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      Kevin Spacey Cast in Italian Film After Being Sidelined in the U.S.

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      He will play a detective in the movie, directed by Franco Nero, in what is believed to be his first film since sexual assault allegations started surfacing in 2017.Kevin Spacey has been cast in a film in what is believed to be the first time since accusations of sexual assault against the actor started surfacing more than three years ago, prompting several court cases and unraveling his onscreen career. More

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      in Music

      Franco Battiato, Pop Singer and Versatile Composer, Dies at 76

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      Though hugely popular as a singer-songwriter in Italy, he never stopped experimenting. He composed for movies, opera and ballet, directed films and painted.Franco Battiato, one of Italy’s most prominent singer-songwriters, who expressed esoteric ideas in catchy lyrics and, ever an eclectic artist, also composed operas and movie soundtracks, directed films and painted, died on Tuesday at his home in Milo, Sicily. He was 76.His manager, Francesco Cattini, confirmed the death. He did not give a cause but said Mr. Battiato had been ill for a long time.In a career of nearly 60 years, Mr. Battiato explored a variety of musical genres with an eye toward innovation. His works included experimental electronic music, symphonic compositions and ballets in addition to pop songs. Mystical and spiritual qualities permeated much of his work.President Sergio Mattarella, in a statement, called him “a cultured and refined artist who charmed a vast public, even beyond national borders, with his unmistakable musical style — a product of intense studying and feverish experimentation.”Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture, referred to one of Mr. Battiato’s lyrics on Twitter: “How hard it is to find the dawn within nightfall. (Franco Battiato, R.I.P.)”Mr. Battiato began his career performing in a cabaret in Milan. He reached a wider audience in the 1960s, when he appeared on a variety show on national television. His “La Voce del Padrone” (“The Master’s Voice”), released in 1981, is said to have been the first pop album by an Italian musician to sell one million copies.Despite his commercial success, Mr. Battiato continued experimenting. He composed music that mixed historical, social, ethnic and mystical themes; he wrote lyrics in Italian dialects and foreign languages.“He had a vast musical and literary culture that was mostly self-taught,” Mr. Cattini said. “He did not like repeating himself, and that made him unique.”His lyrics included references to “Euclidean Jesuits,” Ming dynasty emperors and the whirling dervishes of Sufism, a mystical form of Islam.“Speaking of the Sufis in Italy in the 1980s was like talking about aliens,” said Giuseppe Pollicelli, one of the directors of “Temporary Road,” a 2013 documentary about Mr. Battiato. “But people got it, and loved it.”He added, “He had a magic touch in channeling complex topics through songs that were easy to listen to, memorize and internalize, even if people could not always decrypt the meaning.”Mr. Battiato’s 1991 pop song “Povera Patria” (“Poor Homeland”), a lament about an Italy crushed by the abuse of power and governed by “perfect and useless buffoons,” became a hit, and some of its lyrics entered everyday language in Italy.The next year, after the Persian Gulf war, Mr. Battiato performed with the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra in Baghdad as a gesture of solidarity, sitting on the floor and singing in Arabic and Italian.“He wasn’t interested in politics, but in people,” Mr. Cattini said.He was also a painter. In a 2012 video interview, Mr. Battiato explained that he had always had a restless curiosity and, frustrated by his lack of drawing skills, had decided to learn how to paint. His artwork, initially signed with the pseudonym Süphan Barzani, was exhibited in galleries in Italy, Sweden and the United States. He drew the covers of two of his albums and of the libretto for his second opera, “Gilgamesh,” written in 1992. (His first was “Genesis,” in 1987.)His soundtracks for Italian movies include one for “A Violent Life” (1990), about the Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini; he also composed music for ballets staged at the Maggio Musicale theater in Florence. And as a filmmaker he was named “best new director” by the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists in 2004 for his “Lost Love,” about a boy’s journey from Sicily to Milan in the 1950s.Francesco Battiato was born on March 23, 1945, in Jonia, a coastal town in eastern Sicily. His father, Salvatore, was a wine merchant; his mother, Grazia (Patti) Battiato, was a homemaker. He attended high school in Acireale, Sicily, and moved to Milan when he was 19 to try to make a living in music.He is survived by his older brother, Michele.After living in Milan for years, Mr. Battiato moved in the late 1980s to a villa in Milo, north of the eastern coastal city of Catania, tucked between the volcano Etna and the Mediterranean. He had spent most of his time there since then. More

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      in Music

      Milva, Redheaded Italian Diva of Many Artistic Hues, Dies at 81

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      One of Italy’s best-known singers, she song pop songs and political anthems, and appeared at festivals and on theater stages.ROME — Milva, whose charisma, warm voice and flaming red hair made her one of Italy’s most recognizable divas from the 1960s through the ’80s, died on April 23 at a hospital in Milan. She was 81. Her daughter, Martina Corgnati, said the cause was a neurovascular disease.In an eclectic career that spanned more than 50 years, Milva sang at pop festivals and performed in high-culture houses like the Paris Opera and Milan’s prestigious Piccolo Theater. She became popular across Europe, especially in Germany. She crooned traditional songs and had contemporary hits. She wore glamorous dresses while singing leftist anthems.President Sergio Mattarella, in a statement, called her “a protagonist of Italian music, a cultivated, sensitive and versatile interpreter.” Her body lay in state last month at the Piccolo, where fans lined up to pay their last respects.“She used to say, ‘First I’ll finish the show, then I can die,’” Ms. Corgnati said. “The show came before everything.”Milva was born Maria Ilva Biolcati in Goro, a small northeastern town, on July 17, 1939. Her father, Pescariello Biolcati, was a fishmonger. Her mother, Noemi Farinelli, worked as a tailor and had a gift for singing. Maria Ilva, although she was shy, sometimes sang as well, in outdoor dance halls and with local orchestras. When she was a teenager, her father’s fish truck broke down and his business collapsed, and she began contributing to the family’s income.Audiences knew her as Sabrina, for her resemblance to Audrey Hepburn’s character in the 1954 Billy Wilder movie of the same name. But her family called her Milva, a fusion of her two first names, and it stuck professionally.Milva in concert in Milan in 1965. She hit her stride as a performer in the 1960s.Associated PressHer deep, powerful voice garnered attention. But her short brown hair and slight build were far from the thick manes and full hourglass figures then in demand.To compensate, she padded her bras and thickened her legs with three pairs of stockings. An agent recommended that she dye her hair red, a color that became her trademark and earned her the nickname La Rossa, or the Redhead.Her career took off in 1959 when she won a contest for new voices held by Italy’s national broadcaster, RAI. She was given her own television special, directed by Maurizio Corgnati, an antifascist intellectual, whom she married in 1961.“Then he created the Milva character,” Ms. Corgnati said.Mr. Corgnati took over the shaping of Milva’s career, working on her stage presentation and her repertoire. He accompanied her on tours to Japan and the United States and, Ms. Corgnati said, turned a “clumsy provincial girl” into a charismatic diva.The couple separated in 1969.Milva was outspoken about her leftist views and her votes for Communist politicians. She sang about the killing of factory workers by the Italian police, performed traditional antifascist songs of the Italian Resistance, and sang musical versions of the work of anarchist poets. She became — also thanks in part to her blazing red hair — identified with the political left.In 1968, when she sang the Resistance song “Bella Ciao” at the RAI Auditorium in Naples, she told the presenter, “I have a weakness for freedom songs.”The renowned Italian director Giorgio Strehler, who oversaw the Piccolo, cast her in Brecht roles, most notably Jenny in “The Threepenny Opera.” She carried his theatrical influence into her concerts, which included 15 appearances at the Sanremo Music Festival in Italy.She demonstrated “tireless perfectionism” in preparing her performances, said the director Filippo Crivelli, who worked with her for several years.Milva at the Sanremo Music Festival in Italy in 2007. She performed there 15 times.Luca Bruno/Associated PressShe characteristically sang with her hand on her hip, often dressed in Gianfranco Ferrè’s luxurious dresses and wearing a Guerlain perfume detectable from the first few rows.Magazines put her on the cover, paparazzi chased her, and she was the subject of tabloid headlines, especially after one of her former boyfriends was found fatally shot in his car in mysterious circumstances and another killed himself.She had no shortage of admirers. The Oscar-winning composer Ennio Morricone dedicated an album to her. Astor Piazzolla asked her to sing his tangos. Italians knew her best for “Alexander Platz,” a hit song adapted for her by the singer-songwriter Franco Battiato, a giant of Italian pop music, and “La Rossa,” a song written for her by another major artist, Enzo Jannacci.She toured Asia and Europe, singing in at least seven different languages.All that work took its toll. When her vocal cords grew inflamed, she gave herself cortisone shots to keep singing. Doctors said the treatments contributed to her neurovascular disease, according to Ms. Corgnati. She retired in 2012.In addition to her daughter, she is survived by a sister, Luciana, and a brother, Antonio.Vicky Schatzinger, a pianist who worked with Milva for 15 years, said she had repeatedly promised to cut her red hair once she left the stage, but she never did.“She felt that her hair made her a character,” Ms. Schatzinger said. “But in reality, she was her character herself.” More

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      in Television

      Netflix to Debut Italy’s First TV Show With a Majority Black Cast

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      The creators of “Zero,” including the co-writer Antonio Dikele Distefano, say they hope viewers enjoy it so much that the characters’ racial identity becomes irrelevant.ROME — While much of the world spent 2020 in lockdowns of varying severity, the 28-year-old Italian author Antonio Dikele Distefano had the busiest year of his life.Along with working on his sixth novel and interviewing Italians of different ethno-cultural backgrounds for a television program, he spent months on the set of “Zero,” a show inspired by one of his novels that premieres on Netflix on April 21.This is Dikele Distefano’s first time co-writing a television show. Until now, he has been best known for his books, gritty coming-of-age fiction, with classic themes of heartbreak, friendship and uncertainty about the future, which have become a publishing sensation in Italy. But the work of Dikele Distefano, whose parents migrated from Angola, also integrates his experiences of being a Black Italian.And “Zero,” which refers to the nickname of the lead character, is the first Italian television series to feature a predominantly Black cast.Center from left, Giuseppe Dave Seke, Daniela Scattolin and Dylan Magon shooting an episode of “Zero.”Francesco Berardinelli/NetflixVirginia Diop and Dave Seke, who plays Omar, the lead character in the show.Francesco Berardinelli/NetflixDikele Distefano says he hopes that fact will only briefly be a talking point. He likes to cite “Coming to America,” the 1988 Eddie Murphy comedy that made more than $288 million at the box office worldwide, as an inspiration. “The film is so entertaining that you don’t even think about” the fact that the cast is all Black, he said of that movie in a Zoom interview this week. “For me, that is a victory.”In his novels, Dikele Distefano takes a similar tack, throwing light on the lives of young people, the children of immigrants, who are not considered citizens even when they are born in Italy, speak the language and share the same cultural references. They can apply for Italian citizenship only when they turn 18.The desire to change society motivates much of his work, he said, including “the idea of, in the future, having a country where my nieces and nephews can say, ‘I feel Italian.’” So far, growing calls to change the law and grant citizenship to anyone born in Italy have not gotten far in Parliament.Dikele Distefano’s raw and emotionally open approach to his writing has struck a chord with readers of his novels. While his books are shaped by his background, they home in on universal emotional truths.“People often say that we need beautiful stories,” he said. “I’ve always been drawn to real stories. Truth appeals to me.”He added, “I wouldn’t be able to tell a story far from me, something that I haven’t lived or that doesn’t belong to me.”Dikele Distefano in the Barona district on the outskirts of Milan, where “Zero” was largely filmed. His raw and emotionally open approach to writing has struck a chord with readers of his novels.Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesIt was Dikele Distefano’s “authentic voice” and “clear language” that caught the attention of Netflix, said Ilaria Castiglioni, the streaming service’s manager for Italian original series. She said that he was the first to bring to Netflix Italy the experiences of second-generation immigrants in Italy and that “we were drawn to how he narrated his experience so naturally.”“Zero” is the sixth made-in-Italy series for Netflix, after the crime drama “Suburra: Blood on Rome,” now in its third season; the teenage drama “Baby,” also in its third season; the historical fantasy “Luna Nera”; the supernatural drama “Curon,” and “Summertime,” whose protagonist is a woman of Italian and Nigerian descent.Castiglioni said Netflix had seen a need to better represent Italy’s changing society. “A very important theme for us is representation, to create empathy, so that as many people as possible find themselves reflected in what they see onscreen,” she said.But “Zero” is not overtly about the struggles and discriminations faced by Black Italians, she added.“We tried to tell a story that was universal,” while recognizing the greater difficulties that Black Italians have to deal with, she said. “Our objective is to create entertainment,” she added, “and if that entertainment creates a debate, it’s a plus, but we leave that aspect to our public.”“Zero” explores the metaphorical invisibility felt by many young people facing an uncertain future. In the figure of the main character, Omar (Giuseppe Dave Seke) an often-ignored pizza delivery guy, the metaphor is made literal: He can actually will himself to become invisible. Attempting to save his neighborhood from greedy property investors, the mild-mannered Omar becomes a community superhero, joining a group of other young people who have their own useful skill sets.Characters in the show, such as Sara (played by Scattolin) and Momo (Magon), have their own useful skill sets.Francesco Berardinelli/NetflixOmar (Dave Seke) can will himself to become invisible and becomes a community superhero.Francesco Berardinelli/NetflixAngelica Pesarini, a professor at NYU Florence who focuses on issues of race, gender, identity and citizenship in Italy, said, “The fact that the main character is a dark-skinned Black man — already I think it’s revolutionary in the Italian landscape.”Though racism is rife in their country, Italians are loath to admit it to themselves, Pesarini said.“Netflix is doing a series with an almost entirely Black cast and then on the national channels you have horrific instances of racism that wouldn’t be imaginable in the United States,” she noted.Among recent examples, an Italian actress used a racist slur during an interview on the national broadcaster in March. A few days later, a satirical program on the private broadcaster Mediaset aired an old parody of a lawmaker that also used the slur. In another skit, which aired this month, the same program was again accused of racism after the hosts made fun of Chinese people. On Wednesday, one of the hosts posted a video to apologize for that episode.Pesarini, the NYU Florence professor, said, “I was thinking of all the Black Italian kids watching these programs,” and “hearing the N-word referred to them.”“It was so violent for me as an adult, I can’t imagine the damage this does for someone growing up in this country as a nonwhite Italian,” added Pesarini, who is of Italian and East African heritage.Pesarini and other activists have started a campaign, #cambieRAI (a play on the national broadcaster’s name that translates as “you will change”). She said that they had sent a letter to RAI “explaining why we were shocked and fed up and frustrated” with how Black people were represented on television in Italy. So far, there has been no response, she added.The coronavirus set the production of “Zero” back an entire year. When Italy went into national lockdown in March 2020, the cast and Dikele Distefano decided to remain ensconced in a hotel in Rome, giving them an unexpected opportunity to bond, a chemistry that is manifest in the actors’ onscreen interactions.Dikele Distefano said he was motivated in part by “the idea of, in the future, having a country where my nieces and nephews can say, ‘I feel Italian.’”Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times“We became best friends, we still speak every day,” Dikele Distefano said. That said, the tension of working within the restraints imposed by the pandemic is something he hopes never to repeat. “I would like to work in a more relaxed way,” he said, laughing.“Zero” has a carefully selected soundtrack. Dikele Distefano’s first forays into writing came via his passion for music, he said, and in his teens, he rapped under the name “Nashy.” In 2016, he founded Esse Magazine, a digital publication about Italian music and urban culture. “Rap was a school for me, the possibility to express what I was feeling in four-four time,” he said. When he discovered books, he gave up rap, he added, but without the music, “I wouldn’t be writing.”Dikele Distefano worked on the script for “Zero” alongside the writers Carolina Cavalli, Lisandro Monaco, Massimo Vavassori and Stefano Voltaggio. The eight initial episodes end in a cliffhanger that seems to beg for a second season.But Castiglioni said that Netflix had made no decision about any continuation. “For now, we’re concentrated on this series,” she said. “Let’s see how it goes and then look to the future.” More