The Opera Festival

 

 

 

The cultural highlight in Pienza each Fall, at least for Carol and Roger, is the Pienza Opera Festival.

Now in it's 11th season, the festival brings to town opera students from across Europe, each hoping to be "discovered" and launch their professional careers.

This year's festival had 64 entrants from 16 different countries and three continents.

  

For two days, they performed before a panel of seven judges.

 

The judges came from opera companies in Germany, France, Belgium, and Italy.

 

Their job was to whittle the entrants down to the 16 who would perform in the finals.

 

 

 

Madame DuFarge sat in the audience through much of the preliminaries, knitting away on a pair of socks.

 

 

Two people who didn't get much recognition deserved some.  Moira Johnson, our friend from Toronto, stage managed the event...shuffling schedules, assuaging the judges, and making the programs run on time.

 

 

...And Paolo Andreoili, whose vast knowledge of the entire canon of classical opera allowed him to accompany scores of singers, as they sang well more than 100 different pieces from dozens of different operas.

The preliminaries over, the festival moved on Saturday night from a rehearsal hall above the Pienza library to Chiesa San Francesco for the finals.

The church, built by Pope Pius II in the 15th century, boasted fragments of the original frescoes and better acoustics than the rehearsal hall.

The audience was a mix of local opera fans....

...proud parents of the contestants,...

...and people from professional opera companies on the prowl for new talent.

There was no question, all the finalists could sing.

(Important note: The video files below exceed the size restrictions of this blog, so we have linked to Google Drive...where the videos are stored.  When you click on the links below, the video should open in a new window.  These are large files.  It may take a bit of time to load.  When the video is finished, close the window, and you should return to this blog.)

(Important Note 2:  A 15th century stone church and a cellphone recording of music are not conducive to high fidelity audio.)

 YoungJun Park sings Verdi's Rigoletto

(Important note 3:  If one of these links takes too long to open, close it and come back to it later.  It will likely open right away)

But opera is as much acting as singing, so the judges were looking for people who could express the emotion the composer and librettist intended.

Rebecca Pieri sings Verdi's Aida 

It's also a matter of stage presence.  (Note how the judge sitting in front of the singer reacts to his body language.)

Francesco Bossi performs Donizetti 

As the program wound down to the last few, there were several performances that stood out.

Lucrezia Venturiello performs San-Seans Sampson and Delilah 

With the arias concluded, the judges adjourned to determine who would get auditions with several opera companies and who would receive stipends to further their music careers.  

The contestants didn't wait around idly for the results.  Please note in the two videos below, these performers are students who have never performed either of these numbers together before.  They're winging it and having a great time.

O Sole Mio

Their final number is Verdi's rousing "Libiam Ne Lieti Calcici" from "La Traviata."  In English, it's commonly know as, "The Toast."

The Company sings Verdi

The best part is, one night next July these singers will reunite to stage their first professional opera...outdoors, on the steps of the Pienza Cathedral.

We can't wait!

 

 

 

Sbandieratori. (Flag Wavers)

 

In several of our blog posts, we've referred to Sbandieratori, the flag wavers who put on spectacular performances at all sorts of community events.

The art of Sbandieri (flag throwing) is hardly unique to Pienza.  In fact, the picture at the left was taken in Asti at their annual Palio in 2016.

The evolution of Sbandieratori performances is a fascinating page out of history.

It starts during the Middle Ages, where local nobles were obliged to fight for their overlords, and bring a handful of peasant foot soldiers along with them.

The foot soldiers were a rag-tag bunch, fighting with what clothes and weapons they could bring from home.

 Since there were no uniforms and virtually no military training, battles were often a confusing melee, where it was difficult to tell one's fellow-soldiers from the enemy.  A noble, or more likely one of his pages, would carry a banner, and the peseants were told to "rally round the flag" (Yes, this is where the childrens' game came from) when it came time to attack or retreat.  That worked, so long as the enemy didn't "capture the flag" (This one too) and wave it to lure a noble's foot-soldiers into slaughter.

So the armies quickly developed flag-waving "codes."    Three waves back and forth or pinwheeling the flag was legit.  Anything else was a "false flag," an attempt to entice the peasants into a bloodbath.

(A hint here: once the video starts, click on the box in the lower right corner of the video, you'll get a full screen view.)

Over time, the flag "codes" became more complex.
 

  Army units competed with one another to see who could put on the more elaborate display.

Eventually, armies became more professional, issuing uniforms and providing better training.  The sbandieratori became obsolete for the military, but not for the people.  Virtuoso performances developed.

 In cities bigger than Pienza, the competition among Sbandieratori can be intense...as was the case in Asti...

 

 

 The Sbandieratori start young.

 

 As as you'll see from this final video clip, it takes years of training to get it right...

Abbiamo Vinto! (We Won!)

 

 

Siena's Palio is world famous.  A bareback horesrace around the Campo, the city's main piazza.

 Ever since Renaissance times, when the city temporarily reduced taxes for the winning neighborhood, it's been a no-holds-barred, bare-knuckled showdown that attracts thousands.

 

Pienza's version of the palio is a bit more sedate.  Called the "Gioco Di Cacio," the six contrada (neighborhoods) compete in a sort of horseshoes match...rolling a wheel of pecorino cheese across a bumpy piazza to see who can get closest to the pin.

 

This year's was the 70th edition of the "Rolling of the Cheese," and five neighborhoods were psyched to unseat San Piero, the reigning champion.

 

 

For days leading up to the competition, the neighborhoods were decked out in their Contrada flags.

 

The sbandieratori (flag throwers) led off to warm up the crowd...

 

 

Then came the main event.  One-by-one each team of six had a go...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There's an old legend that says placing a teammate's hat on the target pin attracts the cheese.

 

Going into the final round, our contrada, Le Mura (the blue triangle), had a slim lead. 

 

 

 The tension was palpable as the final participant from Le Mura knelt on the carpet.

 

 

 

Those final points sealed the victory, and our team erupted in a burst of flag-waving cheers.

The winners' prize...a selection of pecorino cheese, of course.

Three Hundred Twenty-five Years of Flour

 

 

 

As you approach it, the place looks like a conventional Italian country house...one that's been renovated and added-on to over the years.

But what's inside is not at all conventional.

 

Running beneath the building shown above is this small stream.  This stream turns...as it has every year since 1696...millstones that grind faro (Italian wheat) into flour.

 

 

 

Unlike the old water-driven mills in the United States, the water wheel for this mill does not stand vertically, but lays on its side under the building.

 

 

There's plenty of evidence that this mill has been operating for a long time...

...from the stack of worn-out stones behind the mill...

...to the hundred year old (or more?) photo of the mill operating way back when.

 

 

 

 

Just as it did in the photo above, today the wheat drops down a chute to be crushed by the water-driven grindstone.

Then a Rube Goldberg device moves the rough ground flour into a machine as elegantly brilliant as it is simple...the buratto.

 

(By the way, the buratto was invented by...who else... Leonardo DiVinci.)

The burrato is nothing more than a series of sieves that separates the flour by grades...everything from Type 0 (used for pastry) to Type 2 (for bread) to Crusta (used for animal feed).

 

 

 

The differences are all pretty obvious.

Guiseppe Grifoni is the twelfth generation of family running the Molino Grifoni.

 

Grifoni flour gets shipped to panificii (bread bakeries) and pasticerie (pastry shops).

Every day, customers line up outside the mill for the chance to buy original stone-ground flour.

Even someone we know...

And as the old cliche goes, "The proof of the pudding..."

This blog post...and so much else...would not have been possible without our hosts Sergio Guerrini and his wife Lorella Vannucci.  Over four days, they showed us things in the Montemagnaio area that a tourist could never have found.

They were wonderful and gracious hosts, who shared their time and their home with us.  We are very fortunate to call them friends.

He May Be Old, But He Ain't Dead Yet

 As Roger's 75th birthday approached, he and Carol got a chance to forget about his impending old age by visiting two friends at their summer cottage in the mountains north of Arezzo.

 

We first met Sergio and Lorella Guerrini in 2014, when we wandered into Sergio's Firenze bike shop looking for a quick repair.  Over time, a friendship evolved and then grew.

The cottage is the place where Sergio was born and he and his 6 siblings grew up.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 The setting is a remote valley nestled in the hills of the Appenines.  To Roger, it looked like pretty rugged terrain.

He and Carol came because Sergio said the cycling was great...quiet roads, challenging climbs, and great views.

 

The nearest town, Montemignaio, is on a hilltop across the valley.

 

Sergio had contracted COVID last November and hadn't ridden much since.  This would be his chance to prove he'd recovered.

But alas, this weekend was not to be that chance.  A blood pressure problem sidelined him for a week, and Roger would have to ride his bike alone.

Now, given Roger's innate ability to get lost, coupled with unfamiliar roads and spotty cell phone reception, he decided to keep it simple...and given the intimidating terrain...short.

The ride started out easy enough...10 km downhill to the first major intersection, then take a left.  Then, a few hundred meters after the left turn...a sign:

 

 

Wait a minute!  Passo...a mountain pass?  

The pass was open (aperto)...does that mean it might be closed...by snow?

What was Roger getting himself into?

Then he recalled Sergio had said they had repaved much of the road in the Spring, because this pass was the featured climb of Stage 12 of this year's Giro d'Italia.

 

Here's the profile of the ride.  The climb is 13 km long with 687 meters of elevation gain (2,254 ft), with a 12% grade at it's steepest (just shy of a Cat 1 climb, in bike racing lingo).

It was a slog.  It took just short of an hour of steady, leg-piercing pain, punctuated by frequent outbursts of cursing, to make it to the top.  But then Roger realized (as the title of this blog post says), "I may be old, but I ain't dead yet."

The point of reaching the top of a mountain pass is you get to go down the other side.

After all that painful climbing, it felt good to let it out...

...until Roger almost t-boned one of these ladies.

She was standing right in the middle of the road, just around an almost-blind curve.  Roger slammed on the brakes and just managed to avoid hitting her head-on.  Not knowing how tempermental she might be, Roger inched around her...and very carefully pedaled the rest of the way back to Sergio and Lorella's cottage.

Important note:  Roger's whining about how difficult the climb is indicative of the fundamental difference between American and Italian cyclists.  As Roger gasped and cursed his way up the Passo dello Consuma, he crossed paths with a half dozen Italian cyclists who tootled along without even breathing hard.  This is consistent with his cycling experience in Pienza, where 85 year olds routinely blow by him on any climb...often while chatting on their cell phones.

The Sacred Forest

 

 

For years, our friend Valerio Trufelli had a photo in his shop...his then four-year-old daughter Anna standing in the mouth of a huge stone scupture.

The sculpture, Valerio told us, was in a park full of sculptures both fanciful and grotesque.  There was nothing else quite like it.

 So when some friends from Siena asked us if we wanted to take a field trip with them, we jumped at the chance.  Carol suggested the Park of the Monsters at Bomarzo...more properly know as "the Sacred Forest."  

It's a collection of 38 basalt sculptures carefully placed along a winding path through a 7-1/2 acre forest packed with creatures from mythology and literature.

 

Wait a minute!  This doesn't look at all like any Italian art we've seen before.  Whose idea was this, and how did it get here?

 

 

 

This all started with Pier Francesco Orsini.  The Orsini are one of the great noble families from Rome, dating back to the 12th century and boasting 34 Cardinals and three Popes.

Pier Francesco spent his teenage years being tutored in the classics and contemporary literature.  In 1546, he joins the army Holy Roman Emperor to fight in the religious wars and is taken prisoner.  When finally released, he retires to Bomarzo.  After years of conflict with the Colonnas, another Roman family of equal status, he secures the property for his forest.  He dedicated the park to his late wife, a member of the noble Farnese clan.

 

This is the era of the High Renaissanc, typified by the portrait at the right. 

 The fantastical and grotesque forms Orsini had in mind for his sculpture garden stand in stark contrast to the prevailing fashion of his day.  To fulfill his vision, he hired Pirro Ligorio, the architect who worked on St. Peter's Basilica in Rome after the death of Michaelangelo. 

The sculptures at Bomarzo proved groundbreaking, transforming into stone the style of frescos found in Nero's villa.  They became immensely popular among the upper classes in Italy.

 

 

Let's start with the grotesque.  Here, a dragon slays a lion...a direct reference to a scene from the epic poem Orlando Furioso, which was one of the great literary achievements of Orsini's time and is still mandatory reading for today's high school students.

The purpose of Ligorio's sculptures was not to please the viewers but to astonish them.

From the same poem, the hero Orlando has just been spurned by his beloved Angelica.  He crosses paths with a poor woodcutter and in an insane rage he dismembers the man.

This statue of Neptune was once a fountain.

Neptune, the god of the sea, was in Roman times also considered the god of the Tiber River...which runs through the valley where Bemarzo is located.

In this sculpture, the goddess Fortune balances on a ball atop a tortoise...symbolizing how precarious good fortune can be.

The tortoise measures more than ten feet long, consistent with the larger-than-life size of most of the pieces in the park.

And here we are with our friends Ellen and Lenny, standing at the most famous of all the sculptures in the park...Hell's Mouth.  It's Orsini's homage to Dante's nine circles of Hell.  The inscription above the door is an intentional misquote of Dante's famous line, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter."

This sculpture is commonly known as the Orc (Ogre), from whence JRR Tolkein got the name for his villains in Lord of the Rings. 

 Unfortunately, this sculpture garden was not well treated by time.  For three centuries it lay abandoned, until just after WW II the Bettini family bought the property and restored it to its present state.

 Who'd think, a small snapshot of a four-year-old girl would open the doors and lead to us discovering something so groundbreaking?

Giro d'Italia 2021

 

 

 

May in Pienza is notable for two things:

 

 

The wild poppies are in full bloom.

...And Carol wears her pink hat to celebrate the Giro d' Italia.

The Giro is one of three grand tours on the professional bike racing circuit.  Grand tours are three week races...twenty-one days of racing, covering 3,500 Km (2,100 miles).

 

The closest this year's Giro got to Pienza was 9Km away (6 mi), passing by the town of San Querico D'Orcia.

This day's stage started in Perugia and finished in Montalcino.  It was notable for the four stretches of gravel road and the final stretch through the heart of Brunello wine vinyards.

 

Carol and Roger camped out at the mid-way point of the race just outside the medieval walls of San Quirico.

In past years, they had to rent a car, drive for hours just to get to the race, and then had to fight the crowds at the finish line.  They had to get there hours early just to wedge in between the thousands of other race fans and then wait, and wait, and wait for the few seconds the racers took to sprint past.

This year was much better.  Carol walked a popular hiking trail to San Querico.  Roger rode his bike.

 

 

 

 

By early the morning of the race road closure signs we up everywhere.

 

 Along the race route itself, the organizers had put up directions to make sure none of the riders took a wrong turn.

 

Roger and Carol met up in San Querico's main piazza, and found a great restaurant, where they had a leisurely lunch.

There, they met an American from Poughkeepsie, who played in a Milan chamber orchestra for 40 years and now runs the San Querico Summer Music Festival.

This was proving to be a much better way to see the Giro.

Instead of waiting for hours along the race course, we sauntered right to the perfect spot a few minutes before the race was scheduled to pass.  Carol and Roger knew the spot well.  It was right near the top of a steep rise approaching town.  

 

We knew it was a good place to wait, because the Lotto-Soudal team van was right behind us, ready to hand out fresh water to their riders as they crested the hill.

It's always easy to tell when the race is approaching.  The referee's car, with flags flying, pass by a few hundred meters ahead of the leading racers.

Less than a minute later, here comes Testa di Corsa...the lead group of racers.  Notice the front rider with the water bottle.  He's from Lotto-Soudal.  As soon as he passed us, he flipped aside his water bottle and grabbed a fresh one from the driver of the team van pictured above.

It's a common tactic in bike racing for a small group of riders to break away from the peloton...called la fuga (the escape) in Italian...and get far enough ahead that main body of racers, who are trying to pace themselves for the sprint finish, can't catch up.

The tactic rarely works.  But today it did.  The break-away group eventually stretched its advantage to 10 minutes and produced a stage winner in Swiss rookie Mauro Schmid.

After what seemed like a long wait, the peloton blew past.  Nobody seemed to be breathing hard.  When Roger rides this stretch of road, he's gasping for breath as he reaches the top of this rise.

 

One great thing about this spot, though.  Never have Carol and Roger been this close to a professional bike race!  It was a thrill.

For those of you wondering, race leader Egan Bernal finished two minutes behind the day's winner...but added half a minute to his lead over his main competitors.

The question of the day was, who was that bald guy taking photos of the approaching peloton?