Chicago crooner Tony Ocean started a daily internet talk show after the pandemic closed many of the area venues at which he performed. The program, “Ocean’s Pit,” was recently named Internet Show of the Year at the Josie Music Awards, a ceremony that celebrates the contributions of the independent music industry.

“We’re thrilled with this honor,” Ocean says. “The show was our way of reaching out to people during a time when we couldn’t perform in person, and it continued to grow, even after things opened up.”

“Ocean’s Pit” can be heard Monday through Friday on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn. The show features a variety of guests and allows listeners to ask questions and make comments via the chat function. Episodes are occasionally broadcast from local restaurants, and Ocean’s wife, Laura, serves as co-host on Thursdays.

Ocean has made a name for himself singing the music of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennet, Bobby Darin and Tom Jones, and he achieved national acclaim playing the part of Dean Martin in the popular, long-running revue “The Rat Pack Is Back.” He has performed more than 8,000 shows at hundreds of venues around the country during his 30-year singing career. (tonyoceanmusic.com)

Embracing the Great American Songbook while fellow high schoolers were dancing to ’70s rock, Denise Tomasello has emerged as Chicago’s quintessential chanteuse.

Known as “Chicago’s Queen of Cabaret,” Denise Tomasello has been entertaining audiences in many of the area’s finest venues for decades. After a nearly three-year hiatus from show business, this acclaimed chanteuse is once again taking to the stage with her stirring interpretations of the Great American Songbook.

Tomasello is a native of Melrose Park, where she attended Proviso East High School. Her mother worked at Amling’s Flowerland, and her father was a delivery driver for the old Burny Brothers Bakery.

“As a child, I remember we would go to church at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and have these wonderful family dinners with my grandparents and other relatives,” Tomasello says from her home in north suburban Chicago. “Sunday was always my favorite day.”

Tomasello has had a lifetime love affair with the music of composers like Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Sammy Kahn and other authors of the Great American Songbook. The same can be said for the generation of singers she admired while growing up.

“When I was younger, I remember my parents and I always used to watch The Judy Garland Show on television,” Tomasello recalls. “I never really liked the newer songs, the rock or pop. I was never really into them, even when I was a teenager.”

Instead, Tomasello, along with her parents, listened to artists like Streisand, Sinatra, Martin and Bennett. Her uncle Joe Toullo played the saxophone and toured with the Lawrence Welk Orchestra, but it was Tomasello’s sister Diane who nudged her toward her chosen career.

“My sister’s boyfriend was starting a show band, and they were looking for a female singer, so she forced me to go to the audition,” Tomasello says. “I never really sang in school, but I did play guitar and sing around the house with my sister Debra. I was 19 at the time, and I was thrilled when I got the job.”

The band played hits from the ’70s throughout the Chicago area. Tomasello went on to form a trio of her own so she could showcase the repertoire that was near and dear to her heart. Local agent and music manager Tony Leanardi booked her into the Tack Room at the Arlington Park Hilton, where local bands held sway. Meanwhile, national headliners like Eydie Gormé, Steve Lawrence, Kenny Rogers, Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra Jr. and Nancy Wilson were performing upstairs in the Hilton’s prestigious showroom. The venue’s entertainment director heard Tomasello singing in the Tack Room and approached her.

“He came up to me and said, ‘What are you doing here? You should be downtown. I know this jewel of a room that is perfect for you.’ He told me he was bringing an agent in the following night, but he never showed up,” Tomasello says. “Oh well, that’s showbiz. But on Monday morning, the phone rang, and I was told an audition had been scheduled for me at Sage’s. I hadn’t planned on being a cabaret singer. In fact, I had never been to a cabaret show in my life. I had to go on cold and sing three songs. The entertainment director shook my hand and hired me for two weeks. That two weeks ended up being a six-year engagement.”

With a style reminiscent of Minelli and Garland, Tomasello took the local cabaret scene by storm. Settling in at Sage’s, she began refining her craft. In this intimate setting, she was able to not only make each song her own, but create a special bond with her audiences. Critics like Rick Kogan and Larry Kart wrote rave reviews, and the who’s who began to turn out in force.

“Sage’s was across the street from the Ambassador East’s Pump Room, so all the celebrities used to come in,” Tomasello says. “On any night, you could see Irv Kupcinet or Harry Caray. That was where I became a chanteuse. I loved it so much I sang there year ’round. I didn’t even want to take a vacation.”

That was a different era. From the 1950s through the 1990s, Rush Street had a vibrant entertainment scene, boasting clubs like Blondies, Billy’s, Yvette’s, The Acorn, Toulouse, P.S. Chicago and the biggest of them all, Mister Kelly’s. With her repertoire of classic torch songs like “Just in Time,” “Our Love is Here to Stay” and “Come Rain or Come Shine,” Tomasello fit right in and played them all.

Word of her talent spread beyond the Chicago area, and Tomasello was soon booking engagements at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Cinegrill and Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, as well as the 88’s and Townhall in Manhattan. She also got the chance to open locally for Don Rickles and Alan King. After she opened for Jackie Mason at the Tropicana in Atlantic City, the legendary comic called her, “an amazing singer and brilliant comedian. She is so natural on stage, like a female Dean Martin.”

Along the way, she developed a close personal relationship with Frank Sinatra Jr., which led to her working with some of the top names in the business.

At the time, Chicago was the capital of the advertising industry, and countless major commercials were being produced there. Tomasello’s voice reached a national audience on the soundtracks of ads by Toyota, American Airlines, Motorola and Oscar Mayer.

As the years went by, the entertainment scene changed dramatically. Rooms like Sage’s were closing, and deejays began replacing professional musicians. Tomasello’s career continued to thrive thanks in part to Ron Onesti, who started booking her at his Italian fests, where she headlined for years.

“I have to give so much credit to Ron,” Tomasello says. “He gave a great boost to my career. He is so wonderful to work for, and he treats his performers with such respect and courtesy.”

Things took a tragic turn when Tomasello’s mother passed away in 2017, followed by the death of her beloved husband, Don Conover, in 2020. Then, the pandemic struck, hitting the entertainment industry particularly hard. Tomasello ended up putting her career on pause for three years.

It was only a matter of time before Tomasello’s love for music and life reasserted itself. She made a triumphant return to the stage on June 12, 2022, when she performed “Judy, Liza, Barbra and Me” with her 17-piece orchestra at Onesti’s Des Plaines Theater. Then, it was back to her cabaret roots on Oct. 15, 2022, when she wowed audiences at Davenport’s Cabaret and Piano Bar in Chicago.

She also played a key role in Davenport’s Chicago Emerging Artist Showcase in August, during which five young musicians competed for the first-ever Denise Tomasello Scholarship. The grant was established by Tomasello to foster the careers of young cabaret singers on the local entertainment scene. She will soon be launching the Don Conover Foundation in loving memory of her late husband.

“Music has the power to heal. I really do believe that” Tomasello says. “It’s given me so much, and I’m happy to do my small part to give back.”

The above appears in the January 2023 issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture. To subscribe, click here.

A commercial artist for Fortune 500 companies early in his career, Carlo Beninati emerged as the go-to portrait painter of the previous century’s sports legends.

While some may experience an occasional “brush with greatness” in their lives, artist Carlo Beninati has spent a lifetime “brushing greatness,” creating portraits of the legendary sports figures of the 20th century. Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Mario Andretti, Muhammad Ali, Joe Montana, Walter Payton, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Derrick Jeter are among the countless luminaries Beninati has captured on canvas. Using bold colors and impressionistic backgrounds, Beninati depicts the prowess and charisma of his subjects in ways that no photograph could.

His portraits of individual legends have garnered him international renown, but Beninati is perhaps best known in the Italian-American community for a collage assembling a pantheon of greats who trace their roots to the Boot.

Commissioned by the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame, Beninati combined the likenesses of Joe DiMaggio, Vince Lombardi, Willie Mosconi, Yogi Berra, Mario Andretti, Eddie Arcaro, Rocky Marciano and others, both posed and participating in the sports that made them famous.

Beninati’s trajectory is all the more impressive given its humble origins. While many artists develop their skills at prestigious art schools or with the support of wealthy patrons, Beninati built a career on raw talent, diligence and the patronage of the Italian-American community.

“I was born in Humboldt Park, but our family moved to Elmwood Park before I was a teenager,” he says from his home in Geneva, Illinois. “I attended Elmwood Park High School where I was part of the first graduating class. I played football on the offensive and defensive ends of the team. That and playing baseball is what probably began my lifelong love of sports. As for art, my teachers always told me I was very good, which is probably why I continued to increase the time I spent drawing.”

Beninati set his sights on being an architect while continuing to hone his artistic craft. His first break came while he was dining at Armand’s Restaurant in Elmwood Park. Beninati’s parents mentioned to owners Mike Caringella and Armand Christopher that their son was an artist. After seeing his work, the restaurateurs agreed to display his paintings in the restaurant, where they promptly sold out. Caringella and Christopher touted Beninati’s talents on the national level, convincing UNICO to commission him to paint their Man of the Year portrait in 1962.

“Mike and Armand knew a lot of influential people, and they were very kind in promoting me and my work,” Beninati says. “They set up an interview for me at a top downtown art studio: Stevens, Biondi and De Cicco. That brought me to another level.”

Beninati began to work for Chicago’s major ad agencies on projects for Fortune 500 companies. This led to him rubbing elbows with government officials, business executives, entertainment personalities and sports stars. Two of the latter were Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams.

Beninati has done several portraits of DiMaggio, which like many of his works are reproduced and often sold at sports memorabilia conventions and auctions. “At first, DiMaggio was a bit distant, and as a celebrity, he was always very guarded,” Beninati recalls. “It was all business. He would set up his pens, put a pad down for his elbow, sign the works and give them to a notary nearby. It took a while before he began to trust me.”

His portraits of DiMaggio were seen by archrival Williams, and Beninati ended up doing similar portraits for the “Splendid Splinter.”

“With Williams, it was different,” he says. “I bonded with him, and he invited me to his home in Florida for a week where I had a marvelous time.”

Beninati’s reach was dramatically extended through his long association with the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame.

“I was the beneficiary of a lot of effort by (NIASHF founder) George Randazzo,” he says. “Through him, there were invitations to fundraisers for the Better Boys Foundation, Athletes in Action and other groups, which is how I met Joe Montana, Dan Marino and Anthony Munoz, and eventually painted their portraits.”

Beninati’s portrayal of Montana is truly iconic. Attired in his bold scarlet and gold 49ers jersey, the football superstar stares intently down the field. By blurring out the crowd behind Montana, the artist highlights his intense concentration, almost looking into Montana’s soul. Like many of Beninati’s works, the original image was taken from a photograph, but Beninati’s interpretation transcends a merely realistic depiction.

Another notable subject was Mario Andretti, whose wavy brown hair, tough guy smile and gleaming Formula One race car are captured in the corner of Beninati’s collage of Italian-American legends.

“People forget what a big star Andretti was,” Beninati says. “His and Andy Granatelli’s STP stickers were in practically every filling station in the country.”

Beninati emerged as the go-to guy when a portrait of a sports great needed painting. Mickey Mantle, Mike Ditka, Willie Mays, Dennis Rodman and Tiger Woods were among the luminaries, but the biggest of them all may have been Michael Jordan.

“I worked a lot with Michael Jordan during the 1990s,” Beninati says. “Like almost all of the subjects, he was extremely gracious and kind. But he was such a sought-after star at that time, almost like The Beatles, that his mother handled a lot of his day-to-day business. She was also a wonderful person.”

Beninati has served as a director of the Village Art School in Skokie and member of the Graphic Design Advisory Board at Elgin Community College, as well as on the board of directors of the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame and the Ways and Means Committee for Scalabrini Village. He and his wife of 40 years, Diane, each have three children and numerous grandchildren. In 1992, he was honored as Man of the Year by the Chicago Chapter of the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame.

Beninati’s work has continued into the new millennium. In 2004, he was commissioned to create a poster for NASCAR’s Brickyard 400 and ended up painting portraits of drivers Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt Sr. Extending his string of portraits of Yankees legends, he was also called upon by representatives of Derrick Jeter and Alex Rodriguez to set their images to canvas. In so doing, he has captured three generations of American sports heroes with his brush and pallet, creating images that will long outlast their on-field careers.

“I have been very fortunate to have been promoted and believed in by many important and influential people, and then to work with all these legends of sports and industry,” Beninati says. “They have always been very kind and gracious. I’m a lucky man.”

The above appears in the December 2022 issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture. To subscribe, click here.

Eminent Italian conductor Enrique Mazzola has been named as Lyric Opera’s music director designate and will become Lyric’s music director beginning with the 2021-’22 season. The transition will be overseen by the Lyric’s acclaimed and beloved music director Sir Andrew Davis, who plans on concluding his two-decade-long tenure at the end of the 2020-’21 season.

“I am thrilled that Enrique Mazzola has accepted Lyric’s invitation to become our next music director,” Lyric CEO Anthony Freud says. “He has accrued a wealth of international experience in his career to date, and he is tremendously well liked and respected by the Lyric Opera orchestra and chorus. Our artistic partnership has already started and is proving both very fruitful and extremely enjoyable.”

The following profile was provided by the Lyric Opera:

Widely recognized as one of today’s foremost interpreters and champions of bel canto opera and a leading specialist in French repertoire and early Verdi, Mazzola is in high demand worldwide as both an operatic and symphonic conductor. He is principal guest conductor at Deutsche Oper Berlin, and until recently served as artistic and music director of the Orchestre National d’Île-de-France in Paris. In recognition of his contributions to musical life in France, Mazzola was made a Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in October 2018. His arrival in Chicago follows his recent return to New York’s Metropolitan Opera for a spring production of “La fille du regiment” and his back-to-back summer engagements in Austria. He led a “phenomenal, monumental” “Rigoletto” (Opern magazine, Germany) at the Bregenz Festival and made his Salzburg Festival debut in August, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in a new staging of Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld” that marked his first collaboration with director Barrie Kosky.
Following the performances of “Luisa Miller” at Lyric Oct. 12-31, Mazzola’s 2019|20 season includes his return to the Zurich Opera House (“Don Pasquale,” new production), Vienna Symphony Orchestra for concerts at the Musikverein and Bregenz Festival, Deusche Oper Berlin (Meyerbeer’s Le prophète and Dinorah), Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, Glyndebourne Festival Opera (L’elisir d’amore), Taiwan Philharmonic, and symphonic concerts in Germany. Future plans include his return to London Philharmonic, both in London and on tour in Europe.
In addition to his extensive conducting roster, Mazzola is the first international brand ambassador of Tuscany’s Consorzio del Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, promoting the culture of Vino Nobile and the surrounding Montepulciano wine region in Italy and abroad. It’s an area he knows well, having served as artistic director of Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte in Montepulciano from 1999 to 2003. As Mazzola told Chicago Wine Journal in 2016, “The life of an ambassador is never being at home. That’s basically true of a conductor, as well.” Mazzola has promoted Vino Nobile whenever the opportunity arises, offering insights into the region, its history, and its wine production.

The mere mention of New York City, Broadway and cabaret conjures a world of glitz, entertainment and glamor. Perhaps that’s why, despite the ascent of digital forms of entertainment, the cabaret tradition has continued to thrive in what Frank Sinatra so proudly sang about as the “city that doesn’t sleep.”

As much as anyone, Marieann Meringolo represents this intimate art form.

Meringolo’s name has appeared on the marquee at countless NYC venues, including the Friars Club, the Rainbow Room, Feinstein’s/54 Below, the Hammerstein Ballroom and Central Park’s Tavern on the Green. Her vocal talents are often compared to another Big Apple icon, Barbara Streisand, and Meringolo has built a reputation as a stellar interpreter of her songbook as well as those of many legendary Broadway composers.

Nowhere is this more evident than in her most recent project, “Between Yesterday and Tomorrow, the songs of Alan and Marilyn Bergman.” Known for penning such landmark melodies as “Windmills of My Mind” and “The Way We Were,” the gifted songwriting couple takes center stage in Meringolo’s review, which was nominated by BroadwayWorld.com for “Best Tribute Show.”

If anyone knows New York’s entertainment scene, it’s Meringolo.

“I grew up in an Italian-American household in Brooklyn,” Meringolo says from her home in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. “My mother spoke Italian before she knew English. She spoke in a Sicilian dialect, and I have fond memories of she and my grandmother and great-aunt sitting around the kitchen table in Brooklyn, speaking in Italian.”

While Meringolo grew up listening to “everything from opera to Frank Sinatra and Johnny Mathis,” there were no professional musicians in her family, and she didn’t have any formal musical training. Instead, she was encouraged by her music teachers and friends at school.

“When I was 14, I sang ‘Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina’ at the school talent show, and the reaction was amazing,” Meringolo says. “I was this shy kid who nobody paid attention to, then I became ‘the kid with a voice.’”

Shortly after graduating from high school, Meringolo began entertaining the summer visitors on Long Island.

“They were small shows, just me and a piano, but it was there that I fell in love with the cabaret setting,” Meringolo says.

Her biggest exposure came when she appeared several times on The Joe Franklin Show. A legend in the New York area, Franklin’s show ran for almost 40 years, and guests included six U.S. presidents, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Bruce Springsteen. Meringolo is also strongly identified with an even bigger NYC legend, Streisand, whose material is a major part of Meringolo’s shows.

Yet while few attempt it, and many fall ridiculously flat while trying to cover Streisand’s material, Meringolo’s power, range, depth and precise vocalization of each musical syllable makes her, if not equal to, at least worthy of covering the legendary singer’s songs.

While New York critics are known for savaging performers, they seem to agree. The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Cabaret Scene, Theatre Wire, and the Times Square Chronicles have not only started but continue spreading the news about Meringolo.

REVIEW

“Between Yesterday and Tomorrow, the Songs of Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Recorded Live at the Iridium.

While many modern singers see a song and its lyrics as a showcase for their voice, Marieann Meringolo sees her voice as a showcase for a song and lyrics.

That talent shines through in her latest CD, “Between Yesterday and Tomorrow, the Songs of Alan and Marilyn Bergman.” It helps, of course, that the Bermans have written some of the most memorable lyrics of their generation, the most notable of which is the first cut on the album, “The Way We Were.” Many try but few manage to come close to Streisand’s interpretation. With a timbre, vocal range and syllabication remarkably close to Streisand’s, Meringolo makes every precious word register in your heart. The same can be said for her rendition of “It Might Be You,” as Meringolo brings out the poetry and romantic idealism of a song as pure as love itself.

Songs like “Nice and Easy” and “That Face” are done in medley style, in keeping with the cabaret tradition. “Love Makes the Changes” takes on a more bluesy tone, setting the stage nicely for the Bergmans’ other Hollywood classic, “The Windmills of My Mind.” Accompanied by a trio, Meringolo interprets these and other songs in a simple, vocally driven manner, letting each song paint a picture with each listener filling in the emotional colors.

Growing up blind and with a variety of medical conditions, 27-year-old Cory Bolletino of Mount Prospect attended mainly special needs schools, and occasionally had to sit out of school for medical reasons. He didn’t have much of a chance to make childhood friends, he says, so his world centered around his mother Veronica, father Rick, and music.

“The way I used to relax was through music. Music was my best friend,” says Bolletino. “It will always be my best friend.”

He has spent years listening to singers like Andrea Bocelli, Julio Iglesias, Marco Antonio Solis and Camilo Sesto, and likes that 1950s-’60s male vocalist style. He hears the music on WEEF-AM, including the shows of Paolo Ciminello and Tony Napoli.

In fact, his mother says her son taught himself to speak Italian and Spanish by listening to radio.

One day, he heard a radio commercial for Pescatore Palace in Franklin Park, and persuaded his parents to take him there.

“Cory asked the waiter if he spoke Italian, and the waiter called over the owner (Vito Barbanente) and said, ‘you have to meet this young man,’” says Veronica Bolletino.

From there, it didn’t take long for Cory Bolletino to sing for Barbanente.

“I’ll sing for anybody. I’m not afraid,” Bolettino declares.

On one of the Bolletino family’s visits to Pescatore Palace, a lightning storm broke out, forcing both patrons and staff to stay inside the building. Bolletino decided to pass the time by singing for Elio Barbanente, Vito’s son. The friendship between the Bolletinos and the Barbanentes grew, and Frank Pellegrino, Pescatore Palace’s general manager, says Cory now sings at the restaurant most Friday evenings starting at 6 to 6:30 p.m.

Cory was aware that Vito knew international superstar Andrea Bocelli. According to the Franklin Park Herald-Journal, Barbanente repeatedly invited the famous crooner to dine at his restaurant whenever he was in town, and Bocelli eventually took him up on his offer. (http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/franklin-park/news/ct-fhj-andrea-bocelli-tl-0623-20160617-8-story.html)

Hoping to meet his idol, Bolletino asked Barbanente if he could meet Signor Bocelli.

“I told him one of my biggest dreams was to meet Andrea and sing for him,” Bolletino says. “I knew it wouldn’t happen, but Vito made it happen.”

Before Bocelli’s concert at Allstate Arena on June 10, 2016, Barbanente took Bolletino and his parents to a basement area near the dressing rooms. Bocelli and his wife, Veronica, were already in the room when the Bolletinos walked in. Barbanente introduced them.

“Andrea said, ‘your Italian is better than my English,’” Bolletino recalled with a chuckle. “I asked if I could sing for him, and his wife Veronica led him to the piano.”

Bolletino sang Bocelli’s song, “Champagne” while Bocelli played the piano, accompanying him. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjJJxbZzlWQ)

“Afterward, Andrea said, ‘Your voice will be the next voice that lights up the world,’” Bolletino recalled. “Coming from Andrea Bocelli, that means a lot.”

They said goodbye and hugged before the Bolletinos left and Bocelli prepared to give his concert.

In the year since, Bolletino has recorded a CD with Francesco Marino, who heard him singing and asked to make the recording. Cory calls him “an angel from Italy.”

On a Saturday in March, Marino did the lighting and tech for “Cory in Concert,” a special evening at Pescatore Palace.

And on June 4, he sang at the annual feast of the Societa’ San Giovanni Bosco SS Crocifisso di Ciminna in Stone Park.

“He spends a lot of his time listening to music, learning new songs, and working on music,” Veronica Bolletino said.

Cory Bolletino said he is hoping that music will take him further. And though meeting Andrea Bocelli has fulfilled one of his dreams, he has a couple more that have not yet been fulfilled.

“I’d like to be a singer, and to go visit Italy,” he said.

More of Bolletino’s music can be heard on Youtube.com by entering Cory Bolletino as a search term.

Nobody puts on a show quite like an Italian. And when the showman is Riccardo Muti, leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a concert of Italian opera masterworks, you know you’re in for a treat.

My wife and I leapt at the opportunity to attend after learning about the program in the June installment of Artbeat. But mere words on paper couldn’t possibly prepare us for the operatic thrill ride to come.

Our seats were on the fringe of the first balcony, where it hovers above the left side of the stage. From that vantage point, we enjoyed an unfettered view of one of the world’s greatest conductors leading one of the finest symphonies on the planet in a performance guaranteed to fan the flames of italianità in anyone with a pulse.

The first half of the program belonged to Verdi and it flew by, hurtling from the overture to “Nabucco” through a quartet of iconic choruses and coming to rest after the overture to “I vespri siciliani.”

The orchestra played with poise and passion under Muti’s deft command. Often with gestures as simple as a raised index finger, a hand cupped to the ear or a flick of the wrist, he inspired a performance of both power and grace. At 150 voices strong, the chorus was otherworldly as it effortlessly soared from ephemeral to thunderous and back.

The second half was more esoteric but just as stirring, featuring intermezzi from Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” and Mascagni’s “Cavelleria rusticana” and culminating in the prologue to Boito’s “Mefistofele.”

Craftily weaving the sacred and the profane, Boito’s choral tour de force was brilliantly rendered, with the symphony chorus soaring as the Heavenly Hosts, the Chicago Children’s Choir cavorting as cherubim, and bass Riccardo Zanellato stealing the show as the sly and irreverent Devil himself.

Having roped the Almighty into a wager for Faust’s soul, Satan stalked off the stage, leaving the combined choruses to cleanse the prologue with a fever’s pitch of piety that brought down a packed house.

I’m embarrassed to admit that this is the first time I’ve had the sublime pleasure of witnessing the maestro in action despite his long tenure in the Windy City. He’s a true international treasure, and we’re unfathomably lucky to have him so close at hand. The elation I felt as the applause died down was soon tempered with regret as I considered the years of missed opportunities to support him as an audience member and patron.

As I parsed the list of benefactors in the program book, I discovered that I wasn’t along in that regard. Of the more than 2,000 annual donors, only 60 bore Italian surnames, comprising a scant 3 percent of the total when our presence in the general population is nearly twice that.

According to Fra Noi correspondent Judith Anne Testa, the opposite was the case during the Italian Renaissance, when patronage of the musical arts was a point of pride for countless aristocratic families. The Medici alone maintained its own group of professional singers, and the very first madrigals were committed to paper by musicians in their employ.

Few of us today have the financial resources to singlehandedly launch a musical genre. In fact, most are hard-pressed to muster the $1,000 needed to crack the first level of CSO sponsorship. That’s certainly not in my budget, but I do have $100 to toss into the hat, and I’m guessing some of you do, too.

I’d like to propose that we pool our resources, call ourselves the Medici Guild, and together aim for the $1,000 minimum that will earn us a listing in next year’s program. (For details, click here.) As Italian Americans, we have a proud legacy of patronage to uphold, and there is no worthier recipient of that support than our beloved maestro.

In only three years, Antonio “Tony” Fiasche has led the effort to pluck nduja, a spreadable salume, from the obscurity of a small Calabrian town and make it something of a sensation in the gourmet world.

The Wall Street Journal and foodie magazines have been salivating over it, and chefs worldwide are inventing ways to use it in pizza, vinaigrette, aioli, arrabiata, marinara, hollandaise and more.

The skyrocketing acclaim of Fiasche’s company, Nduja Artisans, has engendered plans to open a gourmet deli just west of the Loop in the near future. But like many success stories, Fiasche’s began decades earlier.

His father, Agostino, arrived as a teenager in the mid-1970s, got a job washing dishes at an Italian restaurant, and worked his way up to chef at the former Fettucine’s in Norridge. Along the way, he met and married Fiasche’s mother, Anna, who arrived from Naples as a young teen in the 1970s.

Both Agostino and Anna were professional chefs by the time they opened Ristorante Agostino Gustofino on Harlem Avenue on Chicago’s Northwest Side in 1985, with Anna doing the cooking at first.

“When they opened the restaurant, the word ‘foodie’ didn’t exist, but they were focusing on quality,” says Fiasche, 33.

One day. a customer who frequently ordered foodie-type products online brought them a rarity he had found: a spicy, spreadable sausage called nduja (pronounced en-DOO-zha in the Calabrian dialect, though commonly pronounced en-DOO-ya in America).

“My dad tasted it and said, ‘No, this is not the way it’s supposed to taste. How much are they charging for this?’” Fiasche recalls. It turns out that Coccorino — Agostino’s hometown in southwestern Calabria near the Tyrrhenian Sea — is just five minutes away from Spilinga, which Fiasche credits as the birthplace of nduja.

In fact, he recalls sampling nduja and other local specialties during family visits to his grandparents in Calabria when he and his sisters were younger.

Father and son started experimenting with making nduja, soppressata, coppa and other salumi on Mondays when Ristorante Agostino was closed. Then they leased a USDA-approved food processing facility in Franklin Park and began grinding, creating, drying and packaging their salumi. Their drying room alone can fit 70,000 pounds of salumi.

Fiasche sent samples to chefs around the country and received positive responses.

“One chef told us it was the best in the country, and he got us into Bon Appetit magazine,” recalls Fiasche, who runs the salumi business while his parents and one of his sisters work at Ristorante Agostino.

Another big break occurred when Eataly decided to carry Nduja Artisans products, and then Marianos did the same. The company’s website (ndujaartisans.com) lists specialty shops throughout the United States and Canada that carry the its nduja and other salumi.

Nduja differs from most salumi in that it contains about 30 percent vegetables, specifically Calabrian sweet and hot peppers. It also contains humanely-raised pork and pork fat sourced from farms in the Midwest.

Njuja has a spreadable consistency, and the simplest way to eat it is to spread it on plain or grilled bread. “Think of it as pork butter,” said Fiasche. “It has a higher fat content than regular salumi.”

It melts when heated in a pan, and chefs often use the rendered pork fat’s flavor profile to give depth to pasta sauces, vinaigrettes and other types of sauces.

Fiasche is looking to purchase his own food processing facility within two years and is gearing up to open Tempesta Market at 1372 W. Grand Avenue in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood later this year. The market will serve up njuja and other salumi products, sandwiches, prepared foods and specialties.

The name tempesta, which means storms or high winds, is a nod to the Windy City, he says,.

But it also perfectly fits the way Nduja Artisans has taken the market by storm in the past few years, as nduja grows in popularity and brings another Italian delicacy to more and more menus and tables around the world.

In Sorvino’s mind, it’s just another outlet for him as an artist and as an Italian American.

“Cooking is an art. The way we do it it’s an art. It’s an art and the results are almost immediate,” Sorvino says. “We celebrate life. As an Italian, cooking is life. Food is life. You get a chance to sit down at the table and talk with people about your day. It’s the way momma or papa or whoever is cooking expresses love and it’s the way whoever is eating receives the love. We Italians understand it, others still have not learned it and that’s why the Italian food craze swept America. Pizza and spaghetti with meatballs are American staples.”

The cookbook, “Pinot, Pasta and Parties” was the idea of Dee Dee Sorvino, an Emmy Award-winning political pundit and Paul’s wife of two years. According to Sorvino, Dee Dee’s came up with the idea in response to the many requests for recipes they would receive from dinner party guests.

“She said let’s do it and I said, ‘Ok, let’s do it,’” Sorvino says during a phone interview from his Los Angeles home.

This is not the first food-related venture for the 78-year-old Sorvino. He owned a restaurant in New York and also had a line of pasta sauces marketed as “Paul Sorvino’s Foods,” which will be re-launched soon. The book, described by Sorvino as “Pan-Italian,” features both general Italian recipes and Neapolitan recipes that he describes as authentic. Talking to Sorvino, who says he’s been cooking since he was 12-years-old, it doesn’t take long to realize that he is both knowledgeable and passionate about food and not just another celebrity who licensed his name for another cookbook.

“No, no. We wrote this book. We cooked here in our kitchen every day, sometimes 10 to 15 hours a day with a photographer here. We worked very hard on this book,” Sorvino says.

“What I think is extraordinary about this book, it’s the best Italian cookbook that I have seen and I’ll tell you why,” Sorvino says. “A lot of the Italian cookbooks that you’ll find are based on recipes that have been enhanced or changed and what you end up with is a hodgepodge of things that were once were authentic in Italy. My people are from two places in Italy, Molise and Naples, which for my taste, has the finest food in the world. Naples gave us all the American staples like Marinara sauce, Neapolitans invented this.

“Neapolitan food that you find in most restaurants today is not made in the original way. Time has a way of butchering everything. But the book is absolutely authentic from the way things were made 100 years ago.”

When Sorvino married Dee Dee, he says she was not very skilled in the kitchen but quickly absorbed knowledge from him.

“Before, when we made dinner, she would make reservations. She learned cooking from me. I wasn’t aware that she was doing it, but she just looks at something and understands it,” Sorvino says.

Dee Dee also contributed a craft cocktail recipe for each of the book’s ten chapters.

“Ten beautiful drinks and if you do drink any of them, you’ll need railings to hold onto when you walk away from the table,” Sorvino says, laughing.

Cooking is something Sorvino says he learned from his parents beginning at age 12 and the appreciation of food is something inherent with Italians and Italian Americans. He says he also taught his three adult children how to cook when they were kids: actors Mira and Michael Sorvino along with daughter Amanda Sorvino, who rescues horses for a living.

“There is no Italian that doesn’t love food. There is food that doesn’t love Italians, but there is no Italian that doesn’t love food,” Sorvino says, adding a caveat about the book. “Those who are on a diet might want to avoid this book. This is not diet food even though it is generally acknowledged by the latest science that the Mediterranean diet is the best for your heart and your health, but you have to watch your portions.”

Sorvino says while Dee Dee and he end up eating out a lot, they still cook at least one meal at home a day.

“I cook every day at home. We go out to restaurants three to four nights a week but all the other days, breakfast, lunch and diner is cooked right here,” Sorvino says. “Cooking is part of our everyday life. In a way we’d rather eat here because the food is almost always better. It’s certainly as good as and almost always better than restaurants that we would go to.”

He also says he won’t go somewhere that isn’t up to his standards, but that splitting time between New York and Los Angeles presents several great options for eating out.

“There are many great restaurants in New York, Le Cirque, so many good ones. In Los Angeles, there are some very good ones like Da Pasquale, or Marino Ristorante, one of the finest Neapolitan restaurants in the country. These are owned by Neapolitan families who moved here 30 or 40 years ago and kept everything intact, so everything they cook is exactly the way it was cooked in Naples.”

Authenticity essential to Sorvino and something that he says most cookbooks and restaurants continue to fail at.

“The ragù, or sauce — the way Neapolitans make it is very simple. But the way others make it is to put onions and garlic in it. Neapolitans never do that. Another one of the things the book teaches is what olive oil to use. What you fry with, what you sautè with and what you drizzle with is different. Everybody is using extra virgin olive oil, but you shouldn’t be cooking with that. It has a low smoking point, it gets bitter very quickly and then you’ll have to add sugar or onions to your recipe, but that’s wrong. You use regular olive oil and if you fry, you use light olive oil. These are things I teach in the book. Also, you should never use garlic and onions in the same dish. They cancel each other out.

“With cooking, you should not be able to taste the condiments,” Sorvino goes on to say. “If you have a marinara sauce which is a garlic based sauce, you should not be able to taste the garlic. That means you added too much garlic. You should just be able to taste the sauce.”

Sorvino says most Italian cooking isn’t so hard but is often made to seem hard, scaring some people from trying to cook.

“Most people complicate Italian food so much that you don’t even want to have it anymore. One of great things about Neapolitan food is that it’s extremely simple. The sailors in the Bay of Naples 100 years ago would have to make a lunch so they took some olive oil and tomatoes with them on the ocean. They’d take their catch and add it to the simple sauce that became known as marinara sauce. Marinara means sailor in Italian. The marinara sauce was invented by sailors.”

People just starting out cooking should not be afraid to fail, he says. “I knew how to cook really well by the time I was 15 but really improved over the years. The meatballs I make are my mother’s recipe and I show how in the book. I started making them when I was 30 but they didn’t come out great. It took me 10 months and about 12 tries to make them right. Why? Because the recipe is not the only answer. You have to get the feel of making them. That’s a particular thing. If you follow exactly what I say it may not come out well. The meatballs took me a long time and I was a pretty darn good cook by the time I started. So you just have to try again. You don’t learn from your successes. You learn from your failures.”

Another common food crime is overloading ingredients, according to Sorvino.

“If you are making primavara pomodoro which is essentially a marinara sauce made with onions but not garlic, you should not be tasting the onions. If you put oregano into a dish, you should not be tasting the oregano, it kills it completely. Most Italian restaurants throw in so much oregano that you can’t eat the dish. There’s a lot of things like that which I’m very autocratic about and I make no apologies for my dictatorial take on it,” Sorvino says.

Sorvino says another big mistake restaurants make is with simple dishes like pasta e fagioli.

“Pasta e fagioli is a simple dish. This dish is made with regular olive oil, pinched garlic, cannellini beans, and some tomato sauce or tomatoes that you put in it. A lot of restaurants serve it as a soup, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the real Neapolitan pasta e fagioli. When I had my restaurant I had to teach the chef how to make it the real Neapolitan way. Then someone would order it and then ask the waiter for cheese. The waiter was instructed by us to say, ‘Sir, Mr. Sorvino does not allow us to bring cheese to the table for this dish. If you want it, it’s right over there on the table but if I bring it to you I’ll be fired on the spot.’ Cheese completely destroys pasta e fagioli.

Looking ahead, Sorvino says his wife and he have already been asked to do another cookbook; are planning to re-launch Sorvino Foods, this time adding wine and pizza to the selection of sauces; and are considering doing a cooking show.

“We are going to be adding wines and we are developing a way to make pizza on a national scale so that it retains its flavor and freshness. That’s a challenge for us and we’re hoping to have that out in six months to a year. As for a cooking show, we have been approached about it and we’d consider it if it’s done the right way. It has to be something that makes sense for Dee Dee and me to do.”

Sam Franco takes a moment to collect himself before rising from his easy chair. At 92, he doesn’t move quite as quickly as he used to, but he takes a few slow, smiling steps to his right. He bends over to the flip the switch on and old amplifier, and then sits down at a synthesizer keyboard. “Don’t even ask me what I’m playing,” he says. And he begins.

Franco’s playing is slow and measured, in the same vein of his approach to the accordion, his one true musical love. He attributes his style to — of all things — laziness. “ I was always a little bit on the lazy side,” he says. “I never want to do anything too exerting. My head is too laid back.”

A well-known fixture on Chicago’s North Side, Franco has been teaching, repairing and performing on the accordion for longer than the average person spends on earth. Accordion has been his main instrument since he was 10 years old, some 82 years ago. But Franco’s guitar prowess came in handy when he was faced with a changing musical landscape and the arrival of those musical mop tops from Liverpool. “In ’64, The Beatles came and everybody and their brother wanted to play guitar. The accordion business went dead overnight.” Franco laughs while candidly admitting, “Rock ’n’ roll built the house you’re standing in right now!”

While he continued teaching and performing the accordion, Franco is quick to admit that the guitar business helped him build a life with his new bride, Rosina, whom he met and married in Italy at the age of 30. He’s not sure of an exact number, but thousands of students have learned accordion, guitar, and drums alike from Franco during his tenure in the music business.

According to an interview Franco gave to “This American Life” host Ira Glass in 1996, when you look up the accordion in the Chicago yellow pages, Franco is the only name you’ll find. How does an Italian kid from Taylor Street wind up as the de facto king of Chicago accordion?

Franco always returns to the idea of luck. “A little bit goes an awful long way,” he laughs. Luck is the typing class that he took instead of an algebra class, a skill that kept him behind a desk in World War II and Franco believes saved his life. Luck is meeting his wife through a cousin in Rome, a woman who “helped me get my life together” upon their return to the States.

Franco smiles as he plays, picking out jazzy fingerings that blend well with his more “relaxed Italian feel” as he describes it. He’s not sure what he’s playing, but it sounds good just the same. “At 92 years old I can tell you this: Don’t take life too serious. It’s a real joke. I can’t tell you how much luck has to do with it.”