Arrigo Cipriani: «You reach 92 without having dinner and thanks to love: she is 40 years younger, I am still strong after the prostate operation»

During the days of the Biennale, theHarry’s Bar looks like a dance hall. The waiters slalom among the tables with linen tablecloths, where aristocrats and billionaires sit. He’s coming out François Pinault88 years old in August. Arrigo Cipriani, 92 years old the day after tomorrow, gets up to greet him. The dialogue lasts four words: «Tout bien?»; «A demain» (if everything hadn’t gone well, Pinault wouldn’t come back tomorrow).

An elderly gentleman is entering alone, tall, thin, plaid trousers, electric blue jacket, bow tie, red walking stick. Cipriani gets up to prepare the table for him, making him skip the queue. Who will be? A stylist, a duke count? «He is a gondolier, who married a rich American tourist. He is now a widower. He eats lunch here every day, and I always let him find the table because my father taught me that you should never make someone who dines alone wait. When a customer arrived alone, he always gave him the first available table, even with ten seats.” Why? “Because he has no one to talk to, and he must be treated with particular respect.”

Cipriani, how do you get to 92?
«Eating almost nothing in the evening, and doing a quarter of an hour of karate a day».

Karate?
«It’s an internal gymnastics. He doesn’t leave out any movement, not even that of the little finger of his right hand.”

In my opinion, karate is not enough.
“In fact, love is needed.”

Are you in love?
«I am madly in love with a special woman».

How old is the woman he is madly in love with?
“Fifty two”.

Forty younger than her.
«And what does it matter?».

How did you meet?
“By chance. Five years ago we were sitting together at the police party, where I had never been. We discovered that we both came from popular Venice, and that we spoke the same language.”

Love at first sight?
«I don’t believe in love at first sight. Love grows little by little. We take care of each other. She has two important degrees with top marks. She now works with us in the company, and she has healed it.”

Was it going badly?
«After my eightieth birthday party I thought that my working life was over, and I had entrusted myself to the wrong people. She saved the day, without doing anything special, simply with care and integrity. It reminds me of what the Hungarian philosopher Heller once said to her students: “You are studying many useless subjects: philosophy, ancient Latin and Greek, mathematics. However, you will see that these useless subjects will help you a lot in doing the useful ones.” She is an exceptional woman, I am happy with her, and I forgot my age.”

What is love like at his age?
«I’m still as strong as I used to be. The urologist who operated on my prostate when I was fifty told me: we gained ten years. He was wrong: we had gained half a century.”

For those of you who have passed the decade of death, between 80 and 90, no one can stop you anymore.
«They want to take away the driving license of those over ninety: an injustice. The other day they stopped me while I was going 200 mph.”

Should not be.
«It’s true, but my car does 300… They told me: we should seize it and suspend her license; at least go slower.”

What does the heir of the Cipriani empire, his son Giuseppe, say about his new love?
«He’s happy too. I owe everything to my father Giuseppe, the founder, and to my son, who expanded the group throughout the world. In New York alone we have three thousand employees.”

You were even in prison together.
«Five hours in the security room, with handcuffs, during the trial for tax issues, which in America they don’t joke about. The attorney general apologized. Giuseppe replied: I thank you instead, I have never spent so much time alone with dad in my life.”

I saw Giuseppe during the World Cup in your restaurant in Doha: he was filleting the sea bream at a table.
«To get the New York restaurant on Fifth Avenue off the ground we worked together sixteen hours a day for four months. All the billionaires from Manhattan came to the opening with beautiful women; they didn’t look like sluts, but maybe they were; and I didn’t want that kind of place. One day the pimp came for lunch. At the exit I followed him for three kilometers on Fifth Avenue. Finally he turned and I warned him like this: “I’ve been working sixteen hours a day for four months for my place; If you show up again, I’ll kill you.” He never showed up again.”

If I define you as a right-wing and anti-fascist man, do you recognize yourself?
“Yes”.

In Italy you are few.
«I’m a true liberal, so I can’t stand fascism; and not only because he persecuted my father.”

Why?
«Once, on Fascist Saturday, the federal officer in his woolen coat said: “Whoever doesn’t agree can leave!”. Dad got up and left. Some Venetian hoteliers didn’t like their customers going to another place; and the president of the large hotels company was Count Volpi. During the war, in 1944 Harry’s Bar was requisitioned by order of the fascist hierarchs, until the day of liberation.”

How do you remember April 25th?
«The New Zealand amphibians arrived. The city exploded in a roar: the explosion of freedom. People hugged each other, laughed, sang, danced. It was wonderful.”

However, you said that the real reason why you hate fascism is another. Which?
“His stupidity.”

How do you find Meloni?
«She is good, she is growing, she can become an important political leader. Also because you can’t see anything on the left.”

What is your opinion on Berlusconi?
«I liked the Berlusconi of recent years: moderate, pro-European; he left a beautiful memory of himself. A pursuer of freedom.”

Why tracker?
«Because the liberal revolution didn’t happen; but he has always pursued freedom.”

His son Giuseppe had two children with Eleonora Gardini, and has now adopted another.
«Yes, a Uruguayan child, Facundo, who is now six years old. He had surgery for spina bifida, now he is fine. I have eight grandchildren, including the children Giuseppe had with Eleonora, Ignazio and Maggio, who work for us all over the world: they are a mix between Raul Gardini and me. I also have a great-grandson named Harry. So I’m no longer the only human being to have taken the name from a bar, and not vice versa.”

Harry was the American who lent his father the money to open.
«My father was lightness personified. He was a barman shaking the small ice obelisk with light gestures, almost without moving. Before dying he regained consciousness after three months in a coma, saw us gathered around his bed, and asked: are we all dead? He was teasing us. After all, he loved to repeat: life is not a serious thing. Today I recommend Calvino’s American Lessons to my students at Ca’ Foscari, starting with the one dedicated to lightness.”

What are twenty-year-olds like?
«Well done. But they have never read a book in their life. They are always hunched over their cell phones.”

Do you still not love social media or starred chefs?
«Social media have given the floor to fools, they convey the idea that the lowest rabble is always right, and this threatens the future of humanity. Starred chefs, on the other hand, will become extinct on their own, like dinosaurs.”

Why?
«Because they produce artificial flavours, which you don’t know, don’t remember and don’t get attached to. And then they want to make you eat what they decide. You take the tasting menu and you feel like the chef is staring at you. You feel under scrutiny: it’s not you who judges him; it is he who judges you.”

His sister Carla, known as Tinta, was Tinto Brass’s wife and muse. What was he like?
«The most suitable for cooking for the whole family. She ran the Torcello inn, where Hemingway wrote “Across the River and into the Trees.” But he passed it on to her son, to follow her husband in his cinema adventure. Now we have bought it back.”

And what is your relationship with Tinto Brass?
«We have been friends for more than seventy years. We studied law in Padua, in 1951 we took the political economy exam together, but we both wanted to do something else. Tinto, who is actually called Giovanni, already dreamed of cinema. His first film, “He who works is lost”, remains his best.”

Why?
«Tinto is an extraordinary artist, his teacher was Rossellini, “The Key” reconstructs the Venice of 1940 well. But he is too obsessed with sex».

Everyone in the family seems a bit naughty to me.
“Hand. We simply believe in life, love, and freedom. Man is born free. If you give a baby sugar he takes it, if you give him salt he spits it out. Freedom is also spitting.”

The lawyer Agnelli often came to Torcello.
«Every time he asked me: how is your aunt Gabriella? And I said: very well, lawyer!

How was Aunt Gabriella?
«She had been dead for years. But why did I have to sadden Agnelli with bad news?”.

How do you see Venice today?
«I don’t share this fear of water. Venice is water. The tides come in and out. They wash, they vivify. Harry’s Bar is one of the lowest points in the city; the day after the flood, we were open. But the secret of Venice is another.”

Which?
«Spirituality. Venice has a libertine soul; but to build the Basilica of San Marco a great spiritual strength was needed. They built it without estimates, without wondering how much it would cost.”

What is Mayor Brugnaro like?
«He’s from Mogliano. He knows little about Venice, he doesn’t understand it, he doesn’t feel it.”

Who in his place? Zaia?
«Zaia must relaunch the League after Salvini».

Brunette?
“It’s over”.

Cacciari.
“He’s fed up.”

Who then?
«For example Marco Balich. The one who organized twenty Olympic ceremonies. He has international relations, and is a true Venetian.”

How do you find Pope Francis?
«Populist. Like John Paul II, who was always on TV. The most intelligent was Ratzinger.”

What’s in the afterlife?
“Nothing. I don’t believe in God. Death is like sedation before gastroscopy: you don’t realize it, and you’re no longer there. But this makes the years ahead even more exciting.”

April 21, 2024

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