Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo was an Italian filmmaker, theatre and opera director, and screenwriter. He was one of the fathers of cinematic neorealism, but later moved towards luxurious, sweeping epics dealing with themes of beauty, decadence, death, and European history, especially the decay of the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Critic Jonathan Jones wrote that “no one did as much to shape Italian cinema as Luchino Visconti.”
Giuseppe Tomasi, 11th Prince of Lampedusa, 12th Duke of Palma, GE, known as Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, was an Italian 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.
The Leopard is a novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa that 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.
Lupara is an Italian word used to refer to a sawed-off shotgun of the Break-action type. It is traditionally associated with the Sicilian Mafia for their use of it in vendettas, defense—such as its use against Benito Mussolini's army when he decided to break up the Sicilian mafioso network—and hunting.
The Prince of Lampedusa was a minor title in the Sicilian nobility.
Lucio Piccolo di Calanovella was an Italian poet and esotericist.
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, Massimo Franciosa, and an uncredited René Barjavel, 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.
Herbert Mitgang was an American author, editor, journalist, playwright, and producer of television news documentaries.
The Honourable Sir David Robert Gilmour, 4th Baronet, is a British writer and historian. The son of the Conservative politician Ian Gilmour, he is the author of numerous historical works, including award-winning biographies of Lord Curzon and Rudyard Kipling.
Never Take No for an Answer is a 1951 British–Italian drama film directed by Maurice Cloche and Ralph Smart and featuring Denis O'Dea, Vittorio Manunta, Guido Celano and Nerio Bernardi. It is based on Paul Gallico's 1951 story The Small Miracle, about an Italian orphan boy who goes to visit the Pope.
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.
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).
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 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.
