Italian Princess To Enter Bullring

Press, Volume C, Issue 29699, 18 December 1961, Page 2

Italian Princess To Enter Bullring

[By SUSAN VAUGHAN] Even among the present gay young generation of European royalty, Princess Maria Gabriella has a verve that sets her apart. The 21-year-old daughter of Italy’s former King Umberto has announced that next season she will appear in the Spanish bullring as an assistant to the famed bull-fighting brothers, Angel and Rafel Peralta.

Last year, she went on a wolf hunt in North Portugal, near the family villa at Cascais. This year some 20 princesses and princes attended her twenty-first birthday party, which gained notoriety from the fact that the guests hurled large and creamy portions of birthday cake at one another. Romance Denied Princess Gabriella’s romances have for some years made diverting reading. It was reported earlier this year that she would marry Prince Juan Carlos, son of Don Juan, claimant to the Spanish throne. The report was later denied. The marriage had been arranged, so the story went, but when Gabriella was told of it, she said: "Certainly not, I don’t love Don Juan.” One way and another she has proved to be a bit of a trial to the royal marriagemakers. Earlier she had refused an offer of marriage from the Shah of Persia, and was also said to have refused a plan to pair her with King Baudouin of Belgium. Talented Painter Dark - haired, dark - eyed Gabriella, pert and pretty,

had a traditional royal education: private tutors, and then a time at Geneva Uni- : versity where she took a course as an interpreter in French and English. She is a painter of talent (although she says: “I’m nothing but a dauber”) and her nudes are well thought of by the critics. But it is as a personality rather than as an artist that Gabriella is making her mark on the world. She has about her the kind of charm that captivated a celebrated doctor. Count Aldo Castellani, when she was only five.

Castellani was treating Gabriella for typhoid. She shyly asked the great man if he could name a microbe after her.

He promised to do so, but with one reservation: “It will have to be a nice microbe.” Eventually, a largelyinnocuous microbe was found. “I called it Microccus violagabriella,” the doctor said.