JOHN GIUSEPPE

Business man

I t’s almost 90 years that Harry’s Bar has opened in Venice, and since then it has become a legend. Actually its own story is legendary: Giuseppe Cipriani, a bartender at Europa Hotel in Venice in the late 1920s, had a good client, a rich young American whose name was Harry Pickering. Harry was devoted to Giuseppe’s bar, his exquisite manners but most of all to drinking. That’s why the Pickerings decided to cut Harry’s finances: to help his new friend Giuseppe lent Harry 10,000 lire (more or less 7,800 dollars today) and wished him good luck. A couple of years later, Harry showed up at Europa Hotel bar, ordered a drink and handed Giuseppe a 50,000 note. He didn’t just want to pay off his debt, he wanted Giuseppe to open his own bar but pose one condition: it should have been named after him.

An that’s how, on May 13th 1931, Harry’s Bar opened in Calle Vallaresso, a few steps behind Piazza San Marco. Since its very first day, the bar has been the favourite spot for international customers – Americans above others. Its atmosphere hasn’t changed through the decades, and being the birthplace of Bellini cocktail (white peach juice mixed with prosecco, dedicated to the 1500s Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini) and beef “carpaccio” (raw thinly sliced meet, named after another Venetian painter – Vittore Carpaccio –famous for his deep red) has helped building the legend.

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ascinated by Italian literature since the 1990s, in 1997 John played Primo Levi in Francesco Rosi’s movie “The Truce”. Then he ended up directing and interpreting “Questi fantasmi” (“These Ghosts”), by Eduardo De Filippo, at Teatro Mercadante in Naples in 2006. And two years later he was again on an Italian set, starring in Spike Lee’s “Miracle at St. Anna”. In 2018 John also debuted as opera director, choosing Verdi’s “Rigoletto”. “Cultural heritage implies a shared bond, it’s our history and our identity”.

To show his total devotion to his ancestry, in 2011 he became an Italian citizen and now he’s both honorary citizen of Aragona, province of Agrigento, and Giovinazzo, province of Bari, where his parents’ families come from.

Yet, it hasn’t been easy for him keeping his Italian side alive. Although he has been raised listening to the opera (his mother was a singer, his father knew all “Il Trovatore” by heart) Italian wasn’t spoken at home. John uses to tell a sad story about his mother’s childhood: she lost her mom at an early age, and her dad took her to an orphanage because he had to work. There, the nuns forbade her to speak any Italian, punishing her when she used it. Little Katherine was so scared that, even when she got home, she spoke only English and got mad at her dad if he dared use Italian or – worse – dialect. “I really wish I would have taken the time to learn Italian growing up. I have this strong tie with Italy: any time I go back, I feel like a child of the South”.

Elena Frigenti and Massimo Basile, both Italian journalists with thirty years of experience. We come from Tuscany (Firenze and Livorno) but have lived in Rome for twenty years before moving to NYC in September 2018. From the States, we write as correspondents for daily newspapers, magazines and press agencies.

If you’re wondering why we chose to brand us as “Franky in New York”, here’s the answer. First of all, the name is a tribute to Frank Sinatra, a great Italian American and a fulgid example of persistence. Besides, Franky is also one the most common names among Italian Americans, while New York is actually the city where any dream can come true. As Frank Sinatra sang, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere”…

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