AND now they’re a quartet. Gianandrea Noseda, the music director of Turin’s Teatro Regio, is to become music director of Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra, the fourth Italian in recent years to be tapped for a major American orchestra. He joins Riccardo Muti at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Nicola Luisotti at the San Francisco Opera and Corrado Rovaris at the Philadelphia Opera. In addition, Fabio Luisi holds the position of Principal Conductor at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in addition to his role as General Music Director of the Zurich Opera.

 Irpinia contradicts everything you expect about Southern Italy. The rainy climate and green mountains have more in common with the Pacific Northwest than the Amalfi Coast, just 40 miles away. Instead of Roman ruins like those at Pompeii, stones remain from the Osci, the native Campanian tribe known for their salacious festivals. The spiritual center of the region is the famously hard-to-reach church at Montevergine.

 Gina DePalma, a pastry chef whose artfully simple Italian desserts helped make Babbo in Greenwich Village one of Manhattan’s most beloved and admired restaurants, died on Tuesday at a hospice in the Bronx. She was 49.