Profiles

As the current revival of “Singin’ in the Rain” entertains audiences at the Drury Lane Theatre in Oakbrook Terrace, there’s an Italian-American actress lighting up the stage as the seductive Lady in the Green. Cara Salerno, who lives in Chicago’s Uptown/Edgewater neighborhood, claims Calabrese and Abbruzzese roots on her father’s side. (Her mother is of Irish ancestry.) “Growing up with Italian relatives forced me to be outgoing,” Salerno says. “There are so many of us, and if you want to get a word in at the house, especially in the kitchen, you have to make a statement. Everyone is always …

Chicago comedian James Anthony Zoccoli is a walking study in cultural contrasts — half Italian and half Polish, born on the South Side and raised on the North Side. He’s also given to bursts of zaniness that inform his latest undertaking, “The Game Show Show … & Stuff!” But he’s a serious student of comedic craft learned from many, many hours of watching TV as a kid. “I was watching Steve Martin and Richard Pryor way too young, and always had a big yen for comedy because of who my parents were,” recalls Zoccoli, 39. “Because things didn’t go well …

It’s said the theater is proudly populated by hot dogs, but no one compares to Gorilla Tango Theatre founder Dan Abbate. Aside from running venues in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood and Skokie, he also holds the official Guinness World Record for the largest commercially available hotdog — which weighs 7 pounds and is appropriately named “The Big Hot Dog.” “My family has always been in business; manufacturing in metals to be precise,” says Abbate, who has Sicilian lineage on his father’s side. (His mother is of German-Hungarian ancestry.) “The businesses they ran were in very competitive fields. They had to be …

While it’s a cliche to say that love is the universal language, that truism has taken root in Chicago along colorful lines. It starts with Italian choreographer Mauro Astolfi showing the experienced dancers of River North Dance Company moves and nuances that they’ve never seen before, in preparation for a world premiere being presented Valentine’s Day weekend. “It’s a different approach to movement, that’s for sure,” says Astolfi, 49, who hails from Rome. “The River North Company is soulful; they have a strong and energetic way of dancing. But I try to tell them that there are different ways to …

Go back in your Italian ancestry — back beyond your childhood and those of your parents and grandparents. Go back to a time before Italy, before the Roman Empire, even. Now, imagine some ancient Etruscan mystic fashioning a goddess invoked in a magic spell to chase away bad luck. She is probably some 2,700 years old. No wonder she shows her age today. We know this ancient, benevolent presence today as La Befana, Italy’s good Christmas witch. And a pair of Fra Noi veterans who’ve contributed to our magazine since the 1980s now keep her memory alive: Lionel Bottari and …

Carlo Caprio would certainly forgive you if you thought his rock band’s name was Scivoloso Quando Bagnato. After all, that’s how Slippery When Wet translates into Italian. And the Oak Lawn native Ñ aside from being a formidable frontman and lead singer Ñ is also a first-generation Italian American who speaks the mother tongue with a Napoletano twist. Aside from his immediate kin, “Most of my family still lives in Italia,” says Caprio, who turned 41 in November. “Growing up in an Italian household was a great influence, just knowing my parents came to America from another country. I remember …

Paul Barile has so many talents you need a smartphone app to track them. He can dish a blues guitar licks one minute, and dish dirt on Italian beef sandwiches via his culinary blog the next. And when he’s writing poetry, or acting, or getting ready to release a new novel, he’s a playwright who tackles the stage like no other. “I feel blessed to be able to do this — to do all of what I do,” says Barile, 50, a Berwyn native who lives on Chicago’s Southwest Side. “Having a strong and loving Italian family was instrumental in …

For Jeff-award winning actress Paula Scrofano, the journey to accomplished actress began from childhood; growing up in the Cleveland area, she was surrounded by art, music and the magic of Italian culture — which explains how she learned at least a dozen songs in Italian by her high school years. The daughter of a Sicilian father (from the town of Augusta) and a Czech-Hungarian mother, the Riverside, Ill. resident stars as Frau Schmidt in “The Sound of Music.” This Chicago-area production of the award-winning Rodgers and Hammerstein musical runs through Jan. 8, 2013 — you read correctly, 2013 — at …

Opera owes much to Italian culture, but you might be hard pressed to find young, talented Italian Americans carrying the torch in large numbers these days. So it’s a good thing soprano Jamie-Rose Guarrine has stepped up. At the tender age of 33, she’s turning heads for her work with the Sante Fe Opera, the Chicago Opera Theater and the Utah Opera — where Opera News praised her portrayal of Susanna in “Le Nozze di Figaro” as “light, flexible and vibrant — well suited to the part of a scheming maid and romantic ing?nue.” “I was extremely fortunate to grow …

There’s a long tradition of great Italian rock drummers, from Dick Boccelli (Bill Haley and the Comets) to Carmine Appice (Rod Stewart) and Terry Bozzio (Frank Zappa). That’s the old guard; make way for the new: Chicago’s Dan Leali has performed with everyone from Grammy-nominated artist Peter Himmelman to jazz-funk group Liquid Soul (with whom he shared a Grammy nomination for the 2000 recording “Here’s the Deal”). And if you’ve seen Leali play, look out: Here’s a guy who does it all, from sweet finesse timekeeping to powerhouse throb to demolish a brick wall. “My older sister had had a …