Ciro

For the Italian "comune", see Cirò, Calabria.

Ciro (Cyrus) is an opera in three acts and a prologue by the Italian composer Francesco Cavalli in collaboration with Andrea Mattioli. It was first performed at the Teatro San Giovanni e San Paolo, Venice on January 30, 1654. The libretto is by Giulio Cesare Sorrentino in a revised version by Aurelio Aureli. Sorrentino's libretto had been set the previous year by Francesco Provenzale for the royal theatre in Naples.

References

Calabrian wine

Calabrian wine (Italian: Vino Calabrese) is Italian wine from the Calabria region of southern Italy. Over 90% of the region's wine production is red wine, with a large portion made from the Gaglioppo grape. Calabria has 12 Denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) regions but only 4% of the yearly production is classified as DOC wine. The region is one of Italy's most rural and least industrialized with per capita income less than half of the national average. Following World War II, many of Calabria's inhabitants emigrated to the United States and Argentina. Those left behind have been slow to develop a vibrant wine industry with only the red wines of Cirò garnering much international attention. Today Calabrian wines are mostly produced to high alcohol levels and sold to co-operatives who transfer the wines to the northern Italian wine regions to use as blending component. There are no Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita (DOCG) regions but 12 Indicazione Geografica Tipica (IGT) designations.

Cirò, Calabria

Cirò is a comune and town with a population of 3614 people in the province of Crotone, in Calabria, Italy.

History

There were Bronze Age settlements in the area and fossils have been found and are preserved for eventual exhibition in a museum to be established. The ancient Greeks had a settlement on the sea coast - rudiments of a shrine to Apollo have been found. The town on the hill had its origins before 1000 AD but it was greatly expanded after the Saracens started raiding the sea coast. Cirò (known earlier as Psicro) became an important regional center with a castle most of which was constructed between the years 1300 and 1500. Today the castle is in a rather bad shape and should be restored. The administration is attempting to obtain funds and authorisation to do so. Until around 1970 the regional court had its seat in Cirò. After the coastal town split off, much of the administrative functions were transferred there.

Economy

Ciro relies on the production of oil, wine, cereals, citruses and intense breeding of cattle.

Ciro's

Ciro's (later known as Ciro's Le Disc) was a nightclub in West Hollywood, California, at 8433 Sunset Boulevard, on the Sunset Strip, opened in January 1940 by entrepreneur William Wilkerson. Herman Hover took over management of Ciro's in 1942 until it closed its doors in 1957. Hover filed for bankruptcy in 1959, and Ciro's was sold at public auction for $350,000.

Ciro's combined a luxe baroque interior and an unadorned exterior and became a famous hangout for movie people of the 1940s and 1950s. It was one of "the" places to be seen and guaranteed being written about in the gossip columns of Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons and Florabel Muir.

Among the galaxy of celebrities who frequented Ciro's were Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, Sidney Poitier, Anita Ekberg, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Joan Crawford, Betty Grable, Marlene Dietrich, Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan, Dean Martin, Mickey Rooney, Cary Grant, George Raft, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Judy Garland, June Allyson and Dick Powell, Mamie Van Doren, Jimmy Stewart, Jack Benny, Peter Lawford, and Lana Turner (who often said Ciro's was her favorite nightspot) among many others. During his first visit to Hollywood in the late 1940s, future President John F. Kennedy dined at Ciro's.