The Florios Before the Lions: From Calabrian Roots to America
From October 6 to 12, Fulvio Cama and Sara Cappello will bring “The Florios of Calabria, Lions of Sicily” to the United States.
From Washington to New York, a journey through the lesser-known history of the dynasty that shaped Italian entrepreneurship—and through the legacy of knowledge, connections, and culture that originated in Calabria even before Palermo.
Before becoming the “Lions of Sicily,” the Florios had already set out.
They had left Bagnara Calabra, taking with them something that cannot be measured solely by material possessions: knowledge, business acumen, experience, and connections. That intangible legacy that often accompanies great Italian stories and which, once transferred elsewhere, becomes the foundation upon which to build something new.
In Palermo, one of the country’s most important entrepreneurial dynasties would emerge. But to truly understand its rise, we must go back to that “before”—a period that has long remained on the margins of the narrative.
It is precisely from this point that “The Florios of Calabria, Lions of Sicily” takes its inspiration—the theatrical and musical production with which Fulvio Cama and Sara Cappello will tour the United States from October 6 to 12, between Washington and New York.
A contemporary journey that, in a way, retraces the course of the history it tells: from Calabria to Sicily, from Italy to America.
Before Palermo, Bagnara
Presented at the Francesco Cilea Theater in Reggio Calabria, the project stems from the collaboration between Reggio-born musician and singer-songwriter Fulvio Cama and Palermo-born singer Sara Cappello. Both have careers spanning over thirty years and have been founding members of the Unione Cantastorie for more than a decade.
Two voices and two regions come together to reconstruct three centuries of history.
The story begins in the second half of the 17th century and draws attention to the Florio family’s Calabrian origins, long before the era that would cement their name in Sicilian history.
“The story of the Florios isn’t just Sicilian,” says Cama. “They didn’t become lions in Sicily—they were already lions in Calabria.”
The reference is to the so-called “land of the lion,” the area between Bagnara, Seminara, and the Piani della Corona. Here, the family owned vineyards and wine presses, produced wine, and had developed expertise in the trade and preservation of fish in oil.
It’s a detail that shifts the perspective.
The Bagnara of that time was not a remote, stagnant place, but a territory situated along Mediterranean trade routes, connected to Palermo, Genoa, and Marseille. It was a small town capable of participating in a much broader network of trade, knowledge, and cultural exchange.
When the 1783 earthquake forced the Florios to leave Calabria, the family did not, therefore, start from scratch. They brought with them a body of knowledge they had already built up.
Sicily would provide the space in which to let that knowledge flourish.
Another voice drawing attention today to the Florios’ “before” is Stefania Auci, who, in her new novel “L’alba dei leoni. La saga dei Florio”, returns to the family’s origins, reconstructing its history between 1772 and 1799.
Before the economic empire, the tuna traps, and international trade, there was a Bagnara, Calabria, marked by daily toil, and a family still far from wealth but already driven by the desire to imagine a different future.
The turning point comes with the devastating earthquake of 1783. It is after that tragedy that the sea ceases to be merely a boundary and becomes a source of possibility. In 1799, Paolo and Ignazio Florio arrive in Palermo: a departure that marks the beginning of the transformation destined to make the family one of the great protagonists of Italian entrepreneurship.
Auci’s novel and the play by Fulvio Cama and Sara Cappello thus seem to converge on a fundamental point: to truly understand the Leoni of Sicily, one must return to what existed before the Leoni—to their Calabrian roots and to that human and cultural heritage that crossed the Strait alongside the family.
The Business as a Legacy
In Palermo, the Florios became merchants, shipowners, bankers, and manufacturers. Their name became synonymous with Marsala, the tuna traps of Favignana, tuna processing and preservation, and steam navigation.
The business became an industry, and the industry helped transform the society around it.
This is perhaps one of the most contemporary aspects of their history: behind a great entrepreneurial family lies not merely the intuition of a single moment, but a layered accumulation of expertise, experience, and the ability to recognize opportunities.
The Florios’ routes eventually extended beyond the Mediterranean, connecting Sicily to the United States. And it is precisely on the other side of the Atlantic that this story is being retold today.
Sara Cappello, who has been studying the family’s history for about twenty-five years, focuses the show primarily on the Sicilian period and the figure of Franca Florio, an icon of a Palermo that, between the 19th and 20th centuries, was capable of engaging with international culture.
On stage, everything takes shape through the “cuntu e cantu”: words, theater, and music alternate with folk songs, historical posters, and Sicilian puppet shows. Alongside Orlando and Angelica, a previously unseen Franca Florio also appears—a character created specifically for the show and adorned with her signature pearls.
Calabria and Sicily thus cease to be two distinct chapters and become parts of the same story: on one hand, roots and knowledge; on the other, transformation, rise, and, ultimately, decline.
From Italy to America
The tour will begin on October 6 in Washington, with a lecture-performance at the Harris School.
On October 7, Cama and Cappello will be at the Italian Cultural Institute of the Italian Embassy, while the following day the tour will continue to Georgetown University, featuring a program for students dedicated to Sicilian and Calabrian culture, the legends of Colapesce, and the epic of Orlando.
On October 9, it will be time for New York and the Italian American Museum in Little Italy. The tour will conclude on October 12 with participation in the Columbus Day Parade alongside the New York Comites.
The show is produced by the Calabrian cultural association Fabulanova and the Sicilian association Cantieri in Scena, under the patronage of the municipalities of Reggio Calabria and Palermo and the New York Comites.
But perhaps the most interesting aspect of this journey is something else: America isn’t just the destination. It was America that called.
“It was the Americans who asked us to bring this story to Washington and New York,” explains Cama.
A detail that reveals something about the relationship between Italy and the communities that, despite living thousands of kilometers away, continue to reflect on their origins.
When Roots Become the Future
In recent years, novels and television productions have brought the Florio family back into the contemporary collective imagination.Cama and Cappello, however, choose to shift their focus a bit further back, toward what preceded their success.
It is perhaps here that their story takes on a meaning that goes beyond the biography of a single family.
In fact, the Florios also tell the story of an Italy in motion. A country where leaving does not necessarily mean erasing what one leaves behind, but rather taking it elsewhere and transforming it.
Those who leave carry with them crafts, memories, skills, customs, and worldviews. And what seemed to belong exclusively to one place can become, upon encountering another, the building blocks for something new.
It is a dynamic that runs through much of the history of “Made in Italy”: tradition not as a static object to be preserved, but as knowledge capable of evolving.
In the United States, this story inevitably takes on a special meaning. For millions of descendants of Italian immigrants, their origins do not belong solely to the family photo album: they continue to be a space in which to seek a part of their own identity.
The story of “before”
The same desire to rediscover what came before Palermo is also at the heart of the historical novel “I Florio di Calabria”, written by Fulvio Cama together with Maria Cavallo and published by Città del Sole Edizioni.
The book, set to be released on September 25, reconstructs the two centuries preceding the family’s rise to prominence in Sicily: their activities, relationships, and the wealth of expertise developed in Bagnara that would accompany the Florios into their new life.
The trip to the United States will also serve to present the project dedicated to the centennial of Rosa Balistreri’s birth, which is expected to take Cama and Cappello abroad again in 2027 with “Rosa nel mondo”.
Following last February’s experience in Australia, the United States thus becomes a new stop on a journey that demonstrates how a deeply local story can take on an international dimension without losing its authenticity.
Perhaps this is precisely the most fascinating thread linking Bagnara, Palermo, Washington, and New York.
Italian excellence does not always originate in the places where it becomes famous. Sometimes it begins much earlier, in small communities, through skills passed down through generations, trade, departures, and encounters.
The Florios left Calabria and built an empire in Sicily capable of looking beyond the Mediterranean.
Centuries later, their story crosses the Atlantic once again—no longer along the trade routes that contributed to the family’s fortune, but through theater, music, and the voices of two artists from the South.
Because there are Italian stories that, in order to rediscover their roots, must continue to travel.
