alberto franchetti & il covo

Article taken from La gazzetta di Santa of June 20th 2014. A brief tale of Alberto Franchetti's life. An opera composer, less famous now than his contemporary Puccini and Mascagni. He was so in love with the bay of Santa Margherita he wanted to build there a castle and a theatre. Just the second was started, but it remained an unfinished skeleton until he was finished from other owners who transformed the first project in a very famous night-club! The Covo di Nord-Est.

​

If someone says Covo you immediately think to his famous guests: Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Mina, Liza Minelli, Brigitte Bardot, Ella Fitzgerald, Ornella Vanoni, Tina Turner and many others. It stands along the road that connect Santa Margherita to Portofino, directly on the sea in a place called Punta Pedale. During the years of economic boom you could meet there industrialists, politicians, beautiful womans, and crime boss. The same building was born however for different purposes. The area belonged to Durazzo family first and then to Centuriones and Costas. The first having the idea to build there a private palace was Baron Alberto Franchetti.

He was born September 18th 1860 in Turin, he studied in Venice, Munich, Dresden and 1888 his first opera to be represented was Asrael. His rich family payed all the expenses for that: the theatre (Reggio Emilia), a 90 musicians orchestra, a 100 singers choir and the soloists, the scenes etc. It was a success: the musical publisher Ricordi bought the work that was performed again in Bologna, Milan (La Scala), Genova and New York's Metropolitan. 1889 for the four-hundred years after the discover of America, the city of Genova commissioned to him an opera about that. It was Giuseppe Verdi to suggest Franchetti to the committee. On words by Luigi Illica, Critoforo Colombo had its premiere in 1892 (first Carlo Felice theatre and then La Scala). It's this maybe, his most famous work. He met of course his contemporaries Puccini, Mascagni and Umberto Giordano (who often was in Santa Margherita Ligure too). Another success was Germania, in 1902 premiered with Arturo Toscanini and Enrico Caruso in the cast. Other work was La figlia di Jorio after Gabriele D'Annunzio.

Alberto grew up in a very well-off family. His mother was the Austrian Sara Louise Rothschild, belonging to one of the most rich Jewish families (it seems that she took piano lessons from Chopin himself). The father, Raimondo Franchetti was a member of the Jewish Italian aristocracy. Then Alberto married Margherita Levi cutting off a sort of never-ending strife between the two most powerful Jewish families of Reggio Emilia. Even if with the perfect conditions for an happy life, Alberto never stopped to give scandal with his behavior and to spent money, enough to forced him to attempt suicide because of the increasing debts (but fortunately he failed and found a solution for them). Meanwhile the relation with Margherita was not a good one. They tried to start again traveling along Italy and once in Santa Margherita, they bought a land on the sea with the aim to build there a splendid palace. Nor this or in the following years the birth of two children could help them to repair their relationship. Alberto fell in love with the actress Erminia Bellati (called "the Wild" by D'Annunzio) and this forced Margherita to divorce. Alberto Gianolio wrote about him:

Alberto was a spendthrift. As an old-fashioned noble, he stayed apart from practical things and never wanted to be bored by them. During his various journeys he moved always without any luggage, preferring instead to buy in each place everything he needed for, and giving all at the departure, to the lucky and shocked footmen who took care of him during the stay.

(Euterpe in Cittadella: Peri Zuelli e Franchetti)

Alberto and Erminia lived in Florence. There in 1906 their son Arnold was born; but this wasn't a long relationship too. He soon fell in love with a 15 years old girl, Clara Marini (at that time he was 58) and they married in 1920: another daughter, Elena, and a divorce again. During the years at the turn of the century, Alberto Franchetti was more famous for his private life than for his music - and you could now understand why! He had a very busy life dedicated to his great passions: autos, women, glamour, cuisine, dogs, climbing and magic. In 1897 he founded the Club for Italian drivers, becoming in 1899 the president of. Since 1926 for two years, he was the manager at Florence's "Luigi Cherubini" Conservatory. The he moved to Viareggio where he died in 1942.

Another story should be tell about his heirs and their adventures, but coming back to the land at Punta Pedale and to the theatre next to the castle no wonder now why the project was abandoned leaving a big ruin on the sea. Then Santin Repetto (the owner of the first Portofino's café Caffé Excelsior) and Gianni Nava (owner of Hotel Splendido) rent what remains of the "Franchetti Palace" and transformed those ruins in a very famous (soon it was) night-club. Among its first guests we remember Edda and Galeazzo Ciano (daughter of Mussolini and her husband).

 

Since then how many great names of jet set spend time there and how many stars found there their first step to great careers!