Giuseppe Tomasi, 11th Prince of Lampedusa, 12th Duke of Palma, GE, known as Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, was a Sicilian writer, nobleman, and Prince of Lampedusa. He is most famous for his only novel, Il Gattopardo, which is set in his native Sicily during the Risorgimento. A taciturn, solitary, shy, and somewhat misanthropic aristocrat, he opened up only with a few close friends, and spent a great deal of his time reading and meditating. He said of himself as a child, "I was a boy who liked solitude, who preferred the company of things to that of people", and in 1954 wrote, "Of my sixteen hours of daily wakefulness, at least ten are spent in solitude."
Lampedusa is the largest island of the Italian Pelagie Islands in the Mediterranean Sea.
Francis I of the Two Sicilies was King of the Two Sicilies from 1825 to 1830 and regent of the Kingdom of Sicily from 1806 to 1814.
The Leopard is a novel by Italian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, which chronicles the changes in Sicilian life and society during the Risorgimento. Published posthumously in 1958 by Feltrinelli, after two rejections by the leading Italian publishing houses Mondadori and Einaudi, it became the top-selling novel in Italian history and is considered one of the most important novels in modern Italian literature. In 1959, it won Italy's highest award for fiction, the Strega Prize. In 2012, The Guardian named it as one of "the 10 best historical novels". The novel was made into an award-winning 1963 film of the same name, directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon.
The Leopard is a 1963 epic historical drama film directed by Luchino Visconti. Written by Visconti, Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Enrico Medioli, Pasquale Festa Campanile, and Massimo Franciosa, the film is an adaptation of the 1958 novel of the same title by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.
Santa Margherita di Belice is a town in the Province of Agrigento in the Italian region of Sicily. It lies in southwest Sicily, 400 metres (1,300 ft) above sea level, near where the borders of the province of Agrigento, Province of Trapani and Province of Palermo meet. It is approximately 60 kilometres (37 mi) southwest of the city of Palermo, 60 kilometres (37 mi) northwest of the city of Agrigento and sits in the Belice valley among the rivers Belice, Senore and Carboj.
The Palazzo Filangeri-Cutò was a palace built in the 17th century by the Corberas, a noble family of Spanish origin, in the small Sicilian town of Santa Margherita di Belice. The palace provided the setting for Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's celebrated novel The Leopard, which traced the evolution of Sicilian aristocracy in the 19th century.
Joseph Mary Tomasi was an Italian Catholic priest, scholar, reformer and cardinal. His scholarship was a significant source of the reforms in the liturgy of the Catholic Church during the 20th century. He was a member of the Theatines.
The Sicilian nobility was a privileged hereditary class in the Kingdom of Sicily, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Kingdom of Italy, whose origins may be traced to the 11th century AD.
Archibald Colquhoun (1912–1964) was a leading translator of modern Italian literature into English. He studied at Ampleforth College, Oxford University, and the Royal College of Art. Originally a painter, he worked as director of the British Institute in Naples before the Second World War, and in Seville after the war. He worked in British intelligence during wartime. He later headed Oxford University Press' initiative to bring out Italian literary classics in translation. He scored his biggest success with Lampedusa's The Leopard, a translation that is still in print. He was also one of the first translators to introduce Italo Calvino to Anglophone readers. He was the first winner of the PEN Translation Prize, which he won for his translation of Federico de Roberto's The Viceroys. He also wrote a biography of Alessandro Manzoni.
Lanza are an Italian noble family that originated in Sicily in the 15th century. Derived from a cadet branch of the Lancia family, barons of Longi, it represents one of the major dynasties of the Sicilian aristocracy.
The Last Leopard: A Life of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa is a biography about the Italian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, written by the English historian David Gilmour. It was published by Quartet Books in 1988.
The Professor and the Siren or The Siren is a novella by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. It is sometimes known as Lighea, the name of the title character, which was the title chosen by the writer's widow.
Alexandra Tomasi, Princess of Lampedusa, known as "Licy", was an Italian and Baltic German psychoanalyst. She was the daughter of Italian mezzo-soprano and violinist Alice Barbi (1858-1948) and Baron Boris Wolff-Stomersee (1850–1917).
Giacomo de Angelis (1610–1695) was a Roman Catholic cardinal.
The Palazzo Butera is a Baroque-style aristocratic palace located facing the Mediterranean in the ancient quarter of Kalsa of central Palermo, region of Sicily, Italy. On the shoreside, the long facade has a wide terrace, built atop the base of the former walls and called Passeggiata delle Cattive, in front of this is the park Foro Italico, in front, rising just south of Porta Felice and Via Vittorio Emanuele ; the access to the palace is from the land-side street of Via Butera.
The di Lampedusa strategy or di Lampedusa principle is a political doctrine that in order to maintain the status quo, one must accept change. It takes its name from the Italian novelist Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, who expressed the principle in his novel Il Gattopardo.
Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, born Gioacchino Lanza Branciforte Ramirez, was an Italian musicologist and academic. He directed a number of cultural institutions, including the Teatro di San Carlo, the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in New York.
The Leopard is an upcoming Italian television series set to feature on streaming service Netflix. It is based on the Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa classic novel of the same name.
