Opprandino Arrivabene

Opprandino Arrivabene
Opprandino Arrivabene c. 1870
Born	(1807-09-11)11 September 1807 Mantua, Italy
Died	2 January 1887(1887-01-02) (aged 79) Rome, Italy
Occupation	Journalist

Opprandino Arrivabene (11 September 1807 – 2 January 1887) was an Italian journalist and patriot. A native of Mantua, he led a peripatetic life, living in Milan, Naples, Genoa, Turin, Florence and finally Rome where he died at the age of 79. He was a lifelong friend of the composer Giuseppe Verdi with whom he had a correspondence of over 200 letters spanning 50 years.

Arrivabene was born in Mantua to the junior branch of a noble family descended from the Byzantine Komnenos dynasty with later ties to the House of Gonzaga. His father was Count Ferdinando Arrivabene (1770–1834), a lawyer and Dante scholar. His mother was Carolina Lamberti, a Florentine noblewoman. Arrivabene was educated at the Benedictine college in Parma and then returned to Mantua where, like his uncles and father, he was active in the liberal movement and the early struggle for Italian independence. In 1830, when the Austrian authorities became suspicious of his political activities in Mantua, he left for Milan. There he pursued an intense career as a journalist over the next decade, writing for L'Indicatore Lombardo, Corriere delle Dame, Il Foletto, L'Antologia, Il Giovedì, and Figaro and serving as edior-in-chief of La Strenna Italiana. He was also a prominent member of Clara Maffei's salon where his friendship with Verdi began.

In 1839 he went to Naples as the private secretary to the marchese Filippo Ala Ponzone, who like Arrivabene was a fervent supporter of the Risorgimento, and continued working as a journalist there. He later moved to Genoa in the company of Ala Ponzone and then to Turin in 1855 where he was one of the editors of l'Opinione and founded La Staffetta which later became La Gazzetta di Torino. Arrivabene left Turin for Florence in 1865 when the capital of the Kingdom of Italy shifted from Turin to Florence. He finally settled in Rome in 1871 when the capital shifted to that city. He lived there for the rest of his life and continued to write for L'Opinione.

According to his obituary in the Gazzetta Piemontese, Arrivabene lived in Rome's Piazza Lucina and was a well-known figure in the cafes of the Via del Corso, always dressed in black with a broad-brimmed shepherd's hat and a long white beard. He never married. When his health began to fail in 1885 he was looked after by his cousin Giovanni Arrivabene and his nephew Silvio who were with him when he died of heart failure in 1887 at the age of 79.