my Italian Circle

Giuseppe Verdi: the most beloved opera composer of all times. This year the Verdi Festival in Parma opens with a special production of Un ballo in maschera by Sir Graham Vick.

The full episode is available to our top-tier patrons on Patreon.

Marcell Jacobs just became the world's fastest man at the Tokyo Olympics. Despite his name, he is 100% Italian. Today we listen to his voice and we talk about the debate on ius soli and the citizenship acquisition process in Italy.

Let's listen to Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti as she describes her experience of flying to space, living on the space station, and coming back to normal life.

This is an abridged version of the full episode available to our patrons on Patreon, with transcript, translation, and glossary.

Venezia è un pesce - Venice is a fish. It's also an upside-down forest, perched on top of wooden piles. Let's discover this amazing city from a different perspective by reading a few excerpts from Tiziano Scarpa's imaginative guide to Venice.

So, do we all understand each other easily throughout Italy? In this episode we discuss Italian accents & dialects (or better, languages!), and we hear a few sentences in Sardinian, Neapolitan, and Florentine - from the most difficult language to the one that's most similar to standard Italian. Can you understand everything they say?

This is an abridged version of the complete episode available to our top tier patrons. Have a look at our Patreon page to learn more.

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Concerto, opera, soprano, pianoforte... all over the world, people use Italian words when talking about music, and the influence of Italian is particularly strong when it comes to opera. In this brief introduction we discover some of these Italian terms, from aria to fiasco.

On our YouTube channel and on our Website you will find several videos and other content on music and opera.

This is an abridged version of the complete episode available to our top tier patrons. Have a look at our Patreon page to learn more.

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Elena Ferrante's L'amica geniale is written in perfect Italian, but her characters speak the Neapolitan dialect most of the time. Here we discuss what Italian and dialect mean for them and their future.

Did you read My Brilliant Friend? Did you like it? Let us know! Get in touch with us on Twitter, and have a look at our Website and our YouTube channel for plenty of free resources to learn Italian.

This is an excerpt of the full episode available for our patrons. Look for us on Patreon if you’d like to join the circle and give us a hand :)

L’amica geniale (in Italian) on Amazon.com (affiliate link)

My Brilliant Friend (English translation) on Amazon.com (affiliate link)

Our exploration of Italianness continues with an iconic character of the 1970s: Paolo Villaggio's Fantozzi. Not just comedy, but also social criticism.

This is a substantial excerpt of the full audio that is available to our most generous patrons, accompanied by transcript, a glossary and links. Have a look at our Patreon page if you'd like to join our circle!

What does it mean to be Italian? Let's find out together. Today we’d like to read with you two passages from the beginning of Beppe Severgnini’s book La testa degli italiani, where he tries to get inside the head of Italians, and to explain it to non-Italians.