Italian Influences on the Cultural Life of Old Montreal

A short account of such men as Francesco Rasco (Rasco's Hotel) and Tommaso Delvecchio to the arts and sciences of nineteenth century Montreal. Rasco's Hotel often staged English language theatrical productions in the mid-1800s. Tommaso (Thomas) Delvecchio (1758-1826) was an inn-keeper and proprietor of the Museo Italiano at No.4, Place du Vieux-Marché. The Museo Italiano was a museum of natural curiosities which displayed a large natural history collection of stuffed quadrupeds, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and fish. The museum also contained wax figures of a South American Indian family, as well as automatons, musical instruments, and "a lamb with eight legs, a pig with two bodies in its lower part, four ears, and eight legs, and a ram's head with four horns."

The Canadian Modern Language Review

Vol. 9

no. 1

5-7

Fall 1952

en