Ornella Muti — actress with roots in the Russian Empire
Ornella Muti was born Francesca Romana Rivelli in Rome in March 1955, to Mario Rivelli, a Neapolitan journalist, and Ilse Renate Krause, a sculptor. Her mother was a Russian Baltic German from Estonia, and her mother's own father had emigrated from Saint Petersburg to Estonia - the line runs back into the Baltic German community of the Russian Empire, a German-speaking population that had been imperial subjects for two centuries and was scattered across Europe between the wars.
She made her debut at fourteen, in Damiano Damiani's La moglie piu bella in 1970, and worked continuously from then on. In Italian cinema she appeared for Dino Risi, Marco Ferreri, Ettore Scola and Mario Monicelli; internationally she is most widely recognised as Princess Aura in Flash Gordon in 1980, and appeared in Swann in Love opposite Jeremy Irons and Alain Delon, in The Bilingual Lover with Javier Bardem, and later for Woody Allen. Her filmography runs past a hundred titles across five and a half decades, and she has worked steadily in French and Italian television alongside it. She has served as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador.
The connection here is maternal and one generation removed, and Muti has treated it as a fact of family rather than a public theme. What is documented is a named ancestor and a named city.
Her mother, Ilse Renate Krause, was a sculptor. The family line runs from Saint Petersburg to Estonia to Italy across three generations.
"Maternal grandfather emigrated from Saint Petersburg to Estonia; mother settled in Italy"
Migration storyTracing the roots — Saint Petersburg / Estonia
Muti's mother, Ilse Renate Krause, was a Russian Baltic German sculptor from Estonia; her own father had emigrated from Saint Petersburg to Estonia. The line is Baltic German of the Russian Empire.
Her mother, Ilse Renate Krause, was a Russian Baltic German sculptor from Estonia; her maternal grandfather emigrated from Saint Petersburg to Estonia. The line belongs to the Baltic German community of the Russian Empire.
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Saint Petersburg / Estonia. At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.