Pietro Calvano
Sweets Artist
(Vasto 1870 + Citta` San Angelo 1935)
By Paolo Calvano
Born in a family of humble peasant farmers, awake and entrepreneurial from a very young age he moved to Naples. He learnt the art of pastry making from a profitable association in a number of bars and pastry makers of the Parthenopean capital, with the support of the Neapolitan Francesco Ponza, the then mayor of Vasto. Still young, self assured of his abilities he went to Russia, where in St Petersburg he set himself up as a pastry maker for the higher social class families and the Royal House.
With the development of the Russian Revolution he first moved to Odessa and from here escaped to return to Italy, first in Naples and then in Vasto. He was able to keep a comfortable life in the Vastese society, notwithstanding the rapid devaluation of the money he brought back from Russia. The rest of his life in Vasto he lived as well off bachelor trying, without any results, to recover the credits he left in Russia. He helped his family with the purchase of some land and entertained various business ideas, never realised, such as opening in Vasto a high class pastry shop. He died in the hospital of Citta` San Angelo in 1935.
St Petersburg early 1900s
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