In Search of Isabella di Morra with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato

In Search of… with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato explores mysteries where history and legend blur and conjecture begins—along with the strange, the macabre, and the uncanny. What follows suggests possible explanations—though not the only ones.

Isabella di Morra: The Poetess in the Tower

High above the Sinni Valley, on a rocky spur in Basilicata, stands the castle of Valsinni, its walls thick, its windows narrow, its towers looking outward across a landscape both beautiful and isolating. In the sixteenth century, the fortress was home to Isabella di Morra.

Born into a noble family around 1520, Isabella spent much of her life confined within those stone walls. Her father, a baron allied with the French during the turbulent wars between France and Spain, fled into exile. The castle fell under the authority of her brothers, men said to be stern and suspicious. From within her enforced seclusion, Isabella wrote poetry: verses of isolation, longing, resentment, and a profound sense of imprisonment.

Alleged portrait of Isabella di Morra

She wrote of the “horrid valley” that enclosed her and of a fate she could not escape. In a world of arranged marriages and rigid honor codes, her voice was strikingly personal and dangerous.

At some point in the 1540s, Isabella began corresponding with a Spanish nobleman, Diego Sandoval de Castro, a married poet and official. Whether the exchange was romantic or literary remains debated. What is certain is that her brothers discovered it and killed her in the name of family honor. Sandoval was later ambushed and slain. The castle became the scene of blood, and Isabella’s brief life ended within the same walls that had confined her youth.

Centuries later, scholars rediscovered her work, recognizing in it one of the most original female voices of the Italian Renaissance.

Yet in Valsinni, another tradition endured. It is said that Isabella never left. On certain evenings, when the valley falls silent, a solitary figure appears along the battlements, gazing toward the horizon she once cursed.

Visitors to the castle speak of a presence in the tower rooms. Of sudden drafts in enclosed chambers and footsteps echoing where no one walks. Some claim to hear faint recitations rising from the stone, and lines of lament carried on the wind.

Was Isabella di Morra merely a tragic poet silenced by the violence of her age?

Or does the weight of injustice linger in the stones of Valsinni Castle?

……………………………………

Sebastiano III, Conte di Sciancato, a minor prince of forgotten Lucania, was said to have loved his wife more than his soul. When his beloved bride, Donna Lucrezia di Nerafiora, died in a tragic accident, he could not accept the will of fate. In his grief, he turned to ancient books and desperate learning, searching for a way to restore her to the world of the living. The attempt cost him his life. The ruins of his torre lie hidden, and when the earth trembles, some whisper he still searches for her.

In Search of Circe and Scylla with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato

In Search of… with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato explores mysteries where history and legend blur and conjecture begins—along with the strange, the macabre, and the uncanny. What follows suggests possible explanations—though not the only ones.

Circe, Glaucus, and Scylla: The Curse of the Strait

Long before maps charted every current of the Mediterranean, sailors feared the narrow strait between Calabria and Sicily. There, they believed, an ancient curse haunted the waters.

According to legend, Scylla was not born a monster. She was a beautiful sea nymph, admired for her ethereal grace and sought after by many suitors. Among those who loved her was Glaucus, a Boeotian fisherman transformed into a prophetic sea god after tasting a mysterious herb.

Circe Invidiosa, 1892,
John William Waterhouse

Scylla did not return Glaucus’ affection, and in his despair he sought the aid of the enchantress Circe, whose island was said to lie somewhere in the western seas. Renowned for her mastery of potions, enchantments, and forbidden arts, Circe possessed the power to reshape the human form.

But the sorceress herself fell in love with Glaucus.

When Glaucus rejected her advances, refusing to abandon his devotion to Scylla, jealousy overcame reason. Circe poured an enchanted draught into the pool where Scylla bathed.

As the nymph entered the water, her body began to change. From her waist sprang the heads of ravenous dogs, snarling and snapping without end. The maiden disappeared, and in her place stood a terrifying creature driven by endless hunger.

Ovid recounts the transformation in his Metamorphoses, preserving one of antiquity’s most haunting tales of love, envy, and revenge.

Later tradition placed Scylla upon the rocky shores of Calabria overlooking the Strait of Messina, forever facing Charybdis, the monstrous whirlpool that churned off the opposite coast. Between them, ships were forced to choose the lesser danger.

For ages, seafarers navigating the strait saw not merely dangerous waters, but the lingering shadow of an old tale.

The natural hazards of the Strait of Messina almost certainly helped give rise to the myth. Its unpredictable currents and treacherous waters inspired the enduring expression “between Scylla and Charybdis.” Like the modern phrase “between a rock and a hard place,” it came to describe any situation in which every choice carries peril.

Was Scylla merely a poetic explanation for the violent waters that threatened ancient mariners? Or did the Greeks preserve through myth the memory of a place where the natural world seemed to yield to enchantment?

……………………………………

Sebastiano III, Conte di Sciancato, a minor prince of forgotten Lucania, was said to have loved his young bride, Donna Lucrezia di Nerafiora, beyond reason. Unable to accept her death, he turned to forbidden books and desperate learning, seeking to restore her to the world of the living. The attempt cost him his life. The ruins of his torre lie hidden, and when the earth trembles, some whisper he still searches for her.

Giacinto de’ Sivo: In Defense of the Two Sicilies

Giacinto de' Sivo (1814-1867)

Giacinto de’ Sivo (1814–1867) was one of the most influential historians and political writers of nineteenth-century Southern Italy. Born in Maddaloni, near Caserta, he dedicated much of his life to preserving and documenting the history, traditions, and institutions of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. A committed Catholic and Bourbon loyalist, de’ Sivo emerged as one of the leading intellectual voices opposing the Italian Risorgimento, arguing that the unification of Italy came at the expense of the South’s legitimate monarchy, cultural identity, and political independence.

Educated in law but drawn to literature and history, de’ Sivo initially pursued a career in public service, eventually serving as counselor for the province of Terra di Lavoro. Following Garibaldi’s conquest of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1860, he refused to swear allegiance to King Vittorio Emanuele II and openly opposed the new regime. In 1861, his uncompromising defense of the Bourbon cause led to his imprisonment on two occasions. Amid mounting political persecution, he left for Rome in 1862, then under Papal rule, where he spent the remainder of his life devoted to scholarship and writing.

Before composing his major historical works, de’ Sivo continued his opposition through journalism. He contributed to the legitimist newspaper L’Iride and later founded La Tragicommedia, a satirical journal that sharply criticized the new Italian government. The publication was suppressed after only three issues, illustrating the increasingly hostile climate faced by Bourbon loyalists in the aftermath of unification.

His best-known work, the five-volume Storia delle Due Sicilie dal 1847 al 1861 (History of the Two Sicilies from 1847 to 1861), remains a foundational text of the Bourbon perspective on Italian unification. Drawing upon official documents, eyewitness accounts, correspondence, and contemporary reports, de’ Sivo presented a detailed account that countered prevailing liberal interpretations. He argued that the conquest of the kingdom was driven not solely by popular enthusiasm for national unity but also by military invasion, diplomatic pressure, internal betrayal, and foreign influence. Among those he criticized most sharply was the liberal statesman Liborio Romano, whom he regarded as instrumental in the kingdom’s demise. Few writers did more than de’ Sivo to shape the historical memory of the Bourbon Kingdom, providing later generations of legitimists and historians of Southern Italy with the intellectual framework for reassessing the fall of the Two Sicilies.

Throughout his writings, de’ Sivo emphasized the legitimacy of the Bourbon monarchy and defended the social, religious, and legal institutions that had developed over centuries in Southern Italy. He regarded the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies as a distinct civilization rooted in Catholic faith, regional traditions, and centuries of institutional continuity. In his view, it was an independent state whose political and cultural identity deserved to endure. His works consistently highlighted the contributions of the South to Italian and European civilization while criticizing the post-unification policies he believed marginalized the Mezzogiorno.

Although his views have remained the subject of academic debate, de' Sivo is widely regarded as the foremost Bourbon critic of the Risorgimento and an indispensable source for understanding the collapse of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. His writings became an important precursor to later discourse surrounding the Southern Question, regional inequality, and the long-term consequences of Italian unification. Largely dismissed by mainstream liberal historiography of the late nineteenth century, his scholarship received renewed attention after Benedetto Croce reassessed his work in 1918. While rejecting de’ Sivo’s Bourbon political conclusions, Croce nevertheless acknowledged the depth of his research and the historical value of his work.

Whether read as a passionate defender of the Bourbon cause or as a significant historian of his age, de' Sivo's writings remain an enduring testament to the profound complexity of Italian unification and the importance of preserving perspectives that challenged its dominant narrative.

~ By Antonio Isernia

In Search of Leucàsia with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato

In Search of… with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato explores mysteries where history and legend blur and conjecture begins—along with the strange, the macabre, and the uncanny. What follows suggests possible explanations—though not the only ones.

Leucàsia: The White Siren of the Southern Sea

At the southernmost tip of Apulia, where the Ionian and Adriatic seas meet amid striking white cliffs, sailors have long spoken of a beautiful maiden whose song could sway both hearts and storms.

They called her Leucàsia.

According to legend, Leucàsia was a siren whose beauty rivaled her voice. She fell in love with a young shepherd named Melisso, but his heart belonged to another maiden, Aristula. Enraged by his rejection, Leucàsia unleashed furious winds and crashing waves upon the lovers as they embraced along the shore.

The Siren by John William Waterhouse

Choosing death over separation, they clung to one another as the storm-tossed sea engulfed them.

Moved by their tragic devotion, the goddess Minerva transformed the lovers into two rocky headlands, forever facing one another across the bay. Wracked with guilt, Leucàsia turned to stone and was said to have given her name to Leuca, now the town of Santa Maria di Leuca. Today, those headlands are known as Punta Ristola and Punta Meliso.

Some scholars see in Leucàsia another expression of the ancient siren traditions that once echoed throughout Magna Graecia. Others believe the legend arose later, shaped by the dramatic landscape itself as a poetic explanation for the lonely rocks and restless waters where two seas converge.

For generations, fishermen claimed that the wind sometimes carried a woman’s voice across the cliffs at dusk. Others insisted that pale shapes could be seen upon the rocks before storms rolled in from the horizon.

Whether born of imagination, echoing waves, or shifting light upon white limestone, the legend became part of the landscape itself.

Was Leucàsia merely a local legend woven around the rugged coast of Southern Italy?

Or did the ancient Greeks preserve, through myth, the memory of a place where the sea itself seems to sing?

……………………………………

Sebastiano III, Conte di Sciancato, a minor prince of forgotten Lucania, was said to have loved his young bride, Donna Lucrezia di Nerafiora, beyond reason. Unable to accept her death, he turned to forbidden books and desperate learning, seeking to restore her to the world of the living. The attempt cost him his life. The ruins of his torre lie hidden, and when the earth trembles, some whisper he still searches for her.

Farewell to Neapolitan Poet Luciano Somma

Luciano Somma overlooking
his beloved Bay of Naples

Neapolitan poet Luciano Somma, a familiar presence at literary salons and cultural events, died in Naples on 9 July 2026. His funeral was held at the Parish of Nostra Signora del Sacro Cuore in the Vomero-Arenella neighborhood.

Born in the Quartieri Spagnoli on 18 March 1940, Somma began writing poetry in the Neapolitan language at the age of thirteen. While enjoying a successful career in commercial sales, he devoted his life to literature and to the promotion of the Neapolitan language and culture. He participated in numerous radio and television programs, mentored emerging recording artists, and wrote thousands of songs over the course of his lifetime.

His literary works are included in numerous anthologies and are studied at the University of Naples Federico II as examples of contemporary Neapolitan poetry. His poetry is also featured in the anthology Nati per la Vita, published by the Russian publisher Raduga, alongside such Italian literary figures as Salvatore Quasimodo, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Umberto Saba, and Eduardo De Filippo.

Somma received hundreds of literary awards and was twice honored with the Silver Medal of the President of the Italian Republic. He was also a prolific contributor to more than 150 newspapers, magazines, and literary periodicals, including Il Mattino di Napoli, La Nazione di Firenze, Men, Topolino, Intimità, Roma, Frate Indovino, La Disfida, Il Pungolo Verde, L’Eco del Popolo, Il Club degli Autori, Brontolo, Miscellanea, and Cronaca Filatelica. A member of the SIAE since 1967, more than 500 of his songs were published and recorded during his career.

Somma remained steadfastly proud of his native city, especially of his upbringing in the Quartieri Spagnoli. He embodied the napoletanità of the generation born during the Second World War—a generation that served as a bridge between the world of inherited traditions and the forces of modern globalization. Rather than merely preserving the past as folklore, he lived it and carried it into the twenty-first century.

His exploration of the challenges of urban life, Cristo Napulitano, was translated into English and presented in the United States at several academic events, including the Delirious Naples conference at Hofstra University in 2011. Several of his poems were published in the Journal of Italian Translation, Volume VI, Nos. 1–2 (Spring/Fall 2011).

Above all, however, Maestro Luciano Somma will be remembered by his family and friends for the deeply personal poems he composed for them throughout his life.

Among his principal published works are Ddoje voce ’e Napule (1968); La mia ricchezza (1971); Dimane (1977–1978); N’atu dimane (1982); ’E Ggranate (1990); Musica nova (1993); Momenti di versi (1997); Memorie d’Alba (1999); Brividi di ricordi (2000); Cristo Napulitano (2000); Il pianeta dei silenzi (2001); Ll’appuntamento (2001); and Immagini (2001).

~ By Cav. Charles Sant’Elia

A Farewell to Peppino di Capri

An old cassette tape that
belonged to my parents

Iconic Neapolitan singer, songwriter, and pianist Peppino di Capri died on July 11 at his home on his beloved native island of Capri. Born Giuseppe Faiella on July 27, 1939, into a family of musicians, he rose to fame in the 1950s by blending the emerging sounds of American rock ‘n’ roll and the twist with the rich melodic traditions of Neapolitan song. As Naples, the Amalfi Coast, and the islands of the Bay of Naples regained their international glamour from the 1960s onward, Peppino di Capri and his music became fixtures of both the international jet set and local social life.

A child prodigy, he began playing the piano at the age of four. During the Second World War, he performed for Allied soldiers while continuing his musical studies in Naples. By the age of fourteen, he was already singing and playing piano professionally in Capri and Ischia. In 1958, he formed the group Peppino di Capri e i Suoi Rockers, adopting the affectionate stage name that proudly proclaimed his Caprese origins. His early Neapolitan-language recordings, including Nun è Peccato and Malattia, quickly became popular successes.

Over the course of a remarkable career spanning more than six decades, he recorded beloved classics from the Neapolitan repertoire alongside numerous original compositions. Among his most enduring songs are Roberta, Champagne, Forever, and Saint Tropez Twist. His willingness to evolve musically allowed him to move seamlessly from the twist era into contemporary Italian popular music while remaining unmistakably Neapolitan in style.

In 1965, he opened for the Beatles during their Italian tour. He won the Sanremo Music Festival in 1973 with Un grande amore e niente più and again in 1976 with Non lo faccio più. In 1970, he founded his own record label, Splash, and in 1991 represented Italy at the Eurovision Song Contest with the Neapolitan song Comme è ddoce ’o mare.

His signature song, Champagne, released in 1973, became one of the defining love songs of modern Italian music. Reflecting the complexities of romance, marriage, and heartbreak, it established him as one of Italy’s great romantic interpreters and endeared him to successive generations of listeners.

In recognition of his extraordinary career, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Sanremo Music Festival in 2023. He continued performing well into his later years and, in 2025, became the subject of the successful Rai 1 biographical film Champagne – Peppino di Capri.

After a long illness, Peppino di Capri passed away on the island that had shaped both his life and his artistic identity. He lay in state in Capri, and the day of his funeral was marked by official mourning, with businesses and shops across the island closing in his honor.

By embracing the Neapolitan language and musical tradition while continually renewing its appeal for modern audiences, Peppino di Capri helped pave the way for generations of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Neapolitan recording artists. He demonstrated that Neapolitan music could remain rooted in its own traditions while speaking to audiences around the world. His legacy endures not only in his unforgettable songs but also in the renewed prestige he brought to Neapolitan music on the international stage.

Peppino di Capri is survived by his son, Igor Faiella, from his first marriage to Roberta Stoppa, and by his sons, Edoardo and Dario Faiella, from his second marriage to Giuliana Gagliardi.

~ By Cav. Charles Sant'Elia

In Search of the Devil’s Bridge with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato

In Search of… with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato explores mysteries where history and legend blur and conjecture begins—along with the strange, the macabre, and the uncanny. What follows suggests possible explanations—though not the only ones.

The Medieval Aqueduct of Salerno: The Devil’s Bridge

In the historic center of Salerno, rising unexpectedly between narrow streets and weathered facades, stand a series of dark stone arches.

They call it the Devil’s Bridge.

Constructed in the ninth century, the aqueduct once carried water to the Monastery of San Benedetto. Built during the Lombard period, its pointed arches cut sharply against the southern sky, a geometry at once practical and severe. For centuries it served the city quietly.

Local legend insists the aqueduct was not built by human hands alone. It was said that a Salernitan magician—sometimes identified with Pietro Barliario, a shadowy figure associated with forbidden knowledge—made a pact with darker forces to complete the arches in a single night. Others claimed the Devil himself assisted in its construction, leaving behind the structure as proof of his labor.

The name endured: Ponte del Diavolo.

19th-century engraving of the Medieval Aqueduct of Salerno,
known as Ponte del Diavolo ("Devil's Bridge").

In later medieval and early modern folklore, such remarkable feats of engineering often attracted supernatural explanation. Towering bridges and aqueducts—seemingly defying gravity—were natural candidates for diabolical attribution. Across Europe, similar structures bear the same name.

During the Middle Ages, the city was renowned for its medical school, the Schola Medica Salernitana, where Greek, Latin, Arab, and Jewish knowledge converged. It was a place where science and superstition coexisted uneasily. Where healing and alchemy, theology and experiment stood in tense proximity.

To some, the arches were a triumph of Lombard ingenuity; to others, they marked a threshold—an intrusion of something not entirely benign.

At night, the structure takes on another character. The arches loom. The spaces between them darken. For generations, townspeople avoided passing beneath them after sunset. It was said witches gathered there, spirits lingered in the shadows, and something watched from the empty span.

Was the Devil’s Bridge merely a marvel of early medieval engineering?

Or did the imagination of a fearful age project its anxieties onto stone and mortar?

……………………………………

Sebastiano III, Conte di Sciancato, a minor prince of forgotten Lucania, was said to have loved his wife more than his soul. When his beloved bride, Donna Lucrezia di Nerafiora, died in a tragic accident, he could not accept the will of fate. In his grief, he turned to ancient books and desperate learning, searching for a way to restore her to the world of the living. The attempt cost him his life. The ruins of his torre lie hidden, and when the earth trembles, some whisper he still searches for her.

An Introduction to Giambattista Vico and The New Science

Portrait of Giambattista Vico, attributed
to Francesco Solimena or his circle

“Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance.” ~ Giambattista Vico, The New Science

Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) was a Neapolitan philosopher, historian, and jurist deeply rooted in the civic, linguistic, and historical traditions of Naples. Though formally educated, he pursued extensive independent study, distinguishing himself from the dominant rationalist currents of his age. A serious childhood fall interrupted his early schooling, an episode noted by later biographers, though its long-term significance remains uncertain.

He spent most of his career as a professor of rhetoric at the University of Naples, where his study of language, law, poetry, and history became central to his philosophy.

Vico’s major work, Scienza Nuova (The New Science), offered a critique of Cartesian rationalism and of attempts to reduce history and civil life to geometric certainty. Rather than treating civilization as governed by universal formulas, Vico argued that laws, customs, institutions, myths, and histories must be understood as societies create and preserve them. This principle, known as verum factum (“the true is precisely what is made”), stands at the center of his thought.

In The New Science, Vico also proposed that civilizations move through recurring historical cycles, or corsi e ricorsi, passing through the divine, heroic, and human ages. Early societies, he argued, expressed themselves through myth, religion, and poetic imagination before giving way to more reflective and rational forms of political life. 

This cyclical understanding of history opposed the linear idea of inevitable progress favored by many Enlightenment thinkers and instead presented civilization as a process of rise, decline, and renewal. His attention to language, symbolism, memory, and custom anticipated later developments in the philosophy of history and cultural thought.

Little recognized during his lifetime, Vico’s work gained influence in later centuries among historians, philosophers, and scholars. Today, he is regarded as one of the foundational figures in the philosophy of history and as one of the earliest major critics of purely rationalist accounts of civilization. 

His enduring importance lies in his insistence that societies are understood not through abstraction alone, but through the traditions, institutions, and historical memory they inherit and preserve across generations.

~ By Antonio Isernia

Celebrating the Great Neapolitan Tenor Enrico Caruso in New York

Simona Frasca, Malina Mannarino, Prof. Giuliana Muscio, and Claudio Pagliara

On June 6, Director Claudio Pagliara welcomed the public to the inauguration of a new exhibition dedicated to the legendary Neapolitan tenor Enrico Caruso and his remarkable journey from Naples to New York and ultimately to the world stage. The evening featured a screening of the documentary Enrico Caruso, the Greatest Singer in the World—curated by Prof. Giuliana Muscio of the University of Padua for the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs—followed by the opening of Enrico Caruso: From Naples to New York, an exhibition first presented at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli in 2022.

The exhibition brings together rare photographs and historic recordings from the collections of the Istituto Centrale per i Beni Sonori e Audiovisivi. Curated by Prof. Muscio in collaboration with noted author and music historian Prof. Simona Frasca of the University of Naples, it traces Caruso’s rise from humble beginnings in Naples to international acclaim.

Prof. Muscio emphasized Caruso’s pivotal role in bringing opera to audiences throughout the Americas and described him as perhaps the first truly global celebrity. Long before the modern age of mass media, Caruso skillfully embraced emerging technologies such as film and the popular press to cultivate his public image. Muscio also noted that many remain unaware that Caruso appeared in a feature-length silent film and that the celebrated Neapolitan song Core ’Ngrato was composed in the United States by Cordiferro specifically for the tenor, reportedly inspired by the end of one of his romantic relationships.

Prof. Frasca highlighted another dimension of Caruso’s legacy: his pioneering use of recording technology. In addition to performing before audiences across Europe and the Americas, Caruso recorded both operatic arias and popular songs in multiple languages, allowing his voice to reach millions far beyond the concert hall.

Cav. Charles Sant'Elia with Simona Frasca and Prof. Stanislao Pugliese

Among the exhibition’s most notable artifacts are Caruso’s iconic slippers from Pagliacci, one of the sculptures he created for himself and friends, and several of the caricatures for which he was also widely admired.

The exhibition is the fourth of five musical initiatives promoted by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura of New York, in partnership with the United in Sound: America at 250 festival at Carnegie Hall. It will remain open to the public through August 31.

In addition to celebrating Caruso, Prof. Frasca discussed her new book, Mixed by Erri (Naples: Ad Est dell’Equatore, 2025), which examines the mixtape culture of 1980s Naples through the story of the Frattasio brothers. Far from being mere pirate music vendors, Frasca argues, the brothers were innovative DJs and cultural mediators who creatively blended Neapolitan and American musical influences for a devoted audience.

~ Cav. Charles Sant’Elia

New Directions: Investing in Southern Italy in New York

On June 10, members of the Comitati Due Sicilie attended the inaugural Investing in Southern Italy: Tourism, Special Economic Zone and Investments for Promoting the Economy of Southern Italy, presented by Fondazione Magna Grecia, ENIT SpA, and the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura on Park Avenue.

Following opening remarks by Consul General Giuseppe Pastorelli, Director Claudio Pagliara, Federico Tozzi of the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce, and Nino Foti of Fondazione Magna Grecia, attendees were treated to a series of presentations and panel discussions aimed at a diverse audience of investors, bankers, attorneys, academics, hospitality professionals, entrepreneurs, and technology innovators from both Italy and the United States.

Massimo Dell’Utri, Undersecretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, spoke proudly of his native Sicily and highlighted the establishment of more than 1,000 new businesses and approximately 20,000 new jobs across Southern Italy. He outlined a vision of the Mezzogiorno not merely as a destination for tourism or a market for outside investment, but as a dynamic economic center driven by local entrepreneurs competing successfully at both the national and international levels.

Luigi Sbarra, Undersecretary at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers with responsibility for Southern Italy, discussed increased coordination between the Italian government and the European Union, including more than €40 billion in funding initiatives directed toward the South. He also emphasized efforts to encourage domestic and foreign investment through favorable financing programs and coordinated lending initiatives.

Antonio Nicaso, a native of Calabria and professor at Queen’s University in Canada, reflected on Southern Italy’s historical legacy, from Magna Graecia through the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, while addressing contemporary issues of legality, governance, and risk management. Nicaso noted that multinational corporations have increasingly chosen regions such as Calabria and Campania for investment and expansion over the past two decades.

Alessandro Scortecci, Chief Investment Officer for Direct Investments at CDP Venture Capital Group, highlighted the rapid growth of technology and artificial intelligence sectors in Southern Italy, as well as the increasing international reach of Southern Italian firms, many of which have successfully expanded into the American market.

During the luncheon that followed, participants exchanged ideas, renewed professional relationships, and toured the institute’s exhibition dedicated to the great Neapolitan tenor Enrico Caruso under the guidance of Director Pagliara.

The conference presented a vision of a South that is increasingly retaining its talent, attracting investment, and generating new opportunities. Across the Mezzogiorno, exports continue to grow, while a new generation of entrepreneurs is choosing to establish and expand businesses in their native regions rather than seeking opportunities elsewhere. One technology entrepreneur cited during the discussions has even succeeded in attracting workers from Northern Italy by offering competitive wages and a higher quality of life in his hometown.

As many of the speakers observed, the strongest evidence of Southern Italy’s transformation lies in the growing number of international investors, business partners, and innovators who now view the region not as a peripheral economy, but as a place of opportunity and long-term growth.

~ Cav. Charles Sant’Elia

In Search of Dracula in Naples with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato

In Search of… with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato explores mysteries where history and legend blur and conjecture begins—along with the strange, the macabre, and the uncanny. What follows suggests possible explanations—though not the only ones.

Dracula in Naples: The Prince Who Crossed the Sea

In the sun-soaked streets of Naples, where saints and sinners share the same chapels, a stranger is said to have come to rest.

Vlad III of Wallachia

Not a saint, but a prince the world would one day call Dracula.

His name was Vlad III of Wallachia—Vlad Țepeș, the Impaler—a 15th-century voivod whose reputation for ferocity traveled faster than his armies. In life he fought the Ottoman Empire and carved his authority into a fractured frontier world. In death, his legend grew fangs.

Bram Stoker never set his Count in Naples, though he himself once lived there. Yet rumor insists that Vlad’s bloodline reached the Kingdom of Naples through marriage and exile. One of his daughters—Maria, according to local tradition—was said to have wed into Neapolitan nobility and carried with her relics of her father’s life: documents, portraits, perhaps even his remains.

In 2014, renewed attention fell upon a tomb in the cloister of Santa Maria la Nova. Its carved symbols—dragons, sphinxes, obscure heraldry—seemed to some observers to whisper of distant Transylvania. A dragon, after all, was the emblem of the Order of the Dragon, from which Vlad derived the name Drăculea—“son of the Dragon.”

Was it coincidence, romantic imagination, or the faint echo of a Balkan prince whose bones traveled farther than history records?

Most historians maintain that Vlad was buried in Romania, perhaps at Snagov Monastery, though even that grave remains uncertain. His body, like his reputation, resists confinement.

Detail of a marble tombstone depicting a knight's helmet surmounted
by a dragon's head in the small cloister of Santa Maria la Nova, Naples.
Courtesy of visitnaples.eu

Yet Naples is a city that specializes in layered truths. Greek foundations lie beneath Roman streets; ossuaries and catacombs run beneath Baroque churches. If a restless prince were to seek a second resting place, this would not be an impossible city.

No definitive inscription names him. No verified remains confirm the tale. And yet the carved beasts on that Neapolitan tomb—too suggestive to be entirely dismissed—continue to provoke speculation.

Did Vlad the Impaler make the journey in death? Or did Naples, with its love of relics and legends, simply adopt a foreign darkness and make it its own?

In the stillness of the cloister, where sunlight falls through arches onto worn stone, one can almost imagine a prince far from his native Carpathians—exiled even in death, suspended between history and myth.

Is Dracula merely a Transylvanian specter?

Or does a fragment of him lie still beneath Neapolitan sky, his legend drifting like sea mist through a southern city that has always understood how to live with ghosts?

……………………………………

Sebastiano III, Conte di Sciancato, a minor prince of forgotten Lucania, was said to have loved his wife more than his soul. When his beloved bride, Donna Lucrezia di Nerafiora, died in a tragic accident, he could not accept the will of fate. In his grief, he turned to ancient books and desperate learning, searching for a way to restore her to the world of the living. The attempt cost him his life. The ruins of his torre lie hidden, and when the earth trembles, some whisper he still searches for her.

Congratulations to Maestro Alberto Sant’Elia on Il Tramonto Mi Riempie di Nostalgia

Congratulations to Maestro Alberto Sant’Elia on the publication of his seventh book, Il Tramonto mi riempie di nostalgia, continuing his collaboration with Edizioni Reginè. This month, he will present the volume at the XXXVIII Torino International Book Fair.

Sant’Elia began his literary career in 2012 with Dentro la mia vita, followed by Gli uni e gli altri in 2015 and Il cancello di ferro battuto in 2020, works that together form a kind of literary trilogy. Throughout these writings, he has earned recognition for a cultivated contemporary napoletanità joined to a broader universal sensibility.

In Dentro la mia vita, readers encounter Vittorio, a choreographer who directs a ballet company. The novel draws the reader into the little-known world of historic dance, often regarded as exclusive and distant from popular taste. Beneath this artistic setting unfolds Vittorio’s hidden existence, marked by solitude, mystery, and involuntary isolation.

Gli uni e gli altri centers on three solitary figures: Vittorio, Eddy, and Susanna. Vittorio is restless and searching; during a stay in Naples, he seeks answers to unresolved questions within himself. Eddy, a cultivated bookseller, devotes himself to his work with quiet discipline, while Susanna appears as an elusive and enigmatic presence. Their lives converge in the great Parthenopean city amid the almost magical atmosphere surrounding an ancient bookstore.

In Il cancello di ferro battuto, Vittorio recounts his life through continual movements between past and present, creating a kind of social and generational photomontage. His reflections span childhood memories, youthful experiences in the Italy of the 1960s and 1970s, the promises and transformations of postwar prosperity, and the artistic and human searches that accompany him into the present day.

Born in Naples in 1957, Sant’Elia has long distinguished himself as an eclectic dancer, choreographer, and teacher of classical and modern dance. Since 1980, he has performed with many of the great Italian opera and ballet institutions, including the Teatro di San Carlo, the Opera di Roma, the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, and the Teatro Regio di Torino, among others.

In 1982, he joined the RAI dance troupe for the celebrated Saturday evening program Fantastico 3 alongside Raffaella Carrà, with choreography by Sergio Japino. The following year, he appeared in Fantastico 4 with Heather Parisi and choreography by Franco Miseria.

Beginning in 1984, Sant’Elia devoted himself increasingly to choreography, founding the “Espressione Danza” school and later the “Compagnia di Balletto,” through which he staged many of his own productions. In 2002, he served as choreographer for the well-known RAI 3 Neapolitan television series Un posto al sole. He has also worked in cinema as both a screenwriter and director of short films presented at various festivals.

Beyond his novels, Sant’Elia is the author of Cappotto d’Inverno, a collection of poems and stories, as well as the children’s books Il Galeone Magnifico and Il Viaggio di Tippi. He has likewise promoted numerous cultural initiatives throughout Campania and supported the work of other authors, including Ester Papa and Angela Santoro in their book and documentary Maronna re le Grazie, an ethnographic study of faith and tradition surrounding the Madonna delle Grazie di Acquavella in the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park.

~ By Antonio Isernia

Rudolph Valentino: The Latin Lover of Silent Film

Valentino and Nita Naldi in Blood and Sand (1922)

I have everything—and I have nothing. It's all too terribly fast for me. ~ Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino was born Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi on May 6, 1895, in Castellaneta, Puglia, Italy. After his father’s death, he struggled to find direction and, in 1913, emigrated to the United States with little more than ambition, seeking opportunity and a new beginning.

His early years in America were unsettled. Valentino worked a variety of jobs, including as a gardener and taxi dancer in New York City, before eventually making his way to Hollywood. There, he began with small film roles, often cast as a villain or exotic supporting figure, before gradually attracting wider attention.

His breakthrough came with The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), where his performance—and especially a memorable tango sequence—made him an international star almost overnight. He soon became known as the “Latin Lover” and the “Great Lover,” a screen persona defined by romance, elegance, and intensity. Films such as The Sheik (1921), Blood and Sand (1922), The Eagle (1925), and The Son of the Sheik (1926), his final film, confirmed his popularity and established him as one of the most recognizable actors of the silent-film era.

Valentino’s personal life was often in the public eye. He married actress Jean Acker in 1919, though the marriage was brief and troubled. In 1922, he married costume designer and artistic collaborator Natacha Rambova, whose strong influence over his career contributed to tensions with film studios and the press. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1925. Beyond these marriages, he was linked to several romantic relationships, reinforcing the image that made him famous.

During World War I, Valentino tried to join the United States military but was reportedly rejected because of poor eyesight. Although his direct connection to the war remained limited, the effort to enlist reflected his desire to establish himself fully in his adopted country.

At the height of his fame, Valentino became one of cinema’s first great male idols, attracting enormous audiences and inspiring an intensely devoted fan following around the world. His influence extended beyond film, helping define modern ideas of masculine glamour, celebrity, and romantic stardom.

Rudolph Valentino died on August 23, 1926, at the age of 31, following complications from surgery for a perforated ulcer. His death led to widespread public mourning, with thousands gathering to pay their respects in scenes of near hysteria. He is remembered today as one of early Hollywood’s defining figures—the original “Latin Lover,” whose image and screen presence helped shape the enduring mythology of romantic stardom in cinema.

~ By Antonio Isernia

In Search of Alaric I with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato

In Search of… with the Ghost of the Count of Sciancato explores mysteries where history and legend blur and conjecture begins—along with the strange, the macabre, and the uncanny. What follows suggests possible explanations—though not the only ones.

Alaric I: The King Beneath the River

In the fading years of empire, when marble cracked and legions thinned, a foreign king rode through the gates of the Eternal City.

Sack of Rome by the Visigoths
by Joseph-Noel Sylvestre (1890)

His name was Alaric.

In 410 AD, his Visigothic warriors entered Rome—not as traders or mercenaries, but as conquerors. For three days they looted palaces, stripped gilded statues, and carried away treasures that had glittered since the age of Augustus. Rome had been sacked before in distant antiquity, but not in living memory, and to many it felt like the beginning of the end.

Alaric did not linger to build a throne among the ruins. He marched south, perhaps dreaming of Sicily and Africa’s grain fields. Instead, he died—some say of fever, others of exhaustion, and a few of divine judgment.

What followed is stranger still.

Near the city of Cosenza, by the banks of the Busento River, his warriors are said to have performed an extraordinary feat. They diverted the river from its course and, in the dry riverbed, dug a tomb for their king, laying him to rest with the spoils of Rome—gold, silver, sacred vessels, perhaps even relics taken from ancient temples. Then the waters were returned to their path.

And the captives—so the Gothic chronicler Jordanes records in his Origins and Deeds of the Goths (Getica)—were slain, so that none could betray the secret.

The Burial of Alaric in the Bed of the Busento River, 1895
The Cyclopedia of Universal History by John Clark Ridpath

A king buried beneath flowing water—his tomb sealed not by stone but by current.

Is it merely legend—a poetic flourish from the twilight of empire? Or does Alaric still lie beneath the shifting bed of the Busento, his treasure undisturbed, the river running over his grave for sixteen centuries?

Archaeologists have searched. Treasure hunters have speculated. Modern surveys have mapped the terrain. No tomb has been found; no golden hoard has been drawn from the mud. Yet rivers move, earth shifts, and secrets do not always remain obedient to time.

When the Busento floods and the waters run dark after heavy rain, some in Calabria still recall the old tale—the conqueror of Rome, hidden where no empire can reach him.

Is Alaric’s watery grave only a story born from Rome’s long decline?

Or does he remain there still, enthroned in silence beneath the restless river?

……………………………………

Sebastiano III, Conte di Sciancato, a minor prince of forgotten Lucania, was said to have loved his wife more than his soul. When his beloved bride, Donna Lucrezia di Nerafiora, died in a tragic accident, he could not accept the will of fate. In his grief, he turned to ancient books and desperate learning, searching for a way to restore her to the world of the living. The attempt cost him his life. The ruins of his torre lie hidden, and when the earth trembles, some whisper he still searches for her.

A Reconstruction of the Baptistery of the Cathedral of Cumae

By Regnum_Neapolitanum

x.com/1309Regnum

The baptismal font of the Cathedral of San Massimo, the remains of which are still visible among the ruins of this basilica, is perhaps one of the most famous symbols of Paleochristian Cumae.

Commonly dated to a period between the 5th and 6th centuries, this baptismal font was located in a room of the Cumae cathedral specifically designated as a baptistery, located behind the presbytery, towards the western end of the building.

This baptistery consisted of a circular basin, with an external diameter of approximately 3 meters, made of small stone blocks, and whose bottom was reached by two concentric steps (three, if we count the parapet as a "step").

The entire basin was originally completely covered, both inside and out, with small marble slabs of various colors (mostly white, with some fragments of green and red marble), while the bottom consisted of a single circular slab of white marble.

One element of this baptistery that has now disappeared, but some remains of which were discovered by archaeologist Amedeo Maiuri during excavations in the late 1920s, was the so-called "tegurium," a sort of ciborium or canopy supported by columns that sometimes covered baptismal fonts in the early Christian era.

In the specific case of the Cumaean baptistery, the ciborium was supported by six columns, at least one of which must have been twisted.

Although some fragments of the small columns that supported the "tegurium" were discovered, unfortunately, no trace remains of the top of this structure.

In this reconstruction, I have placed a hexagonal architrave, made of wood, similar in structure to the one that once covered the contemporary (or perhaps slightly more recent) baptismal font in Nocera Superiore.