life in an italian village Archives - Page 2 of 11 - Itch.world
A three-minute escape to Italy.
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Those of you who have been with me for awhile know that my favorite part of the holidays is the impressive presepe vivente, or living nativity, that the neighboring village of La Ville puts on. I have missed it dearly the last two years when it was suspended due to Covid. It was epic—200 volunteers, 50 scenes of ancient Jerusalem lit by 1500 candles over a route over a kilometer long. It had it all—nasty Romans with a slave market, donkeys turning a oil press, women washing clothes in a stream, a field of lepers, culminating in a manger with a rotating Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus cast from families who had recently given birth in the local hospital.
I kept driving past the location eagerly looking for signs of activity and notices of the dates it would happen; it always ran a few days between Christmas day and Epiphany. But nothing.
Doing some research I discovered that there is a new parish priest in the church that was located at the center of the event. The church had always given space to the volunteers to house the sets and props, and to build and repair things from year to year. The new priest wanted to end the arrangement causing the organizers to find a new home. They mustered and moved it to another nearby village, but have a much smaller area to work with. We went and it was impressive how much they had managed to recreate, the Jerusalem part was very similar, but the truly magical bits that occurred out in open fields weren’t possible. They still had a few lepers, but it just wasn’t the same without a field of them, it turns out.
Should I send the new parish priest a Grinch outfit?
I have had about enough. I’d been behaving rather well making sure that between guests and life most of the critical things had been accomplished and no one’s feelings had been ruffled, basically keeping the trains running on time. I’d stifled many a thought and comment and was feeling a little pent up. Standing at the kitchen window, overlooking the olives and doing dishes (the view is above), the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray” comes up on shuffle. (According to Spotify, I’ve had quite the year with the Velvet Underground, with it coming up as my most listened to band.) But even though I am a fan, “Sister Ray” pushes it. At 17 minutes 29 seconds it covers all the basics of rebellion and then some—some transvestites bring home some sailors for a drug and sex orgy when one gets shot and killed. The main concern seems to be whether the carpet will get stained. They recorded it in one take and the sound engineer left midway, saying he’d return when it’s over.
But there was something about this song that saved me in that moment. I turned it up, loud, and revelled for all of those 17 minutes and 29 seconds in being bad. Well, bad adjacent. In reality, I actually have no desire to have an orgy with transvestites and sailors, kill one, and shoot up heroin. But when I was describing this moment to John and Sebastian last night at dinner I realized that I wish I’d been badder in my life. They asked how I would define my sense of bad and I had no answer at that moment. They said that it was like I was holding up an empty container labeled “bad” and there was nothing inside. It reminded me of what I just wrote about my mother and the beer garden and Mom wanting to rebel but never doing it. I guess that this apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree, indeed. What a terribly frustrating realization.
I’ve been thinking about what caught me with such power that afternoon and what kind of badness I aspire to that doesn’t scale to transvestites, orgies, or murders. I am not sure I have the answer but it does include caring less about whether I am pleasing people, taking care of things, doing things right, and always, always trying to be perfect. Frankly, it’s getting a little old. So if you happen pass our house and you hear “Sister Ray” being played with the volume up, watch out.
I’m not going to even count the fact that I love orange, because that’s an all-year basic for me.
Going out on a limb I’m going to say that Italy is at her very best in the Fall. Temperatures are perfect—crisp at night but warm in the day, the light is gorgeous—those long slanting beams of sun across the landscape, and most of the tourists have left allowing cities and villages to draw a deep breath.
If that’s not enough, here are a few more reasons to love Italy in the autumn.
The olives are ripe
Every year I turn into a farmer, not something that past Nancy would have imagined on the list of possibilities for future Nancy. I scrutinize weather predictions. John and I walk the orchard to see how far along the olives are in ripeness. I scheme about who I can invite to visit and rope in to help, and beyond that how many additional pairs of hands we’ll need. I call the olive press to see when they open for the season and book our time on press. That appointment starts the picking clock—not good to allow olives to sit any more than 48 hours between when they are picked and pressed.
This year is in the can, so to speak, and was a good one. Despite record-breaking heat in July, an epic drought in August, a hail storm in September that knocked off about a third of the olives, and an unusually aggressive pruning we did in the Spring where we took off about 2/3 of the main trunks of many trees, the unphased olives trees did their thing and gave us slightly over 500kg. of olives, resulting in about 65 liters of oil. Thank you trees.
L’Intrepida, the vintage bicycle race
One of the most wondrous things our village does, out of many, is L’Intrepida, which, just to be clear, means “The Intrepid”. This year over 900 riders assembled from all over, including a friend of ours from California, to ride either a 42, 85 or 120 kilometer trip through the Tuscan countryside. As charming as this thing sounds, it is not for the faint of heart. All bicycles need to be pre-1987. Hasn’t it been since then that they’ve developed all those good gears and tires that make you actually able to climb mountains on dirt roads? That doesn’t stop this gang. Not only do their bikes look uncomfortable, many are also cycling in vintage wool pants and shirts. Luckily they are well fortified by rest stops at castles with wine, vin santo (a local dessert wine) and pastries. Water is not on offer. Apparently there is a hell of a lot of hydration in red wine.
My friend from California had mistranslated the registration form and hadn’t come prepared with a doctor’s report clearing him to participate. The ever-practical Tuscans quickly came up with a solution. He could ride, unofficially, then when he got to the finish and was clearly still alive he could claim his number along with his goody bag. Sadly, upon arriving at the finish he wasn’t given his original number, “123” but did get the locally-sourced goods: a big bag of packaged pre-toasted bread slices, a bag of coffee, a package of feminine douche products, some pasta, and an herbal antibacterial nasal spray and throat wash. Now wasn’t that worth a bunch of kilometers on a gravel road, uphill, on a bike with lousy brakes, wearing wool? Apparently, it is.
Step back fifty years, complete with a local band playing music from the roaring 1970s over distorted speakers that date back even further. Join the queue to choose and pay for your meal in advance from the volunteers lit by glaring overhead fluorescent lights. In an adjoining tent you’ll find a line up of cooking stations, usually involving large open fires and sometimes cauldrons of polenta, manned by local cooks and volunteers. Go into a large tent and sit down at endless banquet tables, all covered with the latest in plastic tablecloths, hand over the ticket you received when you paid, and you will be rewarded with the local speciality in small plastic bowls, often with plastic sforks. Welcome to the world of the sagra, or village festival.
They mostly take place in the fall, and almost every village has one dedicated to its own speciality food. Just up the hill from us is the sagra of a special kind of chestnuts, called marrone. A nearby village in the other direction celebrates polenta. A tiny hamlet in between has a festival dedicated to ciaccia, the local deep fried bread. Slightly further away you’ll be able to find sagras focused on truffles, or porcini.
Our village’s festival celebrates a really fat spaghetti noodle, called bringoli. You’ve got two choices: meat sauce or mushroom. Next to the pasta cooking stations are these really wonderful grills they have here with roaring fires in an upright chamber in the back and a long flat tray in front in which the hot coals are spread, perfect for grilling sausages and pieces of bread that are then rubbed with garlic and drizzled with just-pressed olive oil. Prior Itch: In praise of fat spaghetti. (I do love this post.)
Although popular with the few tourists who are here at this time of year, it’s mainly locals who attend and a time to catch up, see old friends, and for kids and teens to run loose in packs with their own codes and rules. All is accompanied by young wine, almost undrinkable. Usually a euro for a plastic glass and about four for a bottle.
I adore the purity of these events. There’s no hushed-voice, precious attitude that I sometimes found in the Bay Area around food. This is just what’s always been eaten and celebrated, a justification for pleasure and joy, but not for self-gratification or congratulation. And there are absolutely no long descriptions of the provenance of very element. People just know where it all comes from by who brought it to the festival and who is cooking, which is deeply lovely. Give me a plastic sfork every time.
Melvin gets his winter body
Melvin was born in the woodshed, the product of a fly-by-night father and an indifferent mother. She had clearly had too many children before and did the bare minimum to keep the babies alive, visiting only long enough to feed them. Dad was just out for a good time and never showed his face when it came time to raise the kids.
John found Melvin and his siblings one night while getting wood for the fire and we put Donella, who is our resident feral cat tamer, on the case. I have learned that every locality, from Berkeley to the Upper Tiber Valley has a Feral Cat Woman. You figure out who she is and she will always have a feral cat trap you can borrow to catch the kittens so you can bring them into a small enclosed space (like a bathroom) and start the process of taming them. (As you can tell, we have some experience in this having been “blessed” on three occasions with feral kittens in or around our homes.) We got three of the four siblings adopted but ended up with Melvin.
Melvin lives life on his own terms. He never lets you forget that he is, in his heart, still wild and untamed. But he follows you around the yard when you work, usually directly under foot or in the tree you are working on, demanding snuggles. Indoors he is much more aloof, at least until Sebastian “broke” him this summer and now he will sometimes be cuddled even inside, as deeply conflicted as this makes him.
We see Melvin’s relatives everywhere. There’s the old Melvin, clearly the survivor of many fights, whose body moves like a wooden block—no feline undulation here—who could be dad or granddad. There are teenage Melvins swaggering around. We see mom occasionally, usually escaping from where she has hidden another litter. (Don’t get me started on how spaying and neutering is less common in Italy.)
But all the male cats, not just in Melvin’s family but across the valley, share an extraordinary trait. The Winter Body. Male cats gain significant amounts of weight in the winter and are thin in the summer. The first time we went through this with Melvin I thought there was something wrong and was ready to take him to the vet when I started noticing that the same thing was happening to all the male cats around us. It’s extraordinary to see this skinny cat suddenly add another half-cat or more to his body mass. November is a prime month for beefing (or catting?) up and we are suddenly filling the dog food and cat food bowls several times a day. (Melvin often eats Lola’s dog food as he believes that she is actually his mother.)
Maybe we should all embrace the Winter Body. It would make the season much more fun.
Halloween
The big event in Italy is not Halloween, but All Saints Day on November 1st, which is a national holiday. The roads around the cemetery are packed as people come to clean and decorate the graves of their loved ones with fresh plastic flowers and battery-operated candles. (For more about how Italians celebrate All Saints, or the Day of the Dead.)
When we first moved ten years ago I was feeling guilty that the kids wouldn’t have a proper Halloween. Sebastian and I tried—he dressed in costume, I put on a hat and carried all his Nerf guns, and we went out trick or treating in the piazza to the local merchants who reacted with confusion and tried their best. Sebastian scored a sausage from the butcher. A friend had brought us bags of Halloween candy so I handed it out to people we saw in a sort of reverse Halloween tradition.
Things have changed in ten years. Now Halloween is becoming very popular—it gains momentum every year. Now our village was packed with kids in costume. It’s the most profitable evening of the year for the big disco twenty minutes away. Trick or treat is still going from store to store rather than house to house, which is lucky for us as they don’t yet sell packages of small candies for this purpose.
But what really stopped me in my tracks was the a local grandmother in our hamlet who drives a Lada 4×4 and is about as far from trends as anyone I can imagine put a lit, carved pumpkin in her window, behind her protective metalwork. This was Halloween breaking through in an unprecedented way. When I saw her a day or so later I complimented her on her pumpkin and she beamed. Did you notice that it was smiling, she asked.
“Would you like to come and watch my wife and me dance the tango?” asked Paolo, the dynamo of a contractor and stone mason who rebuilt our house and is now working on the restoration next door for our friends. He’s a whirling dervish of a man, curly grey hair, intense, sparkling eyes and always enthused about an arch he’s built or a particularly nice rock or bit of old beam he can reuse in a creative way. In addition to building walls that are art pieces and controlling a crane he and his wife are professional dancers on the Italian tango circuit. His invitation was several years ago and was our first exposure to Italian tango. We enthusiastically agreed that we’d love to come—it’s always fun to watch passionate, skilled dancers and hear vibrant, sensuous music. We closed our eyes, imagined Italians doing the tango, and couldn’t wait.
That evening they’d closed off one of the smaller streets in town and built a wooden stage. The DJ was readying the sound system to play the best of tango music and the dancers were assembling, all dressed in their finest.
Then the music and dancing started. It was about as different from our preconceptions of the tango as we could imagine. It was like taking the tango and instead of turning it to an eleven (you either get this reference, or you don’t), turning it to a two. Slow, stylized, formal, and to us, not in the ballpark of passion and rhythm of what we’d expected. Dancers barely touched, moving around the floor in predefined patterns. The music as well seemed like a pale interpretation. To say we were puzzled was an understatement but fortunately we ran into an Italian friend of ours who delights in knowing odd bits about his own culture, and he explained.
The years around 1890 to 1920 saw a large wave of Italians immigrants to Argentina (up to 60% of immigrants were Italian), mostly young men who came to make money, with many hoping to return to Italy. Buenos Aires became a melting pot with immigrants from all over the world living in close quarters. Into this stew pot the tango was born. Many credit the Italians as being a key influence in the creation of the Argentinian tango, along with mazurkas; milonga (the folk music of the Argentinean pampas which itself combined Indian rhythms with the music of early Spanish colonists); the habanera of Cuba and the candombe rhythms originating in Africa. A dash of traditional polkas and waltzes were thrown into the pot. Scholars say that Italian men were some of the first tango dancers and that they brought a particular note of wistful longing for the homeland that became a trademark of the tango.
The tango bounded around the world and became very popular around 1913-15 and at that time many Italians immigrants returned, eager to share this amazing music and dance with their villages. They tried to teach the music to local musicians and to show off this soulful, passionate dance at festas in the village square. But, apparently, they did not factor in Italian grandmothers, who were appalled and quickly put some decorum around this show of overt sensuality. No more touching than strictly necessary, lose the throbbing, passionate rhythm, make the music sound more familiar. And they would surround the dance floor to make sure all was to their liking. And the Italian tango was born.
Paolo and his wife were at a village event dancing last week and we filmed so that you can get an idea. He’s on vacation now for a couple of weeks and when I asked what they would be doing he quickly replied “Dancing”.
We’ve spent the last year improving the nest, getting around to things that we haven’t tackled after being in the house close to six years. One category was getting some large mirrors. When you live in a house that’s somewhere north of 600 or so years old the aesthetic choices about something like a mirror get a bit complex. Do you go in-your-face modern, real old (which is often gilded and simply too much for our simple house), or pseudo old, most of it screaming out every bit of its fakery. At the risk of sounding pathetic, we’d not found the solution since we’d moved in and wanted it solved and to never think about it again.
The next small town over from us has an intriguing store, although it rarely seemed to be open. One dusty window facing the street revealed a long, narrow space piled high on both sides with all sorts of old wood, some frames, and assorted furniture. We’d tried to go a few times, with little success. Sometimes a worker or two would be there but they seemed unable to give details on what was available because the owner, Paolo, wasn’t there.
One day, this lovely woman who seems to specialize in decorative and faux painting, offered to contact Paolo, who was in his office, and have him come to the shop. She called, and about a minute later he appeared. He sorted through the mess, sometimes needing to crawl on top of tottering furniture to get to what was behind, while the woman called out warnings, and finally we had several possible frames. He helped us pile them in the car to take home to try out and although we’d met five minutes earlier he wanted neither deposit, name, or phone number. And we drove off with hundreds of euros worth of frames.
Several of the frames worked, so we returned the following week to buy a couple, return some, and have more made. Once again Paolo had to be called from the office. We discussed what needed to be done and he invited us back to the office for a coffee. We had things to do so declined.
Several back and forths to check on progress all yielded a similar pattern and it was revealed that the office was in fact the cafe just around the corner. We finally took Paolo up on his offer of refreshment at the office, and he shared his philosophy of life to the tune of church bells.
You choose a work you enjoy and is fulfilling—he has worked with wood since he was a child at the side of his father—but you never, ever let it dominate the rest of the mix. Your life always needs to be bigger than your work or you are lost. He works (or more from what I saw his charming and talented employee works) but it is only to support life and to provide funds for enough time “in the office,” a cafe adjacent to the town square, in the shadow of one of the most famous paintings of the Renaissance, Piero della Francesca’s Resurrection, and filled with his friends and enough new people wandering through to keep life interesting.
With that he invited to come visit him at the office whenever we happened to be in the area for a coffee or glass of wine and more conversation. And we have our mirrors at last.
In 1963, the most exciting event occurred in our village since Florence smacked down Milan in the big battle of 1440—Claudia Cardinale came to town to shoot the movie La Ragazza di Bube. Her equally gorgeous co-star was George Chakiris, who had just won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for his performance as gang leader Bernardo Nunez in West Side Story, but today all the old men seem to remember only Claudia. I have not interviewed the older women on the subject. Claudia’s career was just becoming hot, hot, hot as earlier in 1963 she’d starred in Fellini’s 8½ with Marcello Mastroianni, AND with Burt Lancaster in Visconti’s The Leopard. Both films were critically acclaimed and are often cited by critics and scholars as among the greatest films ever made, so when she hit the village to shoot La Ragazza di Bube it was noticed by the locals—they didn’t even need the Esquire article about her, titled “The Next Goddess of Love,” to help form an opinion. Most Americans know her as from the breakthrough film she did the next year, playing Princess Dala in The Pink Panther, as David Niven’s love interest.
The after effects of this brief event in 1963 are everywhere in the village. The movie poster is lovingly displayed in several of the coffee bars. When John was scouting for a shoot and had a tour of the attic of our local theater, the very spot on the floor, tucked under the eves, where Claudia napped between scenes 50 years earlier was pointed out with awe.
But we were lucky enough to be in the piazza when Claudia returned for a visit in honor of the 50th anniversary of the film. The square was cleared of cars for the occasion and packed with about a hundred people, mainly quite old and male, many of whom I barely recognized as they were all cleaned up and wearing their finest suits. A black car pulled into the piazza and the square became completely silent. Claudia alighted, and was greeted by the mayor, wearing not only his best suit but also his Italian flag sash, only pulled out for very special occasions. Like when he swore me in as an Italian citizen.
One more poster being added before Claudia’s visit.
She walked across the square, chain smoking and now quite stout, was presented with an award, and was whisked off to revisit key sites from the movie followed by a long Tuscan lunch with the local glitterati. But the look on the men’s faces when she crossed the square. I could almost see their youthful passions, possibilities, and obsessions, existing for one important moment intact and alive, a shadow self revealed in the sunlight, as Claudia stood before them. And it was beautiful to behold. Later there was a viewing of the film in our village theater (photo above).
Claudia is still going strong having starred in over 145 movies with stars as diverse as John Wayne, Rita Hayworth, Klaus Kinski, Rock Hudson, Anthony Quinn, and George Segal. In 2020 she was in Netflix’s film Rogue City. Despite a bit of a rocky start to her romantic life, including having a child at 18, she lived with Italian director Pasquale Squitieri for 42 years until his death at 78. She was born in Tunisia to Sicilian parents and is fluent in French, Arabic, Italian, English, and Spanish. She is a passionate advocate for women’s and gay rights. In a 2014 interview she said, “If you want to practice this craft, you have to have inner strength. Otherwise, you’ll lose your idea of who you are. Every film I make entails becoming a different woman. And in front of a camera, no less! But when I’m finished, I’m me again.”
Claudia, here’s to you. Not only from the men of the village, but from me. Never lose the grace of being yourself.
Italian actress Claudia Cardinale and American actor George Chakiris star in Luigi Comencini’s film ‘La Ragazza Di Bube’, also known as ‘Bebo’s Girl’, 1964. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
When Donella was in high school one of her favorite classes was art history. This was curious to me as I’d tried to interest her in this subject throughout her life with absolutely no success; I used to be fairly passionate about art history and had even done a yearlong work/study program at a London auction house. After we moved to Italy it seemed relevant that she could tell a Parmesan from a Parmigianino, but she was deeply disinterested. One day when we were in Arezzo and she took me into a church to see the Cimabue Crucifix and I knew something had changed.
It all had to do with her art history teacher. There’s a certain type of small-town Italian beauty aesthetic that I find endlessly fascinating. The opposite of the French less is more mantra, this type of Italian woman believes that more is more—there’s nothing shiny, sparkling, towering, tight, or colorful that’s ignored, often in the same outfit. I adore this as it’s completely independent from natural beauty, designer trends, or idealized body type. When the Italian small-town woman is wearing gold stilettos, a tight leopard-patterned skirt, and a purple fur jacket, and is properly made up with heavy makeup and perfectly-styled, vibrantly dyed hair there is simply nothing she can’t do, no head she can’t turn, no man she can’t have. I watch in endless fascination, clothed in my uniform of jeans, oversized sweater, and distressed sneakers, wondering if I’ve ever felt this kind of female superpower.
In this realm, the art history teacher reigned supreme. She was in her seventies and Donella would often report the day’s curatorial choices to us. “Tight leather pants, over the knee platform boots, and a gold lame sparkly, tight sweater.” The class was mainly girls, and they all followed this woman’s every move closely, like groupies.
She obviously was covering the curriculum, hence the Cimabue detour, but as in all things in Italian education most of the real learning was off-syllabus. One day a female student was obviously upset and not paying attention. The teacher halted the lesson and asked what was happening in her life. The girl, tears pouring down her face, revealed that she’d just had a breakup with her boyfriend. The teacher promptly said that they needed to turn their focus from Renaissance perspective to much more important things, and to circle the chairs around. The couple of boys in the class sat in the perimeter.
The relationship story was revealed, with much commiseration, and then it was the teacher’s turn. She counseled the girls that they really had to watch who they fell in love with because the wrong choices could bring great complication. She, for instance, had been married for many years, but also had been having a long-term affair with another teacher down the hall, in the same school, who many of the students also had as a teacher. Her husband and lover even shared the same last name. Although she loved both men this romantic triangle had made all of their lives difficult and perhaps this romantic situation might have been better to avoid.
Donella came home that day with her eyes particularly wide as this was the kind of curriculum she hadn’t run across in school in California.
Descriptions of modern high-end houses often brag about having a private theater where one can gather with friends and watch a movie. Starting in the Renaissance, wealthy Italian home builders also had the desire to share entertainment with their friends, but instead of small screening room they built actual theaters in their houses, sometimes including stages with sets, an orchestra pit, and box seats, so they could host theatrical productions or operas in the comfort of their own homes. Or, uh, palaces. Even our small village of around 6,000 people used to have six different private theaters, and recently I did a walking tour that visited them all.
The most mysterious one of them (pictured above) was one I’d only heard about only once or twice over the ten years we’ve been here. When we were looking for a house to buy a couple of people asked if we’d seen the place for sale with the theater, right in the middle of town. A friend said she was walking around the rundown rooms and she opened a door that she thought was to a closet and BOOM, there she was, in the middle of a private theater. Seemed kind of too good to be true, but we couldn’t find anyone to show it to us and when we finally saw plans of it we reached the same conclusion that friends had—the layout was very difficult to convert into a house. So when I had the chance to see this place on the tour I jumped. It’s on the main floor on a smallish palazzo on the distinctive steep, straight street of town that descends and then crossed the valley in a perfect line. Inaugurated at the beginning of the 18th century, The Ulivi Stefanelli Palace theater is pretty humble. It was designed for a standing audience and has its backdrops painted into the walls instead of changeable, but the backgrounds are full of perspectives where your gaze loses itself in the search of imaginary places dotted with bizarre and fantastic characters. It has a petite balcony surrounding it where guests could watch from a different angle.
Today, the old palazzo has been divided into flats so the main floor now holds the theater, a couple of other rooms that could be used as bedrooms, a place that could be a kitchen, and a back garden. (Apparently the floor above is also for sale which could make it much more liveable.) And yes, it is for sale if your home owning dreams include your own spettacolo.
This desire to see a mysterious piece of real estate in the village made me curious about theaters in Italy. Turns out that Italians invented theaters as we know them, as well as some of the widely-credited art forms that are still performed in them, like opera and the Commedia dell’arte.
Theaters started to boom in Italy during the Renaissance as the passion for perspective that was taking over painting naturally extended to backdrops for performances, setting the stage (OK, I will stop) for a flood of innovation as they brought their theories into this three-dimensional space.
The first permanent modern interior theater, the Teatro Olimpico, was designed by Palladio and is still in existence in Vicenza, near Venice. Opened in 1585, the theater has an elliptical shape with tiered seats so everyone could see and hear well. The design was a reflection of Palladio’s love of Roman antiquities.
The scenery could not be changed, but the set incorporated the latest thinking about perspective and vanishing points, emphasized by a tilted floor to force perspective. Every seat was aligned to marvel at one of these views.
The demand for spectacle drove even more innovation and in 1618 the Teatro Farnese was designed in Parma and had the world’s first proscenium, creating a window around the action, the standard in most theaters today, and it also allowed for scene changes. First used in 1628, it hosted about everything you’d want to share with the 3,000 people you’d invited over for pizza and a beer: drama, opera, and ballet were performed on the stage; equestrian acts and sumptuous balls were held in the large arena between stage and seating—this area could also be flooded to a depth of two feet and used for mock naval battles; and, when not floating little boats, hosted court ceremonies and princely extravaganzas.
Competition heated up across Italy and noble families were quick to put the artists they had on the payroll, including Michelangelo and Da Vinci, to design costumes, scenery, and stage machinery for their private events between the big assignments, like the Sistine Chapel.
The ultimate piece of scene change high tech, the chariot and pole system, hit in 1641. Giacomo Torelli designed a set of slots in the stage floor to set backdrops into that were connected to a set of understage “chariots” on casters to roll them back and forth, all engineered with winches, pulleys and ropes so that scenes could be changed with a single winch. This clever bit of engineering quickly spread all over Europe and was the standard until the end of the 1890s. This technology was more than just pretty—it allowed for the use of specific scenes rather than a general static backdrop—plays could now be written about much more specific places and situations.
Back to the village, in addition to the small gem I talked about at the open, the theater craze hit hard and six theaters were built over the years. According to the director of our local theater, Andrea Merendelli, in 1631 Italy was in the throes of yet another round of the plague, which had killed 10,000 in Florence out of a population of 75,000, and one out of four people in Milan. At that time wooden blockades were put up at the village gates to check health passes that travelers carried to prove they had not been to plague-ridden towns, and to keep anyone suspect out. On February 17, local records show, not only were a troupe of performers admitted to town to put on plays but the wooden planks forming some of the blockades were repurposed to extend a stage. Merendelli assumes that they must have been a well-known troupe for this exception to be made—actors were beginning to be stars during this period and often cannons were shot off to announce their arrival in larger towns.
The main theater in the village is well-used and loved to this day. We’ve been many times to events ranging from a Pink Floyd tribute band (Pink Floyd is huge here) to school plays, to film screenings, to all sorts of performances.
Lola loves evenings at the theater.
Sebastian’s fifth-grade play packed them in.
Built in 1789 as a part of a grand compound that included a palazzo, a private chapel, and a garden leading to the private theater, the grandness has gone—the garden is now a parking lot and a road through town—but the theater remains as an historical setting for a vibrantly alive local events.
The other four theaters in town did not fare as well. One burned, two were broken up and converted into unrecognizable civic offices. One tiny piazza still hosts events, now mainly musical, as it has since the 1500s. A tunnel leads in from one side in which, during the Renaissance, a large machine was placed to produce an echo.
I had so much fun uncovering all of this and realizing how much the Italian love of spectacle and beautiful spaces, that has been a constant through the centuries, adds to life daily life. I wonder when they were creating these spaces if it ever crossed their minds that villagers would be enjoying them, and making them their own, hundreds of years later. Somehow it seems unlikely that will be the case for most of what we are building today.
The echoes of WWII are all around us here. The war is not an abstract thing—I have a friend who found a bomb in the woods when he was a kid and he and his brother were thinking of hitting it with a large stick before they decided to show it to their parents. The bomb removal experts came and said it was unexploded, and if they had pounded on it they would likely both be dead. Occasionally, a discussion with one of the oldest members of the village will disclose a great wrong done during the war to their family by another family in the village. The shadows are everywhere, including which coffee bars and grocery stores people frequent; some bars are known to be more fascist or communist. I know people who will not shop at the Co-op grocery store as it is owned by the communist party.
This year’s village play, Tovaglia a Quadri, picked up on some of these themes. When, and how, is it appropriate to make our way back into society after having been a refugee hiding away—or in quarantine; how do people create a plan for the future after a catastrophe; and what role do elections, and politicians play (or don’t play) in such times? The performance, as I’ve covered before—go to Itch.world and search Tovaglia a Quadri for other editions—is a witty, sardonic look at events in the village and nation, always freshly written a few weeks before it’s performed. The thread that united the series of vignettes this year was the importance of the links between people that tie us all together—and how to find it again and restore it. The title of the play, Filocrazia, alludes to the power of the invisible ropes, or cables (a filo), that bind us to one another, and to a place.
The play is usually staged in a tiny square in the village, but due to Covid restrictions they had to move the location for the first time to an old castle a kilometer or two out of town and stage the play in its larger courtyard. This castle, which is now a popular place for a pizza or a large gathering for Sunday lunch, is on a site that dates back to pagan times, but the present structure was built in 1234 and passed from one powerful family to another. It was the summer home of a famous nobleman and soldier from the 1400s, Baldaccio Bruni, who was murdered in Florence in the Palazzo Vecchio by another Florentine noble family who was concerned about his growing power. His body was thrown out the window, dragged through the streets, and then beheaded in the Piazza della Signoria. His ghost is said to haunt this castle, which actually seems possible when you go down in the dungeons at night. Considering what happened to him I think he has every reason to be a ghost.
The castle had a rich history during WWII as well. It was the German headquarters, into which an Allied pilot, who was shot down, accidentally parachuted.
The site informed the play as it featured a group of refugees who have moved to the castle in the countryside to hide from an undisclosed great danger. They think the danger has now largely passed but are split into factions between those who are eager to return and take up the old ways, those who want to remain sequestered, and those who want to use this opportunity to reinvent and improve their community.
The play took place during the runup to the election for mayor in the village and the playwrights couldn’t resist adding a bit current political commentary. Two candidates come to the castle to campaign during this pivotal moment for change, one from the right and one from the left. One is dressed in white and one in black, but they are indistinguishable in every way—they say exactly the same dialogue to the same people, making the same promises. The pilot who parachuted into the castle makes an appearance, as well as a philosopher who comes to help clarify matters, holding a large book called The Book of the Future. It turns out all the pages are blank. A particularly fitting symbol for our current situation—the future is always unknown, but right now it is more unknown than usual. The conclusion of the play, which I profoundly agree with, is that only our ties to each other will get us through and allow us to move forward.
This year’s audience included Ralph Fiennes, right, with director and playwright Andrea Merendelli.
On the topic of the echoes of WWII John and I finally stopped in the lovely hilltop town of Lucignano, between Arezzo and Siena. We went to a little square for lunch and I noticed an interesting inscription on the wall. I am always trying to decipher signs, but this one was particularly intriguing.
“QUANDO SI È FORTI SI È CARI AGLI AMICI E SI È TEMUTI DAI NEMICI.” “When you are strong you are dear to your friends and feared by enemies,” is a quote from Mussolini from March 26, 1939 during a celebration of the twentieth anniversary of fascism. I was intrigued so I investigated and found that this phrase is thrown around even now. In October 2020, when Italy briefly opened gyms during one of the waves of Covid, the anti-fascist journalist Paolo Berizzi, whose work uncovering neo-fascists has forced him to live under the protection of security for over a year, managed to anger almost everyone with a single Tweet. “Robust support from the center right in defence of gyms. ‘When you are strong you are dear to your friends and feared by enemies.'” This linkage of gyms to political extremism went too far, according to one person who responded “This tweet, frankly, does no honor to anyone, neither to you, nor to anti-fascism. You know that I often love to talk to you, so I think I can afford it: it really fell down …”
Friends of ours have a daughter who is a fairly new driver. She borrowed her parents’ car to drive a friend to the train station. A series of things made the drive to the station tense—they were running late, her friend had to make this particular train, and the car was almost out of gas. They arrived at the station with minutes to spare. The station had been newly renovated and she wasn’t sure where to go and pulled into the old passenger drop-off and said goodbye to her friend, tired and stressed. She got back into the car and as she tried to drive away there was a problem: a car was parked in the very small roundabout in front of the station with no driver in sight. A line of cars behind her was growing, as was her uncertainty about how to handle the situation.
She waited for a minute and no driver appeared, so she decided to edge past. She hit the inner side of the roundabout, hard enough to put dents in the car, bend the traffic sign, and lodge the car on the curb.
At this point the owner of the parked car reappears. He’s in his early 60s and with a younger woman. They head for their car to drive away. A person in the car behind gets out to shout that she needs to stop them and get their information. She calls her mother, who in the quick exchange assumes that her daughter had hit the other car, rather than the center post, also says that she should get the information of the driver in the other car. She approaches the two in the car she had needed to get around, who refuse to give her their information, as they had done nothing legally wrong.
She’s desperate. She’s wrecked her parents’ car, there’s a line of people shouting at her what to do, the people in the other car are refusing to give her the information she thinks she needs, so she physically stands in the way of the other driver’s door, blocking him from closing it.
Then things go really wrong. He grabs her to get her away from his door. She feels under attack and scratches his face. She calls her parents to tell them what has just happened. And that the police had been called and were arriving at the scene. Our friends say that they will be there as soon as possible.
When the parents arrived at the scene there were around ten police officers there and several police cars, lights flashing, and blocking the entrance to the station. They learned what had unfolded while they were driving and it was about as unexpected as possible.
They are met by a policeman who comes up with a big smile and says that he lives in their village and that his daughter had been in a local advertising video with their son several years ago when they were both kids. He had just had a long talk with their daughter that she needs to learn to approach life con calma. Their daughter is standing next to the woman, who turns out to the the daughter of the man who was scratched. Our friends’ daughter had been sobbing uncontrollably about what she had done and this woman had held her for five minutes while she cried. Their daughter had immediately recognized that she had gone too far in her anger and fear and kept going to the older man asking if there was anything she could do, each time crying harder as she saw the bleeding scratches. The man and his daughter were consoling her, saying that she could have been a member of their family, mistakes happen, and that we all react emotionally sometimes. The man’s daughter confesses that when she was the same age she actually hit an old man with her car, and that the scratches don’t really matter as her dad was already old and ugly. He agrees, and laughs. Our friend’s daughter learns that the man had double parked in order to come into the station and help his daughter with a heavy suitcase. Our friends tell us that this results in a fresh round of crying.
The officer who had had a long talk with her tells her that she needs to learn to expect that everyone is good and to always look for that. Another officer is preparing a police report and takes their daughter’s statement. Although she doesn’t say anything about the other factors that contributed to the situation the officer puts in the report that the girl was upset because she’d wrecked her parents’ car; the crowd, and her mother’s erroneous advice, had added to her reaction; and that she was a young driver and this was her first accident. The officer doesn’t mention the scratches, only that she defended herself with her hands. The officer remarked that she’s never seen such identical statements as of the girl and the older man. Three different officers apologized to the family and the girl that they need to issue a ticket for entering into the wrong place in the newly rerouted station layout, as well as for damaging the sign.
All begin to disperse and the man, and his daughter, come up to the parents and their daughter. There are warm wishes, forgiveness, humor, and graciousness.
Our friends’ daughter told her parents that this was one of the biggest lessons she’s ever had—that things like a double-parked car might not be a selfish thing but a father helping his daughter with a heavy bag; that is it possible to find the common humanity even after crossing into a dark abyss of rage; and that people can accept mistakes and move on; and, mostly, that people are almost always good. Also that sometimes you need to give yourself a time out before responding. Not bad lessons for a Friday night.
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