Close

From Rocky Balboa to Botticelli, the City of Brotherly Love is one of America’s proudest Italian American locales, and this week’s guest is just the person to tell us how it came to be. Andrea Canepari is an Italian diplomat currently serving at the Directorate General for Country Promotion of the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Rome. He wa...

501

As a child, I was intrigued by Amedeo Modigliani’s art. Looking back, I’m not surprised. After all, Modigliani was a modern painter who depicted stylized women, men, and children, a people person who executed few landscapes or still lifes. To make his portraits of mostly seated figures, he focused on heads and torsos as if he were an Italian Renais...

332

I was born in Palermo, Sicilia, on July 12, 1966; we lived in the little town of Gangi. My dad, mom, her mother Giose and her father Giacomo and I traveled 11 days by boat to the United States of America. We arrived just in time to celebrate my second birthday at the port of New York on July 12, 1968. Our original stay was brief, and we returned to...

518

What a difference two years can make. Just ask Nick Sirianni. On Jan. 29 2021, he had his first press conference as the coach of the Philadelphia Eagles. Despite it being his first head coaching job in the NFL, expectations were high as Philadelphia was a team struggling just a few years after winning the Super Bowl. When he was introduced to the m...

573

A federal appeals court panel on Friday upheld a lower court decision to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that Mayor Jim Kenney discriminated against Italian Americans by renaming the city’s Columbus Day holiday to Indigenous Peoples’ Day. A year ago, U.S. District Judge C. Darnell Jones II ruled that the plaintiffs, including City Councilmember Mark Squ...

330

The earliest contact between the Philadelphia region and Italy occurred during the 17th century. Philadelphia became a magnet for northern Italian immigrants to British North America, who could profit by connecting the city to ports such as Genoa.  Many of these skilled Northern immigrants were musicians, artists, scientists, intellectuals, artisan...

561

Philadelphia's prestigious Academy of Vocal Arts will present Gaetano Donizetti's "opera buffa" Don Pasquale this February - with a hometown twist. Audiences will be taken on a sentimental adventure, as the opera will be set in mid-60s South Philadelphia. This production will evoke nostalgia for that time, from the golden age of the Italian Market...

332

The Head coach of Philadelphia Eagles, Nick Sirianni, is making headlines after a clip of him from Saturday night’s game started making rounds online, know about his salary and net worth. For those who are unversed, let us tell you, in the footage the 41-year-old coach seemed to be yelling and cursing “I know what the f*ck I’m doing,” at a ref, whi...

1699

Jerry Blavat, the fast-talking Philadelphia DJ and impresario known as “The Geator with the Heater,” has died at 82. His tireless promotion of pioneering Black artists of the 1950s and 1960s shaped the pop music culture of the city where he maintained an iconic presence for seven decades. Mr. Blavat first came to fame as a dancer on the teen-target...

659

On Friday, Jan. 20, and Saturday, Jan. 21, Italian contemporary theatre company Teatro delle Albe will perform “fedeli d’Amore,” or “Love’s Faithful,” at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. The company comes at the invitation of both Penn Live Arts and the Center for Italian Studies collaborating with the Italian Studies section of the De...

296