ROME — When the wife of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi took to the front pages this month to announce that she wanted a divorce and accused him of dallying with very young women, it seemed like yet another storm that Italy’s most powerful man would easily weather. For years, Italy has winked at Mr. Berlusconi, where other nations might have glared.
Much of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s success stems from his uncanny ability to read the national mood of Italians.
But then things took a turn for the surreal.
First came a rare and inescapable torrent of speculation — in blogs, on television and radio, at dinner tables across Italy — about the nature and origins of his relationship with Noemi Letizia, a pretty blond aspiring model whose 18th birthday party he attended in Naples last month, and who has said she calls him Daddy. This was the party that caused Mr. Berlusconi’s wife to declare their marriage, one year older than Ms. Letizia, over.
More recent are allegations, potentially more damaging, that Mr. Berlusconi, 72, invited Ms. Letizia and about 40 other girls, some like her at the time younger than 18, to spend New Year’s Eve at one of his villas in Sardinia.
Much of Mr. Berlusconi’s success has stemmed from his uncanny ability to read the national mood. Now many wonder if he has finally miscalculated it and is pushing tolerant Italians too far, and whether his late-career reputation may increasingly resemble the Roman imperial decadence of Fellini’s “Satyricon.”
The prime minister has repeatedly denied anything untoward in his rapport with Ms. Letizia, who has posed in her underwear and said in a recent interview that she was a virgin. On Thursday, Mr. Berlusconi said he had “absolutely not” had “a relationship, let’s say steamy or more than steamy, with an under-age girl.”
The age of consent in Italy is 16, but people are considered minors until 18.
“I have sworn it on the life of my children,” he added. “If this were perjury, I would have to resign a minute later.”
The story is taking on political dimensions less than two weeks before elections for the European Parliament, and a month before Italy is scheduled to host the Group of 8 meeting of world leaders, and when Mr. Berlusconi is trying to secure his standing with the Obama administration.
Dario Franceschini, the leader of the center-left opposition, has been asking voters this question about Mr. Berlusconi: “Would you have your children raised by this man?”
Critics say the debate is not just about sex, but reflects an inattention to Italy’s deep problems, like the economy, or reconstruction after the earthquake that left 70,000 people homeless in central Italy. The leader of another opposition party recently compared him to Nero, fiddling while Rome burned. The Financial Times editorialized this week that Mr. Berlusconi was “a malign example to all.”
And yet, Mr. Berlusconi still governs virtually unopposed. “The problem is simply that the Italians can’t imagine who could replace Berlusconi at the moment,” said Tim Parks, a novelist and commentator on Italy. “It’s too dangerous and too much effort to replace him. So it hardly matters how bad the scandal is.”
Or, as the right-wing politician Francesco Storace said in a recent radio interview, “People don’t vote for Berlusconi because he tells the truth; they vote for him because they like him.”
In what many see as a sign of Mr. Berlusconi’s grip on the levers of power in Italy and the Vatican, the Italian Bishops Conference this week essentially gave him a pass, or at least a no comment, calling for “adult behavior,” but saying that each person’s conduct was a matter “of individual conscience.”
“Things are completely turned upside down,” said Gianluca Nicoletti, a commentator for Il Sole 24 Ore radio. “Those who always represented the family and faithful couples are happy to justify hanky-panky,” he said. While some on the left, “which always professed a belief in total sexual freedom, are now like inquisitors with their fingers wagging.”
What has come to be called simply “the Noemi case” presents new elements in Italy’s long relationship with Mr. Berlusconi’s questionable behavior. For the first time in recent memory, the Italian press is shining a bright light into the dark recesses of a politician’s personal life.
That campaign is being led by Mr. Berlusconi’s archenemy in the press, the left-wing daily La Repubblica. For the past two weeks it has published 10 questions for the prime minister, chief among them how he met Ms. Letizia’s father. Mr. Berlusconi has said he recently met Ms. Letizia through her father, Benedetto Letizia, a functionary for the city of Naples.
In recent weeks, Ms. Letizia’s father and mother have largely stood by Mr. Berlusconi’s accounts of how he met Ms. Letizia, while her former boyfriend and her aunt have contradicted them, creating a confusion that has prolonged the drama.
In an interview published by La Repubblica on Sunday, Ms. Letizia’s former boyfriend, who later turned out to have a criminal record, said that the prime minister first called Ms. Letizia last fall after seeing her picture in a modeling catalog.
He described Ms. Letizia’s relationship with Mr. Berlusconi as chaste and mentorlike. It was he who first said that she and a high school friend had been invited to spend New Year’s Eve at Mr. Berlusconi’s villa in Sardinia.
The newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that Mr. Berlusconi had told associates that Ms. Letizia had been at the party along with many other guests.
Mr. Berlusconi’s many supporters believe he is being unjustly attacked in election season and should be left alone.
Giuliano Ferrara, a sometime adviser to Mr. Berlusconi, has urged La Repubblica to stop the inquisition, saying that “the only thing at stake” in the matter was “Berlusconi’s ego.”
Yet if Mr. Berlusconi and his wife, Veronica Lario, divorce, an inheritance battle is looming between his two children from his first marriage and three from his second to Ms. Lario, all of whom have defended their father.
The “Noemi case” has both deepened and distracted from other lingering black spots on the Berlusconi government. Last week, a Milan court issued its reasoning for convicting a British lawyer, David Mills, of accepting a $600,000 bribe from associates of Mr. Berlusconi.
Mr. Berlusconi was not on trial, having passed a law granting Italy’s top politicians immunity from prosecution while in office. He has repeatedly accused prosecutors of being left-wing ideologues out to get him.
Meanwhile, Ms. Letizia recently posed with a man identified as her new boyfriend for Chi, a magazine published by Mondadori, which is owned by Mr. Berlusconi. She discussed her personal life: “I haven’t yet taken that big step. Virginity is an important value. I believe strongly in God and am a practicing Catholic.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 16, 2009
Because of an editing error, an article on May 29 about a speculative uproar in Italy over Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s friendship with Noemi Letizia, a teenage model, referred incorrectly in some copies to the number of girls younger than 18, including Ms. Letizia, who had been invited by Mr. Berlusconi to spend last New Year’s Eve at one of his villas. It was an unspecified number among a total of about 40 girls — not all of them.
