Word: della
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...little (pop. 12,600) Italian town of Borgo San Sepolcro, lying in the fertile valley of the upper Tiber, has a proud boast: one of its townsmen was the great Renaissance painter and mathematician, Piero della Francesca (circa 1418-92). Legend has it that Piero was a fatherless boy who took the name of his mother Francesca. He studied at Florence, returned to Borgo San Sepolcro to get his first major commission, traveled through Italy painting in Rimini, Ferrara, Rome, Arezzo and Urbino, then settled down to spend his last 14 years in his native town compiling two mathematical treatises...
Three days later an impressive array of government art experts descended on Borgo San Sepolcro. After spending a full day in careful inspection, Professor Ugo Procacci, director of Florence's Department of Restorations, announced: "The decision to attribute the painting to Piero della Francesca is unanimous. Even if the painting is not mentioned in original sources, it emerges beyond challenge, from other documents, that Piero della Francesca did work in this church on some panels...
...Italian language, a discreet narrator explains each scene before it starts. Aida (Sophia Loren) is a slant-eyed, dusky-skinned, full-lipped Ethiopian slave girl in the Egyptian court. She and the stone-faced princess (Lois Maxwell) are in love with a weak-mouthed warrior named Radames (Luciano della Marra). Radames is sent off to trounce the Ethiopians and is rewarded, all against his will, with the hand of the princess. Torn between love and guilt, he slips Aida a top-secret battle plan. He is nabbed and both are left to die in the well-lit dungeons beneath...
INDRO MONTANELLI, Italian political analyst and author, writing in Milan's respected Corriere della Sera...
...clearer by the strange language (the libretto, by Welsh-English Writer Myfanwy Piper, was sung in English). But the audience politely brought the fine English cast back for eight curtain calls. Wrotem Il Tempo of Britten's score: "A type of anthology of modern musical taste." Corriere della Sera applauded Britten's "sinister castle of sounds," but found it "difficult to establish even approximately what the new opera is meant to signify...