O'sole mio, Odessa - the Italian Lady of the Black Sea

Remember this next time you listen O'Sole Mio:

In 1794, Giuseppe De Ribas, born in Naples to a Spanish nobleman in the service of the Bourbons, founded the city of Odessa, organizing its port, fleet and trade, making it an important city for the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

Instead of Odessa, the "legendary city", as Charles King, professor of international affairs at Georgetown University in Washington, defines it in his recent book Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams, there was a village, Khadjibe?, inhabited by the Tatars. De Ribas came into contact with this strip of land almost fortuitously, as a liaison officer in the service of Admiral Grigorij Alexandrovich Potemkin, prince and lover of the Empress Catherine, whose goal, after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, was to extend to the west the great Russian empire.

De Ribas renamed the village Odesso, in homage to the old Greek colony that extended along the coast. Meeting place between Eastern and Western civilizations, multicultural by its very geographical nature, located at the mouth of major rivers, including the Danube, it soon became the beating heart of the southern empire of Tsarina Catherine, who by her own strength and geo-strategic importance renamed the female village, Odessa.

Soon, an Italian colony was established in Odessa, which in 1850 had about three thousand inhabitants, almost all of southern origin. The contribution that this community made to the foundation, development and economy of the Russian Empire was significant. Italian remained the official language of the city's economic activity. Road signs, passports, price lists were written in Italian, and the Italian community made a great contribution to the culture of the city at the gates of the Black Sea, especially in the field of architecture. Francesco Frapolli, originally from Scareglia in the Val Colla - Ticino, was appointed official architect of the city by Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu, in 1804 and it was he who designed the monumental Odessa Opera and the famous Trinity Church.

The famous song O' Sole Mio was written and composed in Odessa by Giovanni Capurro and Eduardo Di Capua who was in the city at the time. The music was inspired by a beautiful sunrise over the Black Sea and dedicated to the Oleggio noblewoman Anna Maria Vignati Mazza. The song was not immediately successful in Naples, only to become famous on the shores of the Black Sea and from there become a heritage song of world music.

Furthermore, great theatrical actors such as Tommaso Salvini, Ernesto Rossi and Eleonora Duse contributed to the formation of the Odessa Opera, making the city the most European and Mediterranean in the Russian Empire.

However, the weight of the Italian colony gradually decreased in the second half of the nineteenth century (in the 1900 census the Italian community numbered only 286 units), but the Italian imprint in the city is still evident today.

Odessa, a frontier city between east and west, actually boasts roots in southern Italy. Yesterday as today, the Black Sea coast remains a border region between Western and Eastern Europe. Rethinking the common roots would help to look at each other with brotherhood and union.

Thanks to Ida Valdicenti