The Dagnini family

In 1994 the Mantova publishing house “La Corte” brought out a book by Vladimiro Bertazzoni entitled “I Dagnini”. The book tells the story of Ambrogio Dagnini (1807-1872), son of Mantova civil lawyer, Giuseppe Dagnini. His fame as an opera tenor had spread all over Italy, and in 1840 he accepted an invitation to appear with an Italian opera company in Odessa (where at that time, incidentally, Italians made up a considerable proportion of the population), and subsequently settled in Russia, which became his second home. We learn how Ambrogio (in Russian Amvrosii) Dagnini became director of the Italian opera, and then after a few years left the theatre to devote himself to teaching Italian, and to writing. In 1860 he was given the chair of Italian language and literature at Kharkov University; he moved to Kharkov, where he died in 1872. In Odessa Ambrogio Dagnini married a French maiden. Their many children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren born in Russia include doctors and architects, school-teachers and university lecturers, lawyers and engineers... 

Ambrogio’s son, Napoleon Dagnini (1849-1919), was qualified as a doctor, and worked as senior physician to the Corps of Pages in St.-Saint Petersburg with the rank of Actual State Councillor; he married a German maiden called Adelaide Haueisen. 

Another son, Camillo (1850-1903), married to Natalia Danchich, was an accountant by profession, and at the same time worked as treasurer of the Italian Charitable Society of St.-Saint Petersburg. One of Camillo’s sons, Emilio Dagnini (1882-1909), taught in a gymnasium, but was also a writer, translator and bibliophile; another one, Giuseppe (Iosif) Dagnini (1893-1939), was a technology teacher. 

Ambrogio’s third son, Vittorio (in Russian Victor), born in 1860, and also married to a Haueisen, was a lawyer; before the Russian revolution of 1917 he was a member of the Warsaw Appellate Court and held the rank of Actual State Councillor. 

The most famous of Ambrogio’s sons, however, was the youngest, Silvio (1867-1942). In 1886 he entered the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, where he acquitted himself with great brilliance; he was appointed architect for the administration of the palaces of Tsarskoe Selo, the Imperial residence outside the capital; in 1911, he was nominated architect of the Imperial Court, and in 1914 became Actual State Councillor. He built a number of public and administrative buildings and private houses, and was partly responsible for the refurbishment of the famous Alexander Palace. After the revolution of 1917 he continued to work as an architect, producing, for instance, plans for dams, locks and electric power station buildings on the river Svir. He died of hunger during the nazi blockade of Leningrad. He was married to a German Lutheran, Vera Stuckenberg. They had four children: Evgenii (1894-1954), a distinguished biologist who married Ekaterina Filomatitskaia; Orest (1896-1958), died in emigration (in Egypt); Valentin (1900-1972) an architect, like his father; and Virginia (1903-1982), a librarian, who married Sergei Kvashnin-Samarin. Their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren still live in St.-Saint Petersburg, and some of them still bear to this day the Mantova name of Dagnini.