Stations of the Cross: Giandomenico Tiepolo, San Polo Church, Venice Italy and Art Institute, Chicago USA

Giandomenico Tiepolo (1727-1804) was the son of Giambattista Tiepolo, a master of painting.

He never achieved the status and fame of his father.

San Polo Church, Venice

However, between 1747 and 1749 he painted “Via Crucis”, the stations of the Cross, in the Oratory of the Crucifixion in the Venetian Church of San Polo. In the same period he also etched the sequence of prints with the same title.

This sequence of 14 paintings is for me the most moving sequence of Christ’s path to the Cross and the Beyond.

Inside the San Polo Church (when I visited) there were on display only some of the 14 paintings, the ones I photographed and have included here.

To my delight, I discovered some of the etchings on paper at the Art Institute of Chicago, which I also display here. Although they do not form a complete series, they supplement the paintings very nicely.

I followed the numerical sequence for both the prints and the paintings.

Frontispiece to Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)

Frontispiece to the set of etchings

Station I: Christ is Condemed to Death, plate one from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)

Station I: Christ is Condemed to Death

Station II: Christ Receives the Cross, plate two from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)

Station II: Christ Receives the Cross

Station III: Christ Falls Beneath the Cross for the First Time, plate three from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)

Station III: Christ Falls Beneath the Cross for the First Time

Station IV: Christ Meets his Mother, plate four from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)

Station IV: Christ Meets his Mother

Station V: Christ is Helped by Simon of Cyrene, plate five from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)

Station V: Christ is Helped by Simon of Cyrene

Station VI: Christ's Face is Wiped by St. Veronica, plate six from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)

Station VI: Christ’s Face is Wiped by St. Veronica

Station VII: Christ Consoles the Weeping Women, plate seven from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)

Station VII: Christ Consoles the Weeping Women

Station IX: Christ Falls Beneath the Cross for the Third Time, plate nine from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)

Station IX: Christ Falls Beneath the Cross for the Third Time

Painting IX: Christ Falls Beneath the Cross for the Third Time, San Polo Church, Venice

Station IX: Christ Falls Beneath the Cross for the Third Time

Painting IX - Detail: the crowd

The crowd is shown full of anticipation.

Station X: Christ is Stripped of His Garments, plate ten from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)

Station X: Christ is Stripped of His Garments

Painting X: Christ is Stripped of His Garments, San Polo Church, Venice

Station X: Christ is Stripped of His Garments

Painting X - Detail

The elder

Painting X - Detail: Mother and Daughter

Mother and daughter observing

Station XI: Christ is Nailed to the Cross, plate eleven from Stations of the Cross, c. 1748, published 1749 (Art Institute of Chicago)

Station XI: Christ is Nailed to the Cross

Painting XI: Christ is Nailed to the Cross, San Polo Church, Venice

Station XI: Christ is Nailed to the Cross

Painting XI - Detail: Christ

Christ unconscious

Painting XI - Detail: Crowd

The watching crowd

Painting XII: Crucifixion, San Polo Church, Venice

Station XII: Christ crucified

Painting XIII: Deposition, San Polo Church, Venice

Station XIII: The deposition of Christ

Painting XIII - Detail

Deposition detail

Painting XIV - Entombment, San Polo Church, Venice

Station XIV: Entombment

The late Mattia Pascal – Ο μακαριτης Μαθιος Πασκαλης

Lyobov Popova: Sketch for a portrait

Introduction

For the moment (and God knows how much it pains me), I have died already twice, but the first time was a mistake, and the second—well, you may read for yourself . . .

Luigi Pirandello, Forward to The Late Mattia Pascal

So, then, man is but a disguise, a lie and hypocrisy, both in himself and in regard to others. He will not have the truth told him, he avoids telling it to others, and all this disposition, so far removed from justice and reason, is rooted by nature in his heart.

Blaise Pascal, Pensees

(both quotations are sourced from Ed Mendelowitz’s article)

Giorgio de Chirico: Portrait prémonitoire de Guillaume Apollinaire.

This is a story about the late Mattia Pascal, the hero in Luigi Pirandello’s 1904 novel, Il fu Mattia Pascal (The late Mattia Pascal)..

Through a movie made by Bernard L’ Herbier in 1925, Mattia assumed another identity (and life) as one of the alter egos of the Greek poet and Nobel Laureate, George Seferis.

In this post I will present Pirandello’s novel, hoping to continue in the future with Seferis’ alter ego.

The Author

Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) was born in Agrigento, Sicily, the son of a rich mining contractor.

Having studied at the universities of Palermo and Rome and taken a degree in philology at Bonn, the young Pirandello turned to writing poetry and stories, achieving his first literary success in 1904 with his novel The Late Mattia Pascal. 

During World War I, Pirandello began to write for the stage, winning an international following with plays such as Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) and Henry IV (1922).

In 1934, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Pirandello was the author of novels, essays, stories, and more than fifty plays, as well as an influence on writers as different as Eugène Ionesco and T.S.Eliot.

Pine tree with Pirandello’s grave

Commenting on his work in 1920 Pirandello wrote:

I think that life is a very sad piece of buffoonery; because we have in ourselves, without being able to know why, wherefore or whence, the need to deceive ourselves constantly by creating a reality (one for each and never the same for all), which from time to time is discovered to be vain and illusory….

My art is full of bitter compassion for all those who deceive themselves; but this compassion cannot fail to be followed by the ferocious derision of destiny which condemns man to deception.

Pirandello Museum

The Novel

The story

Mattia Pascal endures a life of drudgery in a provincial town.

Then, providentially, he discovers that he has been declared dead.

Realizing he has a chance to start over, to do it right this time, he moves to a new city, adopts a new name, and a new course of life—only to find that this new existence is as insufferable as the old one.

But when he returns to the world he left behind, it’s too late: his job is gone, his wife has remarried.

Mattia Pascal’s fate is to live on as the ghost of the man he was.

Francis Bacon: Study after Velazquez

Pirandello on personal identity

…So personal identity is also perception and interpretation, it is a mask, a construction.

And as ernerges from Pirandello’s work, either we play along, or we are out o f the game, i.e. society.

The authentic identity is an illusion; identity is fiction.

Luigi Pirandello

This means that we are always playing roles, with the onIy distinction being between those people who do it unconsciously and those who are aware of their condition.

The resulting character, in Pirandello, is one that is more or less conscious of the fragmentation of the self.

The protagonist usuaily suffers fiom the awareness of this fragmentation whereas the secondary characters generally perceive themselves as unified subjects.

(from Rachel Remington’s thesis)

Masks of No Theater

Pirandello and Heidegger

.…It’s difficult not to be stunned and impressed by the wisdom of Pirandello who had been employing these concepts in his art from his very first novel. But within the genre of novels, it was with Mattia Pascal that Pirandello inaugurated the series of personages to whom he would assign the arduous task of searching for their own authenticity in this Heideggerian sense. But upon the emptiness left by his presumed death, in fact, Mattia quickly reconstructs another persona which, only apparently different from the first, in reality represents its grotesque double. Mattia’s voyages, without any precise destination or practical utility, can seem like the modern transcription of the great romantic theme of vagabondage.

(Source: Wikipedia on Pirandello)

… Pirandello’s play (Cosi e) enacts a post-modern model of truth, which is characterized as an event, an arriving withdrawal, and as a particular affective relationship to that event. The event occurs in ec-static moments that open up the possibility for decisive action, and for the freedom to constitute a new order of life, what Martin Heidegger would call, a new way of being-in-the-world.

…Pirandello shares with most existentialists the urgency of criticizing conventional (unauthentic) society…. But where Pirandello’s development of the existentialism problematic stands out is in the affinity between it and Heideggerian phenomenology. His likeness to Heidegger in describing the modalities of the solitary self (the losing of the self in the they) and the process by which the self relinquishes its central position as the subject of representation is … striking.

…Both for Pirandello and Heidegger, the truth of being-there is mysterious because truth is always intertwined with the concealment of truth’s withdrawal.

(Source: Anthony Petruzzi’s article)

Feu Mathias Pascal

Feu Mathias Pascal – The late Mathias Pascal (1925)

Since seeing a Paris production of Pirandello’s play Sei personnaggi in cerca d’autore, L’Herbier had been eager to collaborate with the author on a film of one of his work’s, but hitherto Pirandello had been unwilling to give permission for any adaptations because he would not accept the compromises that were asked of him.

When however a proposal was put to him on L’Herbier’s behalf to film his novel Il fu Mattia Pascal, he was sufficiently impressed by the film-maker’s earlier work to give his enthusiastic agreement.

It was after watching this movie that George Seferis adopted Mattia as one of his alter egos.

But this is the topic od another article, to come in the near (unknown) future.

Seafood!!! Images for the body and the soul (from Venice’s Rialto fishmarket)

Today’s post is food for the body and soul, images from Venice’s seafood market in Rialto.

Rialto Fishmarket in Venice

I love fishmarkets!!! As you can tell from a sequence of posts already dedicated to them!!!!

No words or explanations or arguments are necessary.

Red Mullets - Barboni - Μπαρμπουνια

Alici - Γαυρος

Sardines - Sarde - Σαρδελλες

Sardines - Sarde - Σαρδελλα φιλετο

Molli

Orate

Papaline

Monkfish - Rana peskantrice - Πεσκανδριτσα

Palombo

Eel - Anguila

Swordfish - Pesce Spada - Ξιφιας

Skate - Razza - Σαλαχι

Skate - Razza - Σαλαχι

Sole - Sogliola - Γλωσσα

San Pietro

Scorpion Fish - Scorfano - Σκορπινα

Tuna

Scallops - Canestrelli - Χτενια

Scallops - Capesante - Κοχυλια του Αγιου Ιακωβου

Cuttlefish eggs - Latti di seppia - Αυγα σουπιας

Small cuttlefish - Seppioline - Σουπιτσες

Cuttlefish - Seppie Grosse - Σουπιες

Small Octopi - Folpi - Χταποδακια

Octopi - Piovra - Οκταποδες

Calamaretti

Calamari

Mazzancolle

Scampi

Soft Venetian Crab

Canocce

Squilla - Canocce

Donatello’s “The Penitent Mary Magdalene”

Following the trail I started with Titian’s “Pieta”, today I go a few years back to meet another Genius and Master, Donatello.

Donatello's statue outside the Uffizi Gallery in Florence

As I read in PBS’s web site:

“Donatello was not a popular person, but in his sculptures he managed to capture life itself. Every look and gesture was rich in humanity and personality. He was known to mutter “speak, damn you, speak!” at his figures as he worked.

In 1434, following his triumph over the enemies of the Medici, Cosimo requested a special commission from his friend. A statue of an Old Testament hero, symbolizing triumph against the odds. Donatello’s bronze “David” broke all the rules.

Donatello: Davis, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Firenze

A playful, sensuous, and androgynous hero, “David” was the first life-size nude to be cast in bronze since Classical times.

In the 1450s Donatello began work on a terrifying statue, the most vivid of his career. The “Penitent Mary Magdalen”, carved for the baptistry of Florence, is an eloquent vision of fear and decay, perhaps brought on by the realization of Donatello’s own mortality.”

( The material of the previous paragraphs comes from the web site of USA’s Public Broadcasting Service, PBS.)

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalene, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Firenze

From David to Mary Magdalen. It is a path of life.

Mary Magdalene has been the subject of many paintings and sculptures.

Titian: The Repentant Mary Magdalen

Titian has painted a portrait of Mary, which is in the Gallery of Palazzo Pitti, a few hundred meters away from Donatello’s sculpture, which is in the Duomo Museum of Florence.

What a contrast between Titian and Donatello’s interpretation! Is it only Titian portraying Mary as a young woman, repentant or not?

El Greco: Mary Magdalene in penitence

Not really. Look at El Greco’s interpretation. Mary is young, very young, beautiful, with long hair that envelopes her body.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

The hair is the only common element between Titian’s and El Greco’s paintings and Donatello’s sculpture.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

Donatello wanted Mary to be an old woman. A woman approaching the end of her life.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

A woman whose face is pierced by the bones, whose eyes inhabit open dark holes, whose mouth is almost toothless.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

Her hands are almost forming a prayer pair, but not so.  It is as if she was going to pray but she changed her mind as the hands were coming together, but not touching yet.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

The aging woman is standing firmly on her feet. As disconcerting her hace and overall condition may be, she is standing with confidence and without any weakness. She is almost “relaxed” when it comes to her feet.

This in my view is the key to “reading” the work. Reading the body.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

As the eye travels from the face to the torso, the hands and then to the feet, the ambivalence of the artist manifests itself in a comprehensive way.

This ambivalence is the distinctive feature of the work, a feature that differentiates Donatello’s interpretation from Titian’s and El Greco’s.

In both paintings, Mary is a person wiht a clear attitude and stance in life. Repentant in Titian’s painting, full of devotion in El Greco’s.

But in Donatello’s sculpture, Mary may be skinny and appearing in a state of departure from the worldly affairs, but at the same time she is not fully wholy absorbed by her devotion or repentance. Her body language expresses ambivalence and the coexistence of the worldly stuff with the heavenly. This is what I find amazing in this work. Donatello either consciously or subconsciously is a Modern Master in this work, as he depicts Mary in the state of inner conflict, in the state of Being and Being Not.

What Donatello may have started as a work that would portray his fear of Death, his anguish of getting old, was transformed in the creative process to a work that is full of Life, as Life is ambivalence and contradiction and conflict.

Emilio Vedova – Italian Artist

During my recent visit to Venice, I was lucky to discover the Italian artist – painter, Emilio Vedova, who impressed me. Emilio Vedova was known as the ‘Italian brother’ of abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline.

This post is triggered by the Exhibition “…in continuum”, that was on show in Venice until the end of November 2011.

The biographical notes that follow and the short description of the exhibition come from the site of the Emilio and Annabianca Vedova’s Foundation.

Biographical notes

Emilio Vedova painting in his studio

Born in Venice into a family of workers and artisans, from the 1930s onwards Vedova began an intense activity as a self-taught artist, drawing figures and buildings. In 1942, the young Vedova joined the anti-Novecento movement known as “Corrente”.
An anti-Fascist, he worked for the Resistance from 1944 to 1945 and in 1946, he was one of the co-signers of the “Oltre Guernica” manifesto in Milan. In the same year in Venice he was one of the founders of the “Nuova Secessione Italiana” followed by the “Fronte Nuovo delle Arti”.
In 1948 he made his debut in the Venice Biennale, the first of many appearances in this event: in 1952 an entire room was devoted to his work, in 1960 he was awarded the Grand Prize for Painting and in 1997 the prestigious Golden Lion award for Lifetime Achievement.

In the early 1950s he created his celebrated cycles of works: “Scontro di situazioni” (Collision of Situations), “Ciclo della Protesta” (Protest Cycle), “Cicli della Natura” (Cycles of Nature). In 1954, at the second São Paolo Art Biennial he won a prize that would allow him to spend three months in Brazil, where he encountered an extreme, hard reality that would leave its mark on him. In 1961 he designed the sets and costumes for Luigi Nono’s “Intolleranza ‘60” (Intolerance ’60); in 1984 he would work with the composer again on “Prometeo”.
From 1961 onwards he worked on his “Plurimi” creating an initial Venetian series followed by works made from 1963 to 1964 in Berlin including the seven pieces forming the “Absurdes Berliner Tagebuch ‘64” (Absurd Berlin Diary ’64) presented at the 1964 Kassel Documenta where he also showed in 1955, 1959 and 1982. From 1965 to 1967 he worked on “Spazio/Plurimo/Luce” (Space/Plurimo/Light) for the Montreal EXPO.

He carried out intense teaching activities in various American universities followed by the Sommerakademie in Salzburg and the Academy of Venice. His artistic career was characterised by a constant desire to explore and innovate.
In the 1970s he created the “Plurimi Binari” in the “Lacerazione” (Laceration) and “Carnevali” (So-called carnivals) cycles followed by the vast cycles of “teleri” (big canvases) and his “Disks”, “Tondi”, “Oltre” (Beyond) and “…in continuum…” (…in continuum…) works. He won numerous prestigious prizes and awards. His last important solo exhibitions included the major retrospective held at Castello di Rivoli in 1998 and, after his death in 2006, the sister shows at Rome’s Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna and the Berlinische Galerie (Berlin).

…In Continuum

June 1, 2011 – November 30, 2011

Emilio Vedova began his artistic research in the 1930s surrounded by the seventeenth-century Baroque atmosphere of Venice. In the following decade, he was already a major figure in the post-war art scene, and in the 1950s, together with Alberto Burri and Lucio Fontana, he became a leading exponent of Italian and European art informel alongside abstract expressionist painters from the United States such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. The winner of the Gold Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 1997 Venice Biennale, he endlessly fought for the freedom of the artistic experience against all forms of repression.

…in continuum, compenetrazioni/traslati ’87/’88 (…in continuum, compenetrations/transferred ’87/’88) is a cycle of 109 large canvases conceived and executed between 1987 and 1988. White on black and black on white paintings made using a unique technique, which Vedova called “blind painting”… in continuum is a sort of accumulation “with no beginning or end” that invades space in free and random layers. The potential gesture of arranging these canvases in ever-changing images in motion is meant to express the unstable precariousness of our lives and actions.

In an article on Italymag, we read:

[From the dark geometries of his experiments with cubism, Vedova's work from 1950 onward grew increasingly abstract, placing him in league with the European ''Art Informel'' movement that paralleled the work of abstract expressionists in America like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

''My [works] are not creations, but earthquakes,” Vedova once said.

”They are not paintings, but breaths”.

Vedova’s experimenting would eventually carry his work off the canvas altogether into the groundbreaking new terrain of artificial light play and installation art, for which he was featured in the Italian pavilion at the 1967 International and Universal Exposition in Montreal.]

Luigi Nono’s Intolleranza – Venice 1961

Vedova worked with his friend Luigi Nono in the production of Intolleranza, at “La Fenice” in Venice, 1961.

The Italian Pavilion in the Montreal 1967 Expo

In 1967 Emilio Vedova was appointed by the Italian Government to create an installation for the Italian Pavilion of the Montreal Expo. Vedova came up with this great ideas of using small glass slides, especially created to reproduce his abstract painting, and then projected on the asymmetrical walls of the Pavilion. He then asked Nono to compose some electronic music, but Nono had no time, and suggested to ask Marino. He replied: “I could do something, but keep in mind that I am no composer”. The result is Parete (Wall) 1967, a spectacular and intense 30-minutes loop of pure and intense electronics, a magmatic cascade of harsh sounds and deep drones, and a fantastic counterpart to the harsh and expressionistic painting of Vedova.

P.S. For whatever reasons, Vedova has not been a darling of the publicity circus in Europe and the USA. Artists of lesser qualities have been publicized and known, but not Vedova. In any case, this is a matter for another discussion.

Titian’s Pieta: The master of light … plunges into darkness

Tiziano: Pieta, detail

I borrowed half of the title of today’s post from an article by Jonathan Jones in the Guardian.

As Jones says,

“Titian painted the Pietà when Venice was struck by plague. It was made as an ex voto offering, a prayer for the survival of himself and his beloved son, Orazio. In the bottom right-hand, propped under the stone lion, is a tablet on which Titian and Orazio are depicted praying to the Virgin for delivery from the plague. His plea went unanswered. Titian is recorded as having died “of fever” on August 27, 1576. Orazio also died during the plague.”

Titian: Transfiguration

Compare the dark oppressing colours of the Pieta to the exhuberant light of the Transfiguration of Christ in San Salvador in Venice,

Titian: Assumption of the Virgin

or the Assumption of the Virgin, in Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice.

Titian: Pieta (detail)

The world of the light has been transformed into the underworld of the Dead.

Titian: Pieta (detail, Nikodemus)

The kneeling Nikodemus is a self-portrait of the painter himself. The brushwork is visible only in some parts of the huge canvas. In many others, the careful observer can see smudges of paint, rather than brush strokes.

Titian: Pieta (detail, tablet)

The tablet in the right-bottom under the lion shows the painter and his son Orazio pleading to the Virgin for salvation.

Titian: Pieta, detail

But there has been no salvation. And the painting itself is anticipating this. It is full of fear, and silent resignation to the inevitability of Death. A Death that is anticipated as the entry in a dark, damp, frozen chamber, without any natural light. The painter of light, the admirer of women, the master of color, locks himself in the vision of his own death in the most horrific way imaginable.

The Pieta is allegedly Titian’s last painting. He did not even manage to finish it. According to the incription at the bottom of the picture, it was finished by Palma the Younger, one of his apprentices.

Surf and Turf: Lunch at the Bar of Hotel Metropole, Venice, Italy

Hotel Metropole is one of the hospitality jewels in Venice. This I knew before my last visit to Venice. What I did not know was that for two years now they serve some real food dishes (not only sandwiches and salds) in the bar of the hotel every day of the week from 1230 to 1430. Taking into account that the famous gourmet restaurant of the hotel (with two Michelin stars) does not serve lunch except on Saturday and Sunday, the bar is a practical solution for a visitor who wants to have lunch.

Hotel Metropole, Venice

The Hotel commands a fantastic position on the promenade of the “Riva degli Schiavoni”, a few meters away from St. Mark’s square.

Lunch serving area of the Bar at the Hotel Metropole

The Bar is located on the ground floor, on the left side as you enter and before you reach the reception. It has beautiful wooden panels which are used as displays for the owner’s collection of objects.

Being in Venice, it is proper to start with the surf side of the menu.

Gamberi "in saor" - Hotel Metropole, The Bar

Gamberi (prawns) “in saor” (sweet and sour). A delightful appetizer. The prawns are seared for one or two seconds, literally, and then served on a bed of cabbage and pickled red onions, with raisins and raspberries (lamponi). On top the chef placed a few finocchio leaves. The flavor combinations are incredible! And if you do not have all the rest, go and get prawns and taste them with raspberries.

Prawns "al saor" detail - Hotel Metropole, The Bar

The red onions are pickled and caramelized, adding the mild sweet and sour background to the taste of the prawns.

Cod with asparagi and potatoes with mustard sauce - Hotel Metropole, the Bar

Merluzzo is “cod” of the Adriatic Sea. It was served on a bed of mashed potatoes with mustard seeds, and asparagus.

Cod - detail

The Merluzzo was seared on the side of the skin for a couple of minutes in very strong fire, that made the skin crispy and the flesh juicy, firm, and succulent. The fish was served with fresh oregano and dill. Wonderful execution!!!

We now move to the turf side of the menu: Italian Delicacies are the first chapter.

Prosciutto crudo di Sauris is the prince of this dish of mixed cured meats. Sauris is a locality near Udine, where this tender and tasty prosciutto crudo is produced. It tasted like it has more character than the prosciutto di Parma.

Soppressa di Valdobbiadene

Salsiccia del Veneto (deer and pork)

Speck di Alto Adige. Perfect balance of salty and sweet. When the pig has had the proper food, the fat is sweet and flavorful.

Salame del Piave

The silky and full of flavour “Veal Carpaccio (di Manzo)” completed the tasting experience.

After the qualitative parts of the food, it is time to come to the value for money summary. Not only is the food of top quality, not only is the service excellent, the value for money of the Bar’s Lunch Menu is unbeatable, the best not only in Venice, but in most of Italy!!! But please please please, keep this little secret to yourselves.

A Cretan Madonna in Venice: Mesopanditissa in Santa Maria della Salute (Saint Mary of Health)

JMW Turner: Santa Maria della Salute

Today I want to honor the centuries’ old ties between Byzantium and Venice, by kneeling in front of the “Mesopanditissa” Madonna, a 12th or 13th century Byzantine icon that was brought to Venice in 1669, after Candia (Herakleion) fell to the Ottoman Turks. The picture is kept in the main altar of the Church of Santa Maria della Salute (Holy Mary of the Health). Lets start with the historical background.

Santa Maria della Salute is one of the jewels of Venice. Baldassare Longhena was 32 years old when he won a competition in 1631 to design a shrine honoring the Virgin Mary for saving Venice from a plague that in the space of two years (1629-30) killed 47,000 residents, or one-third the population of the city. Outside, this ornate white Istrian stone octagon is topped by a colossal cupola with snail-like ornamental buttresses and a baroque facade; inside are a polychrome marble floor and six chapels.

The Byzantine icon above the main altar has been venerated as the Madonna della Salute (Madonna of Health) since 1670, when Francesco Morosini brought it here from Crete. The icon and other holy relics, were brought to Venice by Morosini when Crete fell to the Ottoman Turks.

It was the jewel of the Church of Saint Titus in the center of Candia, today’s Irakleion. Morosini also brought to Venice the remains of Saint Titus. They were kept in Saint Mark’s Basilica until 1966, when they were returned to Crete.

Above it is a sculpture showing Venice on her knees to the Madonna as she drives the wretched plague from the city.

I must confess that the baroque sculptures surrounding the Madonna did not impress me, but they are not in nay way obstructing the view of the magnificent icon.

The Madonna is serene, understanding, can absorb the pain of the whole world. The Holy Child is contemplative.

The icon is at home in the magnificent Church. It stands next to Titian, Giordano, Tintoretto, like they are the most natural companion.

This is the glory of Byzantium, glory that remains alive and strong in Venice. More on the subject will follow.

Cosi fan tutte, ossia La Scuola degli Amanti – Thus Do They All, or The School For Lovers

Mozart’s opera buffa is a perplexing one, and in spite of appearances, a very dark one indeed.

It is this mix of comedy and tragedy that attracts me, and led me to write this post.

Così was written quickly, over the autumn and winter months 1789 and premiered on January 26, 1790, on the eve of the Mozart’s 34th birthday.

Dramatis Personae

Fiordiligi: Lady from Ferrara and sister to Dorabella, living in Naples

Dorabella: Lady from Ferrara and sister to Fiordiligi, living in Naples

Guglielmo: Lover of Fiordiligi, a Soldier

Ferrando: Lover of Dorabella, a Soldier

Don Alfonso: an old philosopher

Despina: a maid

Cosi fan tutte, 23 January 1995, ROH

Synopsis

In a coffeehouse, Guglielmo and Ferrando, two soldiers, discuss with Don Alfonso,an old philosopher, the faithfulness of their fiances, Fiordiligi and Dorabella. Don Alfonso dismisses all that, and bets that he can prove within a day that Fiordiligi and Dorabella like all women, are fickle.

Cosi fan tutte, Act 1, Scene 1: Coffeehouse. Source: Royal Opera House, London

The two men will pretend they have been called to active duty, and they will leave (only to return in disguise). They announce the “bad” news ot their fiances, and they sail off to “war”. As they do, Don Alfonso, Fiordiligi and Dorabella wish them a safe trip: Soave sia il vento—”May the wind be gentle”

When left alone, Alfonso predicts that he will prove that all women are unfaithful: Oh, poverini, per femmina giocar cento zecchini? (Poor ones, (how stupid can you be) to wager 100 sequins on a woman?)

The arrangement is that the two men will return disguised as mustochioed Albanians and will attempt to seduce the women, swaping one for another. Ferrando will (attempt to) seduce Fiordiligi and Guglielmo will seduce Dorabella.

Cosi fan tutte, Act 1, Scene 2: In the sisters' home. Source: Royal Opera House, London

In the sisters’ home, Don Alfonso meets alone with Despina, the maid of the sisters, and bribes her to cooperate, as he is afraid that she will recognize the two men in spite of their disguise. Despina is fully part of the plot as the two “Albanians” enter the scene and offer to the two sisters their unlimited and irresistible charm.

Cosi fan tutte: Act 1, Scene 2: In the sisters' house. Source: Royal Opera House, London

The charm of the “Albanians” is not working and Despina asks Alfonso to take over. Extreme actions have to be taken. The two “Albanians” fake severe illness and Despina arrives disguised as a doctor to treat them. Eventually the two sisters succumb to the charm of the “Albanians” and the swap is done.

Cosi fan tutte: Act 2. Source: Royal Opera House, London

The four are now ready to be wedded, but in the “swap” mode. Despina now disguised as a notary presides over the event. Don Alfonso has won the bet! Women are fickle!

In a sudden change of the scene, the “Albanians” disappear, and the two soldiers return to find their beloved ones and confront them with the “contract” of their marriage to the “Albanians”.

Cosi fan tutte: Act 2. Source: Royal Opera House, London

In the finale, the men receal their “mixed” identities, and they all accept that life must be accepted with the good and the unavoidable bad times.

But of course it is not “life” we are talking about, the story is about people, and trust, and betrayal. And the moral of the story is that you cannot trust anyone! Unfortunately it is not only women who are fickle, everyone is fickle!

A Philosopher

What is a philosopher? What is philosophy? Definitions vary. I will quote some passages from Bruce Alan Brown’s article  (included in ROH’s program of the 1995 performance).

Thomas Allen as Don Alfonso in MET's production of Cosi fan Tutte (2005)

…..Pierre Richelet’s dictionary of the French Lnaguage (1775) gives as its primary definition of philosophy “love of wisdom” or “clear and distinct knowledge of things natural and divine”; but other senses of the word are given as well, including “firmness and loftiness of mind by which one puts oneself above the accidents of life and the false opinions of the world”.

It is precisely this trait which so distinguishes Alfonso from his young friends and which moves him to explain to them that “[....] in ogni cosa /Ci vuol filosofia” (philosophy is necessary in all things) after both sisters have been proved to be unfaithful. A “philosophical” attitude implied a forgiving nature, as one sees at the end of COSI.

….. The entire opera is premised on Rousseau’s notion that experience precedes understanding. Alfonso cannot simply tell the soldiers that women are inconstant, or the sisters know precious little about love. If they are truly to learn his lessons, they must experience the pain that comes from being deceived of their initial notions. The cruelty for which Don Alfonso has so often been criticized is the same as that of the tutor in Rousseau’s Emile, ou De l’Education, whose pedagogy amounts to “a minutely organized and vigilantly executed conspiracy”.

Allen as Don Alfonso with Cecilia Bartoli’s Despina at the production premiere of the Met's Così Fan Tutte in 1996

….It is Despina, not Alfonso, who presents the most complete “philosophy” of love in Cosi fan tutte. The creed she recites just before the first finale is a mixture of proverbial folk wisdom and current “naturalist” philosophy, probably learnt second-hand. The taking of a second lover, she declares, is not merely prudence byt a “law of nature”.

Jonathan Miller

I was lucky to have seen Jonathan Miller’s 1995 production of Cosi fan tutte in the Royal Opera House, London. This was his debut in Covent Garden, and what a debut it was! It is a production that has already been staged seven times since. From the archives of the Royal Opera House I can see that the production has been now modified to adopt a modern set and costumes and devices: the singers are using iPhones!

Culatello: Il Re dei Salumi – The King of Salami

In late August of 2011, I was on my way to Milan’s Linate Airport to catch a flight. As I passed by Parma (I was going North) I realized that I had time for a nice long lunch. What an opportune moment this was!

Polesine Parmense Coat of Arms

It did not take much to exit the Autostrada del Sole (A1) and head for the small community of Polesine Parmense.

In the small area northwest of Parma, by the river Po, a small miracle is taking place for centuries now, thanks to the artisans who know the craft of producing the King of Salami, the Culatello.

River Po

The river is the creator of dense fog, especially in the cold months of the year. It is this foggy environment that is required for the aging of culatello. And this is the reason why culatello is not produced – naturally – in any other part of Italy or the world.

Po is a foggy River

Polinese Parmense is bordering to Busseto, the home town of Giuseppe Verdi, and the locals proudly declare that “Bassa Parmense”, the small area northwest of Parma, where Polinese Parmense is located, has given to the world culatello and Verdi. Why should anyone ask for more?

Casa Natale Giuseppe Verdi

Culatello is made of the upper thigh of the pig, i.e. the buttocks. Its name derives from the italian word “Culo”, which means buttocks. The muscle is cut out of the rest of the leg’s meat, trimmed, and bagged so that after it is done it resembles a really bif pear.

I chose the restaurant “Al Cavalino Bianco” where the Spigaroli brothers, Luciano and Massimo, have created a big name for themsleves. Today they also operate a gourmet restaurant in the restored mansion “Antica Corte Pallavicina”, where Luciano is the chef.

Culatello produced by the Spigaroli family

I tasted the culatello of 13 and 20 months, and was in heaven. The 13 month culatello was more moist and tender. I ate it first as I should, because what came after than needed the proper background.

You cannot appreciate the 20 month old culatello unless you had the 13 month old. The meat is slightly drier, more brittle, but the flavours are more mature. This also shows if you try to measure the mode and speed of your eating. With the 20 month old, I fould myself imitating the motions of wine tasting, eventhough I could not swirl the culatello in my mouth. The process was long, and started with smelling the paper-thin slice.

"The fugitive King of the Foggy Bottoms" (Burton Anderson, Treasures of the Italian Table)

The Spigaroli brothers keep their culatelli in the cellar of “Antica Corte Pallavicina”, and this is a great motive for the weary traveller and culatello aficionado to spend the night there, in one of the beautifuly restored rooms overlooking the pastures of Polesine Parmense.

Luciano Spigaroli who manages “Al Cavallino Bianco” is a real enthusiast and professional at the same time.  His brother Massimo was in the USA on business, so I did not have a chance to meet him. One more reason to visit the brothers again, this time to taste culatello again, but also to taste the gourmet creations of Massimo.

Antica Corte Pallavicina

In closing, a few words of wisdom about culatello, from Peppino Cantarelli, as quoted by Burton Anderson in his wonderful book “Treasures of the Italian Table”. Peppino answers the author’s question “What should I look for when I buy a culatello?” Here is part of the answer:

“Well, first the mold. If it’s white like flour, that means it was aged artificially. Look for muffa verde (green mold that forms naturally and allows the culatello to mature) , because the green develops only in natural conditions. Also it should have a fuller pear shape than an industrial type. “

On my way to Linate I was a happy man. After all, it does not take much to experience happiness.