The Agnellis, the Ferragnezs, the Calendas, the Pradas… Michele Masneri redraws the country’s dynasties in an essay published by Rizzoli. This is how large families have changed. Obviously bourgeois
We Italians do not have a mature relationship with power or with money. «He made the money» is a negative expression, to be pronounced in a mixture of suspicion and mistrust: if he made any money he must have done something bad, or at least shady. This is why we prefer those who don’t have money or, better still, those who have always had it. The Dynasty precisely. Title of a historic book by Enzo Biagi, which now returns through the brilliant pen of Michele Masneri, signature of the “Foglio”, who has published an essay by Rizzoli to tell how capitalism has changed and how the great families have changed. An evident change right from the subtitle: From Prada to the Ferragnez, portraits of true Italian nobility. The one without a coat of arms.
Even in the Italian comedy – Masneri points out – there is always a poor man who tries to change class, to become rich, and is always punished, amidst laughter, and made to return to his initial state (Sordi nel Conte Maxo in A difficult lifeGassman nel Overtaking…). The social elevator in Italy has never worked very well. In the most beautiful film ever made about rich Italians, The widower, inspired by a crime that really happened, Alberto Sordi, a failed Roman entrepreneur, tries everything to emancipate himself from his wife Elvira (Franca Valeri), a Milanese capitalist who calls him “cretinetti”. Failed as an elevator builder, he then plans to make it out of her, in an elevator accident. Obviously he’ll end up there later.
Masneri divided his dynasties by city. Milan continues to produce an upper middle class also of ideas capable of establishing itself not only in Italy but also abroad, also on Instagram, a new dream factory of which it has become the capital. Let’s start with the Pradas: the author tells of Miuccia «her Giulia Maria Crespi side, when she buys immense estates like the last one in Maremma, with an ecological spirit: and also lamblike, when she flees by helicopter to see an obscure museum». Then there are the Boeris, a dynasty of design but also of politics (the central figure, the Sardinian butler who supervised the little Boeris when their very feminist mother Cini was absent and said: «The young gentleman is not at home, he’s demonstrating»). Then the Morattis (even Letizia has started making videos of her while she cooks) and of course the Ferragnez, «our informal royal family, at the apex of a system of classes that are now social, not social. But if they are our royalty, an entire aristocracy is placed underneath, and then valvassori and valvassini, and then the bourgeoisie, large and small, which imitates them». The book recounts the moment of formation of the dynasty, the 2018 marriage between Fedez and Chiara, the brand «The Ferragnez» was also born, in an armored Noto as for a G8, among mothers who push their daughters up to the top of the bell tower to try to spy in the “red zone” where the wedding takes place and the bishop who composes a rap in honor of the couple. Is titled The word of beautyis a “freestyle rap against Dostoevsky’s nihilism and the dangers of selfies” (“remember that beauty has drowned Narcissus / you risk a lot therefore if you mirror your face too much”) but it is part of the broader program of popular evangelization, indeed of Pop-Theologytitle of the book published by the bishop in 2018, a manifesto of an “embodied theology, closer to the new generations”, as he himself defines it.
In Rome, writes Masneri, everything has remained analogical, and the bourgeoisie remains a mirage, like functioning buses or streets without potholes. In Rome the bourgeoisie tries above all to resemble the only class that has always been dominant, the aristocracy, and even very modern mothers continue to dream for their daughters not of a master’s degree at Stanford but of a Prince assistant to the papal throne. It is no coincidence that a fantastic fake aristocracy thrives, with its fake surnames and noble predicates, perfectly integrated into society, which enjoys it.
The central character of Masneri’s Rome is Giovanni Malagò, interviewed in his office at Coni, with photos of Sabaudia and Agnelli on the walls, the press officers struggling to keep up with him, he reproaching the author – «I’m giving you a bag of goodies; but focus!” —, without denying the legend: Malagò and Gianni Letta are the only powerful ones who always respond within the same day to everyone, «and for three reasons. First, if you don’t then the work piles up. Second, out of education. Third, for clients, a lesson from my father. Every phone call can be a customer and if you don’t answer him, he can change his mind». The father is Vincenzo Malagò, ninety years old, white hair, made Cavaliere del Lavoro by Ciampi. They have “the most beautiful dealership in the world”. Malagò also talks about his Aniene with the selection procedures, and the names of the candidates on probation which remain exposed to public ridicule for months. And the case of the SUV that they stole from him last summer, a story that seems to have come out of the film Yuppies in which Ezio Greggio, a car dealer, has always said he was inspired by him. (In summary: a gang of Neapolitan thieves arrives in Rome in search of luxury SUVs, goes to Parioli, finds the Levante of Malagò, takes it. They then throw themselves onto the motorway, but when they see a patrol, they abandon it in a ditch ).
Then there are the Calendas, a dynasty between cinema and politics, and also an economist father who ended up in the clutches of «Madoff dei Parioli», who would later write a novel à clef, Money is everything, in which there was also an “eldest son, adored by his mother and precociously established abroad as an investment banker, whose mere existence seems to reproach his father for his mediocrity”. To close with the capital, a real dynasty from Great Beauty: the Ludovisi, former princes of Piombino, today represented by the last princess, a Texan who is a movie character: lives in his palace frescoed by Caravaggio (and auctioned off) with relatives who cut off the electricity, and explains: «I am Most Serene Highness. There are only four of us in Rome». She is in fact sovereign of Piombino. And from Elba. Even if the Boncompagni-Ludovisis almost never went to the island: «At a certain point, after the Congress of Vienna, we sold it»; like those who sell their second home in Santa Marinella and invest in bots. The Boncompagni-Ludovisis, in addition to being very serene, are very quarrelsome: the princess is in dispute with all the children of her ex-husband, who – the author assures – are also in dispute with each other. «A friend of mine from Washington – concludes the princess – told me to look Succession: I’ve seen it, but those are amateurs in comparison.’
But a book by Masneri, Marchionne’s biographer, could not miss Turin. There is Ginevra Elkann, with her new Roman life, now also separate, and the cinema. Which belies some legends about Lambs, such as the one that you don’t eat at home. «We ate, yes. Maybe sometimes they were on a diet, that’s all.’ There is John with the release of him from the fiat burden; there is also the Agnelli branch of Andrea, the one “with too many teeth and too many eyebrows”, as the lawyer said. And then there’s our huge global province: the Panini of Modena, the Beretta of Brescia, the Agnelli, those of the pots. But the mutation of entrepreneurship is seen even more in the story of Silvio Scaglia, who goes from fame to prison and becomes a Netflix series.
He volume
Michele Masneri, Dynasties. From Prada to the Ferragnez, portraits of true Italian nobility. The one without a coat of arms, Rizzoli (pp. 192, euro 17). In the volume, the author outlines the “houses” of the Italian big bourgeoisie. Michele Masneri (Brescia, 1974) is a journalist. A part of the texts that compose Dynasty it appeared for the first time in the «Foglio», for which Masneri writes. The gallery of portraits outlined by Masneri includes families such as the Agnelli-Elkann, the Prada, the Moratti, the Fedez-Chiara Ferragni couple, the Calenda, the Malagò, the De Benedetti. Masneri’s volume opens with a bitter observation by its author: in Italy the social elevator doesn’t work, especially in some cities. Masneri writes: «A study some time ago calculated that today the top ten Florentine families by status and census are the same as they were in the 15th century»
December 6, 2022 (change December 6, 2022 | 21:15)
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