Irma Capece Minutolo, a Neapolitan beauty queen and opera singer whose relationship with the exiled Egyptian king and world-renowned hedonist, Farouk I, became fodder for gossip columnists around the world, died on June 7 at her home in Rome. She was 87.
Her death was confirmed by a niece, Irma Capece Minutolo.
Ms. Capece Minutolo was a teenager from Naples in the early 1950s when she first encountered Farouk, who had fled to Italy, along with other members of his family, on his royal yacht after a military coup in 1952.
During his reign, “he had such exorbitant tastes,” read his obituary in The New York Times, “and such little concern for his public image in a poor country that he soon became known as a wolf, a glutton and a carefree gambler.”
He took those appetites with him to Italy. “The name of this rotund monarch with the rakish mustache had become synonymous with international playboy,” The Times noted. He died at 45 of a heart attack during a midnight meal at a French restaurant in Rome in 1965.
Accounts of how the couple met vary, and are often filtered through the gossip standards of the day. According to “Farouk: Uncensored,” a pulpy 1965 tell-all by a journalist named Michael Stern, Farouk became entranced with Ms. Capece Minutolo at a beauty pageant, and yelled ‘Fraud!’ when she failed to place, before arranging a meeting. (She had by then been crowned Miss Naples of 1953.)
In an email, her niece disputed that and other accounts, saying that Ms. Capece Minutolo, at 16, was chosen to welcome Farouk with a bouquet of flowers when he arrived in Naples in 1952 and that they got to know each other at Circolo Canottieri, an exclusive club in Naples where her father was a member.
Her social standing, too, became something of a question. Ms. Capece Minutolo, who was born in Naples on Aug. 6, 1935, was often cited as a princess or marchioness in the news media, and the venerable L’Annuario della Nobiltà Italiana (The Yearbook of the Italian Nobility) lists her as a descendant of Neapolitan princes.
In 1954, as rumors of impending nuptials swirled, however, she sued two Italian journalists who reported that her parents were a chauffeur and a janitor’s daughter. “At the newsmen’s trial for slander,” Time magazine reported at the time, “Irma’s father had indignantly complained: ‘To doubt my daughter’s aristocratic descent is to slander the father of the fiancée of Farouk, whose wedding is imminent.’” (The resolution of the lawsuit is unclear.)
Her niece said that Ms. Capece Minutolo’s father was Prince Augusto, who owned a luxury car dealership.
Another open question was whether any nuptials were in fact imminent. At the time of the lawsuit, Time quoted Ms. Capece Minutolo as saying, “I prefer not to marry. Farouk is sensible and tender, but marriage is the tomb of love.”
But she later said they married in an Islamic ceremony in 1958. Ms. Capece Minutolo was present at Farouk’s funeral, along with his…
2023-06-15 16:32:00
Article from www.nytimes.com