My Dad just got back from Italy

I pick Merv up at the airport yesterday and he tells me how he scored a single ticket to the opera the night before. It was a fabulous seat, the opera was Carmen, the male lead was Andrea Bocelli. Being ever social Merv introduces himself using the little Italian he knows to the woman seated beside him, roughly the same age, who, with limited English, introduces herself as Monica, Monica Mussolini. Merv comments on how that is a famous surname, any relation? She replies "daughter", or at least that is all Merv understands, later I discover he was sitting beside Donna Monica Mussolini, widow of the late Vittorio, Mussolini's eldest son.

Here's a link to an interesting article on her:

The mass over, Donna Monica Mussolini, widow of the late Vittorio, Mussolini's eldest son, led the congregation out of the llth-century church into the ferocious midday heat, then down into the dark crypt at one end of the cemetery to file past the stone tombs of the Duce and members of his immediate family. Candles flickered and the air was thick with the sweet smell of lilies as Signora Mussolini stood in front of the Duce's tomb, on which is a giant stone bust of her father-inlaw's head. She raised her right arm in the Roman salute and delivered the traditional fascist greeting. 'A noi!' (`To us'). She then patted the nearby tomb of Vittorio, who died last year [1997], kissed it and left.