Rule reminder

In cleft sentences, the tense of 'essere' must reflect the time of the event: È (present), È stato/Era (past), Sarà (future). The subordinate clause verb maintains its own tense. In formal/literary Italian, passato remoto of 'essere' (fu/furono) is used for past clefts in narrative. Tense mixing errors are common: avoid using present 'è' when the event is clearly in the past, or past 'è stato' when referring to a general/current truth.