Word: volpi
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...Italian-style tenors have always been a scarce commodity, and for the past two decades they have been growing scarcer & scarcer. Opera impresarios count on the fingers of one hand (Gigli, Lauri-Volpi, Borgioli, Schipa . . .) the lusty high-voiced Latins still capable of raising even moderate-sized rafters on either side of the Atlantic. Since the death of Enrico Caruso (1921), tenor departments of U. S. opera-houses have shown a steady decline. Today their audiences count it a privilege to hear their "Ridi Pagliaccios" and "La donna e mobiles" sung by anything bigger than a microphone voice...
This motion was adopted at massive Palazzo Venezia last week in a tumultuous closing of ranks around the Dictator by Italians who were saying in their own way, "We hold these truths to be self-evident. . . ." With Mussolini stood Grand Councilmen whose names the world knows: Marconi, Volpi, Balbo, Grandi and others, scarcely one of whom has not been the butt of anti-Fascist insinuations that he had "quarreled with Mussolini" at one time or another. Air Marshal Italo Balbo, once rumored "banished'' to the post of Governor of Libya by the "jealous" Dictator, has been in Rome...
...stratagems peculiar to Benito Mussolini, most typical is what he calls "changing the guard." A Finance Minister at the zenith of successful budgeting is abruptly returned to his private business, as was Count Volpi. A national hero like Atlantic-soaring Italo Balbo is swept off to rule an African province. Last week such a jolt came even to one of the "Four Men," the original Quadrumvirs who led the March on Rome while Mussolini gave orders from 400 miles away in Milan...
With pistol shot abruptness Italian "food profiteers" were whisked to jail, average Rome food prices downed slightly during the week, butchers were ordered to close shop Tuesdays and sell no beef Wednesdays, and II Duce rapped that "Fascist discipline" will keep Italians from overeating. Famed Count Volpi, stabilizer of the lira, again moved in Government circles which he left after one of the Dictator's orders to "change the guard" (TIME, July 16. 1928). Italy's tempo last week was definitely staccato-and the King came out openly...
...picture alone to Italy where a Hearstling approached U. S. Ambassador Breckinridge Long to see what could be done about having it exhibited in Venice. When Ambassador Long decided not to use his good offices in Mr. Hearst's behalf, the Hearst man went directly to Count Volpi, finally got permission to hang the portrait in the pavilion vestibule where it would presumably not interfere with the authorized U. S. exhibit...