How the idea was born

American cinema and television portray Italians more often than not as gangsters, policemen, boxers or, to put it more plainly, as caricatures. Sometimes, unfortunately, it is actors and directors whose roots are in our country, who help to spread this negative image.
Even if it is true that amongst the millions of poor illiterate Italian emigrants with their cardboard suitcases there were terrorists, thieves and killers, it is likewise true that the majority were made up of poor people who were honest and upstanding, not to mention a great number of artists, intellectuals and scientists who made a solid contribution to the development of the New World.
Here we name but a few: Lorenzo da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist, Antonio Meucci, the inventor of the telephone, Amadeo P. Giannini, founder of the Bank of America and Fiorello La Guardia, the historic mayor of New York.
American museums are brimming with important works by Italian artists from the renaissance to present day and the theatres are filled to the rafters whenever an Italian opera is performed.
Versace, Ferrè, Cavalli, to cite but a few, the Genoese architect Renzo Piano, Ferrari, Ducati and so many more which have maintained the high prestige of our nation with the brand “Made in Italy”.
And it is for this reason that we would like to tell the life of Philip Mazzei (1730-1816), the man who was the “first great Italian in the history of the United States”.

Do you know who Philip Mazzei was?

He could be defined as a kind of mid-eighteenth century Italian superhero who led an extraordinary life and did many extraordinary things.
It is difficult to define in any other way a well-off, genial, bizarre thinker and adventurous traveller from Tuscany who, in an era, where it was not possible to travel around the world by plane, was a surgeon in Asia and importer, salesman and teacher of Italian in England; then off to America where, in Virginia, his second home, he became a farmer, vocal rebel agitator, diplomat and key player in the American revolution.
Philip Mazzei forged strong friendships with the first presidents of the United States, with whom he shared a strong conviction for the fundamental principles of democracy.
He played an active part in drawing up the American Declaration of Independence, bringing to it enlightened principles such as the concept of democracy, equality and freedom of man.
He coined the expression “All men are equal”.
A forerunner to the “Italian Style”, in addition to a few Tuscan peasants, he brings from Italy a tailor who will, amongst other things, make the famous velvet “hunter’s” suit which Thomas Jefferson will never seem to take off.
His agricultural company “Colle” experiments with different crops imported from Italy: grapes, mulberry, olives and the special type of corn known as “fifty-day corn”, until this time unknown in America.
An eclectic thinker and writer and a tireless protagonist of his era, he returns to Europe after his long stay in America.
Secret agent for the United States, chamberlain to the King of Poland, and as a close confidant of the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, Philip Mazzei was witness to the French Revolution.
It seems almost impossible to believe that one man could have led so many different lives, yet this is the true story of Philip Mazzei.

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