Books. FRANKIE GOES TO LEGHORN to Touch the Stars at Montenero

For Touch the Stars in Montenero, cultural event organized by Pro Loco di Montenero, Friday, September 27, 9.30pm, in Montenero, Sanctuary Square, meeting with the book by Maurizio Mini FRANKIE GOES TO LEGHORN, the story of Frank Sinatra’s concert in Magenta Square, in Livorno, in July 1945 (Erasmo Editions – 2023). The evening will be moderated by Rossana Fatighenti.

The book tells a fragment of the city’s history in 1945, when the dramas and destruction of the war were still visible but somehow the desire to start living again emerged.

Chronicles tell us that when Francis Albert “Frank” Sinatra arrived in early July 1945 in Livorno, he was just under thirty years old, having been born in December 1915 in Hoboken, New Jersey, and already had a considerable musical experience.

In the city there were thousands of Fifth Army soldiers and even though just three months earlier, on April 25, 1945, Italy had been liberated from Nazi-fascism, the troops were certainly not in high spirits.

“… The day of the concert it was hot, and in Magenta Square, where Sinatra would perform, many American soldiers gathered, they say there were more than 10 thousand… and here comes that skinny boy in front of the microphone, already famous among the American soldiers under the name of “Frankie”….

Maurizio Mini was born in Livorno in 1950. A journalist, he has published several volumes for Erasmo Editions in collaboration with other authors: Livorno, from American music to jazz (2013); The word to Enrico (2014); Whistle for kickoff 1915 (2015); Paris 1917. Modigliani, an exhibition that scandalized (2017). In 2020 his first novel The Screenplay was published by Erasmo Editions, and in 2023 Frankie Goes To Leghorn. Since 2012, Maurizio Mini has been part of the UNESCO Jazz Day Livorno Committee.