Sagra di Santa Marta

Santa Marta band Ska J entertains the crowd with its love song to the neighborhood

The Santa Marta section of Dorsoduro, just a short distance from where all the big ships dock, is both one of the most and least Venetian sections of the city. Except for the marvelous and moody and ancient church of San Nicolò dei Mendicoli, most famous from its appearance in the 1973 film Don't Look Now, it's not the picturesque postcard Venice tourists come to see. It's best known for its low income housing, not its palazzi, which is why it's exactly the place to go for a break from tourists.

The dinner crowd just beginning to arrive

It was once an infamously rough neighborhood, and until recently wasn't someplace Venetians liked to visit after dark. But this area, once considered strictly for i popolari (or working class), has been becoming more and more popular. Ca' Foscari has classrooms in the area now, and a great new little theater--which is a pleasure to see live performances in (my post of April 18 has images from a recent show http://veneziablog.blogspot.it/2012/04/shakespeare-in-chinese-at-teatro-ca.html)--and, according to friends who live nearby, it's proximity to Piazzale Roma has made it a desirable location for white collar commuters to the mainland.

Looking toward the bandstand

In other words, I wouldn't be surprised if whatever the Italian term for "gentrification" is starts to be thrown around. But this past weekend the neighborhood held its first ever Sagra di Santa Marta, and from the panel discussion about the Big Ships that preceded dinner on Saturday night to the bands that played afterward it was a distinctly local affair. (The air pollution produced by the docked big ships is the equivalent of having a few parking lots filled with idling cars situated nearby.)
  
So for those of you who may be making a mental list of feste and sagre to attend on your next summer visit to Venice, this one is a worthy addition. Here's hoping this year's is the first of many.

A view from the Rio dell' Arzero of the bandstand and, in the distance, the food & drink area

More pictures of the sagra and a report in Italian may be found at the Allogia Barbaria Blog at http://alloggibarbaria.blogspot.it/2012/07/festa-di-santa-marta-2012.html, which notes that the festivities seemed entirely tourist-free.

Inside La Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana

After waiting far too long to do so, I finally got my Venetian library card last week and, with it, the use of the reading room above as an office away from home. It's a marvelous space, which was until 1904 the courtyard of La Zecca, or the Republic's old mint, whose construction was begun in 1536 after a design by Sansovino. In the office where I applied for--and quickly received--my card, there's an antico torchio, or coin press: massive as an old kitchen stove, its black surface is extensively ornamented in relief and bears the date of its manufacture: MDCCLVI.

To make the reading room (or, as it's officially called, la sala di lettura degli stampati), la zecca's old courtyard was covered with an opaque roof and the arcades which surround it on both the ground floor and the 1st floor enclosed with glass. The arcades were thus turned into offices and rooms for the stacks, while the courtyard, at least in the heat of late July, was left quite stuffy.  

There's only a single fan in the whole room and, as you can see in the top photo, it oscillates exclusively and in close proximity to the librarian. So for the rest of us it's rather hot--but there are certain things I'll gladly suffer for a space and a place like this. 

(A friend recently wrote to me from the United States that she drove by a golf course near Kansas City that has giant fans (about 10 feet wide by 12 feet high) positioned around its fairways to cool its golfers. I leave you to draw your own conclusions about this.) 
  
There's a large imposing sculpture of Petrarch in the reading room beneath and just in front of which the librarian sits. The comune commissioned it in 1904 from the sculptor Carlo Lorenzetti to commemorate the 600th anniversary of the poet's birth. It was installed in 1905 and from its central archway it commands the room with an expression not exactly pleased and a pose not exactly at ease.

Of course Petrarch lived just up the Riva degli Schiavoni from la piazzatta off which the library now stands in Palazzo Molina (aka Casa Molin delle due Torri) from 1362 until 1368. He lived there with his daughter and her family free of charge as part of an arrangement he'd made with Venetian authorities to leave his personal library--one of the truly great personal libraries of the age--to the Republic. According to this agreement, his library was to become the cornerstone of a great public collection, modeled after that of ancient Alexandria.

It didn't work out that way. After Petrarch left Venice, his priceless collection of humanist texts seemed to have been forgotten about. Venetian scholars, as practical-minded as the rest of their fellow citizens, were interested in the sciences, and Petrarch's humanist library was left to moulder away to very nearly nothing or become soggy illegible lumps of mold.

The pedestal beneath the statue of Petrarch of course makes no mention of this travesty, but everything about the sculpture itself seems--at least to me--to recall it: the way in which he holds the volume to his chest with his large hands, protectively as a mother among a barbaric crowd lacking all respect for children. The set of his mouth, the inwardness of his eyes--his attention withdrawn almost self-protectively it sometimes seems to me from the Venice of his time (and perhaps ours), in which science and its practical and money-making applications could lead to a complete neglect of human concerns, and of a priceless cultural legacy.       

The Dirty Truth About Venice's Canals: A Reminder

Waiting for the vaporetto on Mazzorbo, Sunday evening, like birds on a wire

In the photo above I'd like to point out that not a single person's feet were dangling into the water. Feet in the water might not even be such a bad an idea on the lightly populated island of Mazzorbo, but I'd like to remind anyone who might be tempted to cool off by dangling his or her feet into the Grand Canal--as I often see people doing these days--that the vast majority of raw sewage produced by Venetians is flushed directly into the canals.

Last week I spoke to a Venetian architect about why the canals seemed to smell so much stronger (ie, worse) the first time I visited here in July 1982 than they do now, and he told me that at the time of my first visit the canals had not been cleaned for some 30 or 40 years. After so long a time without cleaning they were thickly coated with accumulated matter, so that even the natural flushing mechanism of the changing tides was not as effective as it is now, when the canals are cleaned at more frequent intervals.

I also asked about a city ordinance which requires that human waste from apartments no longer be routed directly into the canals but into a three-part filtration system within each building prior to entering the canals.

I know at least a couple of people who installed such systems at considerable expense There is one in our own building. My interlocutor, however, was having none of it. For one thing, the system is not only expensive to install, it is a recurrent expense, as the solid waste that accumulates in one of its three reservoirs must of course be removed periodically. And one can easily imagine what that involves in a city like Venice.

He thought it was outrageous that the city would force upon him such an ongoing expense and insisted that the pollution problem in the canals and lagoons is not because of the merda, which has always been flushed into it, but the chemicals that have been released into it during the modern era. Studies have shown that such chemicals--from industry as well as from detergents used in the home--interfere with the normal breakdown of organic waste.

But, I asked hopefully, there must be far fewer buildings now flushing their raw sewage into the canals than there used to be, right?

Oh, no, he answered, probably 90% of the raw sewage in the city still goes right into the canals. But, he repeated, la merda is not the problem!

Well, be that as it may, I'd still suggest you keep your bare feet out of the canals. And I'm sure my Venetian architect friend would too.

Baroque Music in Palazzo Da Mosto--and Elsewhere

Photo of the Belgian group Bel Ayre in Palazzo Da Mosto courtesy of Venetian Centre for Baroque Music

I'm sorry to be so late in reporting this, but two weeks ago today Jen and I found out first-hand how marvelous it can be to hear Venetian Baroque music performed not only on period instruments but in a period setting.

The setting in this case was the beautiful Palazzo Da Mosto (aka Palazzo Muti-Baglioni, after the family who built it in 1602 and the family who acquired it in 1750, respectively), which hosted two separate concerts on 7 July. We were lucky enough to go to both of them: the earlier, entitled Tanti Cuori, Tanti Dolori ("Many Hearts, Many Pains"), in the portego (pictured above), featuring the young Belgian group Bel Ayre; the later, Eri Già Tutti Mia ("You Were Already All Mine"), on the ground floor with the soprano Roberta Invernizzi and the tiorba (a sizable stringed instrument) player Craig Marchitelli (pictured below).

Photo courtesy of the Venetian Centre for Baroque Music

Both concerts featured extraordinary voices and musicianship, and some pieces by Monteverdi, of course. But the revelation for me were the pieces by other composers of the era who were active in Venice, such as, to give just one example, Benedetto Ferrari (1604-1681). Recordings of whose work, I discovered the next day with chagrin, seem quite difficult to find (except insofar as one of his duets was partly or wholly incorporated into the final duet of Monteverdi's opera L'Incoronazione di Poppea).

So impressed was I by Bel Ayre, in fact, that I was hoping to see them the very next night at Ca' Zenobio. They were playing an entirely different set of works (enticingly entitled Chi Vol Vedar Venezia Vera--"Whoever Wants to See the Real Venice"), but I didn't make it. Both concerts we attended though were so entirely captivating that we hope to see more of the Centre's series.

The last concert of the summer takes place tonight in Teatro La Fenice. But the series begins again on September 3. The link that follows will take you to ticket information and a full listing of their forthcoming concerts: http://www.vcbm.it/en/page/ticket-office

For more information on the Centre's cultural aims and much else: http://www.vcbm.it/en/page/presentation.

You can also check them out on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/venetiancentreforbaroquemusic

Information on the Belgian trio Bel Aye may be found here: http://belayre.be/ They're planning to record a CD soon, which I hope--in contrast to works by Ferrari--I'll be able to find easily.

In any case, whether you've never heard a single note of Venetian Baroque music, or whether you own a collection of every important Monteverdi recording ever made--or whether you're somewhere in-between--I suspect you'll find much to interest you in the offerings of the Venetian Centre for Baroque Music. It's an incomparable live and living introduction to an essential era of Venetian (and world) cultural history that's often experienced far too generically here(Vivaldi's Greatest Hits), if at all.

Festa del Redentore 2012 Revelers

By 10 pm, the parties in Sant' Elena were in full swing: food, drink, even karaoke

Sant' Elena at around 8:30 pm in the above and the 3 photos below

photo credit: Jen

photo credit: Jen

photo credit: Jen

photo credit: Jen

By 8:45 later-arriving boats were beginning to take up their positions around the bacino

photo credit: Jen 

photo credit: Jen

photo credit: Jen

Looking up Riva degli Schiavoni just after 10 pm

At 1 am the parties were still going: the one above & just below near the Arsenale, the others below along the Riva Sette Martiri

A karaoke-like set-up but with a single headliner

Alas, the only time you see fishing boats of this size around Venice these day is when they're being used as party boats

Festa del Redentore 2012 Fireworks

I have so many photos from this year's Festa del Redentore that I'm going to divide them into two different posts: today will be devoted to fireworks, the day after tomorrow (Tuesday, 17 July) will be devoted to revelers.

Today's post might also be called "16 Ways of Looking at Santa Maria della Salute."

A very different perspective on last year's Redentore fireworks, which I took from aboard a friend's boat near the basin of San Marco, may be seen here:
http://veneziablog.blogspot.it/2011/07/festa-del-redentore-4-views-from-boat.html

 

 

 

 

 

First Views of Venice

One of the more familiar views of Venice, taken yesterday evening

A couple of days ago, 10 July, marked precisely the 30th anniversary of the day I first laid eyes on Venice. I know this because 11 July 1982 was the date of the Italian national soccer team's triumph over Germany in the 1982 World Cup Final and I was here for it, not knowing really anything about Venice or Italy or the World Cup (though I'd played soccer in high school for 2 years in California).

I was 17, had just graduated from a small accademically-suspect Catholic high school, and was traveling with a large group of other high school students from my hometown. It was either a 21- or 24-day tour of Europe: Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, Munich, Paris, Brienz, Florence, Bruges, and Venice--not in that order (and perhaps I've missed a stop). Largely ignorant, as I've mentioned in a previous post, of both history and geography, my primary concerns on the trip were seeing places as different from my hometown as possible, alcohol and girls.

Not quite in that order. 

Though a female classmate of mine would many years later tell me that she received her first real kiss on the Rialto Bridge from an ecstatic young Italian stranger passionately celebrating Italy's World Cup victory--she'd been going out with my cousin at the time for at least a year (sorry, cuz)--nothing so dramatic happened to me.

I don't, as one might imagine, have any recollection of seeing the interior of San Marco for the first time. I don't remember something so obvious as Santa Maria della Salute. I don't even remember the Chamber of the Great Council in Palazzo Ducale.

Instead, I remember the Armory there, as I took a photo of the suit of armor that once belonged to Henri IV. (I had no idea who he was, but I liked his gear.) And I remember the view of the Riva looking east, as I also took a photo of that out of a nearby palace window. 

I remember being given the dire news while on some forgotten type of boat (not a gondola), that the city's population was steadily declining due to the lack of work for young people in the lagoon. This in 1982.

I remember how overwhelmingly fetid the canals were in the sweltering heat.

(Just the other day some older Venetians Jen was talking with on Lido complained that the canals smelled only about "one-tenth as bad" as they did a couple of decades ago--almost as if less raw sewage in the canals benefitted only those persnickety tourists.)

I remember my disbelief at the narrowness of the calli, and my unexpected pleasure at looking out the little window of my little hotel room and finding a rough sea of red tile roofs stretching out before me, scores of crooked tv antennae like the skeletal masts of ghost ships.

I remember being so impressed by a night-time ride in a gondola that I'd insist for years after that night was the only time to take a gondola ride--though I had no other time to compare it to.

I remember the faint smell of leather that came out of shops. I remember the thick plastic Cinzano and thin metal Martini plaques attached to the back of every outdoor cafe chair on the north side of the Piazza. (I was able to surreptitiously remove one of the Martini plaques--now lost--but not one of the more appealing Cinzano.)

I remember our hotel was in one of the dark calli that branch off the north side of the Piazza, but I don't remember its name, or location, or which calle. I remember that going to or coming from it I saw the red banner of the lace school on a nearby parallel bridge, and how exotic it looked to me.

I wish I could remember more about the shops I saw, what the people who worked in them were like, how many of the people around me seemed to be tourists, how many seemed to be locals.

When I stand in the Piazzetta dei Leoncini today--one of the few places I clearly remember having lingered in 30 years ago--I can't remember anything like the number of people in it back then that there are today. But perhaps I am misremembering.

In short, I remember disappointingly little about Venice from my first visit 30 years ago. I'm sure we were here for two days and I suspect two nights, but I somehow seem to have missed all of the art and pretty much all of the architecture. Unlike other cities on the tour, no adventures return to me from the dark corners of memory: no nocturnal roaming, not even any particular bars or meals or flirtations.

I did not fall in love with the city at first sight. I did not feel at home in it almost immediately, in its very oddness, as I later would during my first trip to late 1980s New York City.

There were no hints, in other words, that I would ever return. That I would ever have any particular desire to ever return.

So that there seems to be nothing for me to learn from thinking about my first experience of the city in relation to my more recent move here except a general lesson that, if we are lucky, we have no idea of how we may change over the years or the surprising turns that our lives may take.

I say "if we are lucky" because I shudder to think of what my life would be like if I had entirely remained the know-it-all/know-nothing numbskull I was at 17.

For it seems that much as we might imagine otherwise, we often have no idea of what exactly it might be good for us to wish for ourselves. Or at least I didn't. And don't. 

I wonder what other people's first views of Venice were like. Would anyone like to reveal them in the comments section? Were you well prepared? Were you surprised? Could you not wait to return?