Albert Bellson was Minnesota's mandolin maestro
Italian immigrant Albert Bellson was considered Minnesota's master mandolin player and teacher in the 1920s and '30s, an era when big string orchestras were all the rage. Despite his lofty stature, Bellson took time every week to walk from his downtown St. Paul instrument shop and music school to the Rondo neighborhood. That's where he coa...
House Representative in Colorado Wants Columbus Day Gone, Opposition Fights to Keep It
by Tara Houska "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Every year, school children across the United States will learn this poem; each October, federal employees will get a day off to honor a man who never stepped foot in North America but is widely associated with its alleged discovery. Over the past few years, however, C...
Festival Italiano at Belmar
Festival Italiano at Belmar will feature the finest Italian food, artisan vendors, chef demonstrations, Balistreri Vineyard's Children's Grape Stomp, performances by the flag throwers from Florence and live entertainment on 2 stages, strolling performers, a two day Bocce Tournament, plus more! Join us on the main stage on Saturday night fr...
NMM’s Amati ‘King’ Cello Holds Summer Court At The Met
One of the world's greatest musical instruments, the 16th-century Amati "King" cello, has temporarily left its home at The National Music Museum (NMM) in Vermillion for a special summer-long exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, running through Sept. 8. Says National Music Museum Director Cleveland Johnson, "The 'King' is one o...
Celebrate Ferragosto...Picnic and Bocce Ball!
Ferragosto, the mid-August Italian holiday, is celebrated in Italy with picnics and informal outdoor gatherings. The Italian Cultural Center invites you, and your family, to a picnic-style celebration to be held from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., at Tartan Park in Lake Elmo, on Saturday, August 10, 2013. The ICC event will take place near the bocce courts and...
Homemade dishes mark 29th annual La Festa Italiana
By Kevin Cole Plaudits came easily Sunday for the food, drink and fun at the 29th annual La Festa Italiana. This was the third and probably final year the festival was at the National Guard Center near 116th Street and Rainwood Road. "Next year, if we're ready, we will be at our permanent home at 132nd and Fort," said Dr. Ted Bolamperti,...
La Festa Italiana Getting New Home
A groundbreaking ceremony was held on Thursday for a new American Italian Heritage Society headquarters in Omaha. The building, at the corner of North 132nd and Fort streets, will provide space to educate the community about Italian culture and serve as a banquet facility accommodating up to 600 people. The group has been the sole spo...
Effort to renovate Santa Lucia Hall in Little Italy restores more than a building
A task to banish a resident raccoon and unplug a gutter has "snowballed" into an interior makeover of a 125-year-old former firehouse in Omaha's Little Italy neighborhood. But that's just the beginning. Owners of the narrow two-story structure — which has long been the Santa Lucia Hall — now want to launch a major capital campai...
The Light in the Piazza melds Broadway, opera
by Bob Curtwright Is "The Light in the Piazza" opera for the Broadway crowd or Broadway for the opera set? Well, it's sort of both, says Wayne Bryan, guest director for the lushly romantic tale about the meeting of a naive American tourist and a lovestruck Italian boy in Florence, Italy, during one summer in the post-war 1950s. ...
Italian round table book discussion - Tavola rotonda, "Pista nera" di Antonio Manzini
21 Nov 2015, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM. Italian Cultural Center - 528 Hennepin Avenue, Suite 501 - Registration - Member $15.00 (USD), Non Member $20.00 (USD). The ICC is excited to announce a new, very special Italian round table book discussion--- Tavola rotonda, "Pista nera" di Antonio Manzini! ICC native Italian...
Patsy Guadnola in CO Italian Hall of Fame
The late Patsy Guadnola, a beloved music teacher for many decades in Glenwood Springs who died this past March at age 92, has been inducted into the Colorado Italian American Hall of Fame as part of the class of 2016. She joins 111 other Italian Americans who made their mark in Colorado history and have been selected to the Hall of Fame ov...
Marco Griffero, co-founder of Pietro's Restaurant, dies at 87
When Marco Pietro Griffero Jr. worked the front of the house at Pietro's Restaurant, he wore a suit and tie and his trademark wingtip shoes. He called the busboys laddie or laddie boy — they turned over too frequently for him to remember their names. He loved to dim the dining room's lights. Was it too dark? "Well," he would say to a compl...