When I left Lancaster
for my Christmas holidays in Rome, I felt I had accomplished all my tasks: the
house was clean (even the fridge and the oven), clothes ironed, plants watered,
and the application for UK citizenship done.
In the chill of the
early morning, at Manchester Airport, I felt no pressure. I deserved my break.
From the plane I could
see dawn tinting the sky pink with snow on the Alps and a view of the sea as we
turned for Rome.
When I landed it was
strangely sunny, or so it appeared to me coming from the north. I longed to see
my sister and my parents, to spend some time at home with them just chatting
about friends and relatives, laughing, preparing Christmas treats, watching
trashy TV programs and treating myself to some extra shopping (mainly leather
things this year). I needed to ease off, do something different from what I
usually did, be less committed and more relaxed. After a week I had achieved
all my goals, but then I started to yearn for England. Luckily it was soon time
to return.
I met friends, attended
some exhibitions, read voraciously, took photos, drew sketches and dug into old
photo albums.
Interesting people
crossed my way, one of my cousins with a spectacular apartment and the poet
Valerio Magrelli, who lives in Rome and is now spending a month in London as
poet in residence at the Italian Cultural Institute. All in my next blog
entries, until Easter.
In the photo attached,
light decorations in via del Corso, a fashionable street in the centre of Rome.
This year they chose the colours of the rainbow flag which in Italy is usually
linked to peace and peace movements, not to Gay Pride.
I found my parents
fairly well and they welcomed me as best as they could. They gave me presents
as soon as I arrived and took me to a supermarket to buy the food I liked best.
My mum showed me her knitting, things she is making with the help of a
neighbour, a ninety-one year old lady very skilled and full of ideas. She wore
a beautiful hand knitted purple jumper with a complex pattern of cable work.
She is so precise in her knitting that the jumper looked flawless, as if made
by a machine.
My dad made me listen
to some opera pieces he had selected for me and watch scraps of TV programs he
had recorded so we could discuss them together. He stays at home most of the
time now as he gets easily tired and suffers from asthma. Besides, he can be
quite stubborn from time to time especially with my mum, mainly due to his
secluded life and the old-fashioned kind of relationship they have. On the
contrary my mum is much more energetic than him, though she is two years older,
and would like to go out and meet people. She is attending some evening art
history classes in a school once a week and goes on guided tours around Rome.
This helps her carry on and accept the hardships of old age.
During the Christmas
holidays I was free from Valentina, my autistic daughter, once in a while. My
husband had volunteered to take care of her: he was at my parents in law’s with
my third son, while I was at my parents’ with my older daughter. This made a
huge difference. I was finally completely rested, and free to go wherever I
liked.
Firstly my daughter, my
mother and I indulged in shopping. We had several outings at shoe shops, bag
shops, and glove shops, we strolled round a big shopping centre and spent about
an hour in a four storey building dedicated to clothes. Sales were everywhere
so I decided to buy a pair of all-leather shoes, real leather which you can
find in only a few shops now, even in Italy. Of course they are more expensive
than ordinary shoes sold in most of the shoe shops today. The leather shoes and
boots looked so stylish and were so comfortable that I had to restrain myself
from buying more than one pair. Other shops had good offers, e.g. buy one and
take another for half price. So my daughter bought two pairs of shoes...and I
opted for another pair of cheaper non-leather high-heels, and a bag that looked
really practical: large, full of pockets and elegant as well. We were spoiling
ourselves.
Another day we walked
through the centre of Rome where the expensive shops are, around Piazza San
Silvestro. Near the piazza there is a famous glove shop (only leather gloves)
where we could choose from hundreds of styles in colours from bright pink to
lavender or apple green. Next step, a walk in via Frattina and via del Babuino,
where we stopped for a hot chocolate with cream at the Canova Tadolini bar,
surrounded by reproductions of classical sculptures.
I received lots of
presents from friends and relatives. My favourites were a silk scarf from my
husband with black and golden patterns reminding of Klimt pictures, a hand
knitted lilac jumper from my mum, and some books ( a beautiful edition of
Ruskin’s Stones of Venice, and Viaggio in Sardegna by Michela Murgia).
We met some friends and
went together to see an art exhibition (well, actually some of us as Valentina
refused to enter), had a pizza and looked for an ice cream parlour for the
traditional final ice cream in Rome. We decided to try GROM (named after one of the founders), a new
chain of ice cream parlours which started in Turin and opened in Rome last
year. Their flavours are meant to be traditionally made and from genuine
products. (‘gelato come una volta’, ice cream as it used to be made http://www.grom.it/ita/index.php ), It was good, but the range of flavours was
not as extensive, nor the taste as complex and zesty, as the home-produced
Sicilian ice cream we were used to in Rome. At the entrance there was a poster
with some suggestions about how to match flavours:
LUI (HE) LEI (SHE) L’ALTRA (THE OTHER
WOMAN)
pear and extract of chocolate or
apple
torrone (nougat) and
hazel nut
or bacio (kiss, a chocolate
with nuts)
and so on...at the end
of the list: ‘Lemon is single’: weird! Maybe because of the sour taste.
Valentina didn't like
her chocolate and spit it out, then licked all our cones to find her favourite.
Walking about the
centre we reached one of our usual haunts, a bookshop in via del Governo
Vecchio, Altroquando. On the window
was a new poster of a board game called Rosiko, instead of Risiko (Risk), with the
map showing different districts of Rome (rosicare
means gnawing but it has a figurative meaning, i.e. being jealous) and a new
sign, Do you speak tandem? written in
a pidgin language mixing English and Italian (photo attached).
When we parked the car
not far from Capitol Hill, where we met our friends, the sign said we had to
pay and display from 8.30 till 19.00. I was puzzled because it was a Sunday and
I thought we shouldn’t have to pay. I asked two other people who were also
parking their cars but they had no idea. Finally one of them explained to me
that the two crossed hammers on the sign meant the weekend was free, you had to
pay only on working days. Well, I didn’t know. Isn't Saturday also a working
day in Italy? Yes, it is, but coming from abroad I wouldn’t think so.
On 31st
December we were at my parents’. We watched the President’s speech on TV, had
the usual big dinner and played cards. At about 10.30 my husband had to leave
as Valentina was becoming unsettled. I spent the rest of the night watching the
Aristocats with my parents and
daughter, comparing the songs in the Italian version with the original in English.
I must say I prefer Thomas O’Malley’s song in Italian. Here the cat is called
Romeo (er mejo der Colosseo, the best
of the Colosseum which is notoriously full of stray cats), dubbed by Gigi
Proietti, a comedian and actor from Rome who speaks with a strong accent. The
other famous song (Ev’rybody wants to be
a cat) sounds much better in English, though. Lovely film. Marie, Berlioz
and Toulouse reminded me of my three children when they were little, before we
adopted Valentina.
Giorgio Napolitano’s speech
was great as usual. I admired his confidence and strong belief in democratic
values, in spite of what is happening in Italy, in its political and economic
crisis. He shows care and attention for Italian people, firmly calls for
justice, honesty and participation. He claims Italy needs reforms and refuses
to surrender to the slandering campaign some political figures launched against
him. He is the only strong point in today’s Italian government.
During my Christmas
holidays in Italy I read L’Espresso, La Repubblica and Il Venerdì di Repubblica, and conversed about the present social
and political situation. I found that the economical crisis begun in 2008 has
brought a deep and increasing political crisis. There was an apparent recovery
with Mario Monti’s government of technicians, culminating in Berlusconi’s ban
from parliament when he was declared guilty of fraud. However, the consequences
of the political crisis are much wider and are still affecting Italian people
both economically and socially.
More and more companies
have been declared bankrupt or have moved to Eastern Europe or India.
Numbers of unemployed are rising and
there is no hope of re-employment, even in the north of Italy where central and
southern Italians would traditionally have come for work. At the same time,
Italian politicians seem unable to tackle the crisis. They don’t pass bills or
reforms because they dither about the voting system, but they retain privileges:
benefits, high wages and pensions. Ordinary people pay with high taxation,
unemployment, reduction of pensions and a deep sense of impotence and
frustration.
I heard some talk of
revolution, while others irrationally blame the Euro and the economic supremacy
of Germany, without realizing that the main source of the Italian economical
crisis is in the chronic inability of Italian politicians to work together for
the sake of the country and its people. This always results in a lack of
commitment, in corruption and collusion with criminal organizations, like Mafia
and Camorra. Undoubtedly it’s hard to resolve. Maybe it's impossible.
Curzio Maltese (Il Venerdì, 26-12-13) points out the
main issues:
The illegal public
funding of political parties (abolished by a referendum in 1987) will finish,
but only by 2017.
Italian MP's wages are
the highest in Europe. Pensions are still operable after only one term in
parliament.
Expenses are
claimed from different authorities:
councils, provinces, regions or counties: hard to check yet paid by the
government.
Taxation is often
evaded by the cunning.
40% of young people are
unemployed and at least a third of the country is in the power of criminal
organizations. Everybody knows about it; everybody talks about it but nobody
does anything to change it.
M5S (Movimento 5
Stelle), led by ex-comedian Beppe Grillo, harvested the protest votes of the
exasperated, reducing votes for the PD, a left party with high voter turnout.
The M5S's largely pointless protest, and Grillo’s anarchic declarations and
attacks are dangerously similar to Berlusconi's pronouncements, such as his
attack on Giorgio Napolitano, the one stable member of present government.
Berlusconi and Grillo
aren’t currently in parliament, but their influence on public opinion is still
strong. L’Espresso (26-12-13) personifies them as reflections in a mirror.
Anchorman in troubled waters, Matteo
Renzi, the new leader of PD, is young, apparently resourceful and often
compared to Tony Blair.
The man of the year for
L’Espresso is Costantino Baratta,
fifty-six, a builder from Lampedusa. Last October he took his boat to the
shipwrecked immigrants, saving twelve people. Three hundred and sixty-six
people died in the accident. Only a hundred and fifty three survived.
Constantino represents an ideal beyond laws and nationalities, profoundly
human. He is a family man, a Sicilian from Trani who married a woman from
Lampedusa, moved there and built his own house.
Time Magazine's person of the year, Pope Francis (second place
Edward Snowden and third place Edith Windsor). He is not promoting radical
reforms (and probably won’t, though some Catholics say they will be patient),
he is nearer to the people, less clerical and more popular. He reformed the
Ior, the Vatican bank, and the Roman Curia, which monitor spending and
privileges. Pope Bergoglio is Argentinean, of Italian origins (both his
father’s and his mother’s families came from Piedmont). He is a Jesuit, an
order well known for its bright, open-minded and astute priests. Certainly his
tone has changed: compared to his immediate predecessors, he stresses
forgiveness and acceptance rather than adherence to rules and dogma. Having two
Popes (Benedict XVI resigned about a year ago for ‘lack of strength of mind and
body’) is not so common in the history
of the Catholic Church. It happened only once in the past, during the Avignon
Papacy in the fourteenth century.
Other interesting news:
Cortina D’Ampezzo, the VIP ski resort in the Dolomites, had a blackout at
Christmas leaving its rich and spoiled celebrities without heating or
electricity.
Research at the
University of Rome (La Sapienza) reveals that Italian people are biologically
very different. Their genetic differences are even greater than people with
national disparity, like Portugal/ Hungary or Romania/ Spain (Il Venerdì, 27-12-13). Researchers
compared fifty-seven kinds of population living in Italy and proved that the
variety in DNA was due to the fact that the Mediterranean has always been a
migration area.
The film Philomena is finally on, in July, in
Italy,. I saw it in England before Christmas. Judy Dench is superb. She
interprets the part perfectly and realistically. I think the most
thought-provoking and disturbing part is not just when the nuns sell her child
but when we finally find out that they lied: both to old Philomena and to her
dying son.
A final gem: Checco
Zalone, whose film Sole a catinelle
cashed more than fifty million Euros (about forty-one million pounds), was
crowned Berlusconi hero. He replied: ‘Thank you, but I am not at his level. I
make people laugh only in Italy’ (L’Espresso,
02-01-14).
There were a few
interesting exhibitions in Rome last December, which I was eager to attend. We
often meet some of our friends before New Year and go to an exhibition. We were
wavering between Cézanne and the Italian
Impressionists at the Vittoriano, and Modigliani
and Soutine in Via del Corso (Palazzo Cipolla). Finally we opted for
Modigliani as my daughter and I had seen enough of Cézanne in Paris last
summer.
The exhibition
displayed ten or so works by Amedeo Modigliani (ten wonderful, heart-stopping
pieces) and a hundred or so works from the Netter collection by Chaïm Soutine, Suzanne Valadon, Utrillo, Kisling, all
of them so called maudit (accursed)
artist who lived in Montparnasse at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Their biographies were pretty similar. They were poor and dedicated themselves
to painting, debauchery and above all boozing. Nowadays it would be drug
addiction.
Apart from Modigliani,
I wasn’t impressed by the other painters’ works. I found them repetitive,
unskilled, one-dimensional and lacking intensity in both colour and accuracy.
Modigliani’s work stood out: his smooth use of colours, his catching the
expression of the sitters not only in their faces (with typical, stylized oval
shape) but also in pose, clothes and background. A deep melancholy surrounds
his pictures, a suggestion of nostalgia, even emptiness, but never irremediably
tragic. His painting technique is definitely superior to that of the other
artists in the exhibition. There were also some photos of painters. Modigliani
was the most handsome, reminding of an actor such as Marcello Mastroianni.
My daughter and I also
visited a photo exhibition at the museum of Rome in Trastevere. It is in a
restored building, once a convent in piazza Sant’Egidio, not far from Piazza
Santa Maria. Here they host temporary exhibitions, especially of photography.
The main exhibition was
a series of portraits of homeless people by the British photographer Lee
Jeffries. They were black and white photos with striking contrasts: dark and
light, very detailed and amplified. You could count the hairs of each beard and
the lines in each forehead. The effect accentuated the desperate reality of
these people, utterly deprived of any comfort or warmth. Their faces were
deeply marked: some gaunt, their mouths opened, shouting, eyes evasive or
blank, fingers misshapen and filthy. The misery of their situation intensified
the beauty of the portraits. They were meaningful, shouting their right to
live, to be part of society. In some way it reminded me of Caravaggio’s work.
It was profoundly thought-provoking and enriching.
On the second floor,
there was an exhibition of photos of Rome in the 1950s and 1960s by Mario
Carbone. I liked ‘Le Gattare’ (women who take care of stray cats) and ‘L’Occhialaro’
(a street-trader optician), now part of another world.
That same day we went
to see Villa Farnesina with the famous fresco of the Triumph of Galatea by
Raphael. The edifice is one of the few Renaissance buildings in Rome, designed
by the architect Baldassarre Peruzzi in the early sixteenth century. Besides
Raphael’s Galatea, there are also other beautiful frescoes by Sebastiano del
Piombo, Sodoma and Peruzzi. Renaissance-style chairs are all over the place.
You can sit comfortably and admire the artwork, ceilings and the walls.
We also planned a
guided tour of the Vatican Necropolis, which is under St. Peter’s, with my
parents and parents in law.
Book the visit: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/institutions_connected/uffscavi/documents/rc_ic_uffscavi_doc_gen-information_20090216_en.html).
It was massively
interesting and our guide was very good. Archaeologists found the necropolis
during excavations in 1940-1949, looking for St. Peter’s grave. It was
originally a Roman open air cemetery. The burial ground had to be outside the
city, on the Vatican hill near Caligula’s Circus The obelisk which was in the circus
is now central to St. Peter’s Square. A good way to recycle art. According to
tradition, St. Peter was martyred in the circus of Nero in 64 or 67 AD
(Christians were accused of setting fire to Rome and horribly tortured and
slaughtered) and buried in the Vatican cemetery. As it became a place of
worship, a shrine with two slender columns (called the Trophy of Gaius) was
built on it. Of course, the area was full of tombs and mausolea belonging to
both Pagan and converted Christian families.
Romans used to build
tombs near main roads because they believed that dead people could stay alive only if visited by live persons.
As many people passed along main roads, they stopped and read the inscriptions
at the entrance of the tombs and mausolea and remembered the people buried
there. For the same reason, relatives used to gather and celebrate near the
graves to remember the dead. In the mausolea slaves and servants were also
buried, some of them interred, others cremated, and the graves are decorated
with beautiful mosaics, statues and marble sarcophagi.
When the convert
Emperor Constantine declared freedom of worship in 313 AD, he decided to build
a church where the grave of the Apostle Peter was supposed to be. In order to
do this he had to level the Vatican hill, so he ordered burial of the Roman
Necropolis without destroying it. Nevertheless Roman people could no longer
visit their dead. The altar of
Constantinia Basilica was built on the shrine dedicated to Saint Peter.
During the twentieth century, excavations found the mausolea perfectly
preserved and Apostle Peter’s tomb
venerated. The tomb was empty but they also found some human bones in a
burial niche inside a wall engraved with worshippers' prayers. According to the
archaeologist Margherita Guarducci, during the construction of the Costantinian
Basilica the Apostle’s bones were removed from the grave and placed in the
burial niche. Some of these bones are in the Pope’s palace, with an inscription
in Latin saying: We think these are St. Peter’s bones.
My daughter and my
husband also searched Rome looking for Francesco Borromini’s work (e.g. the
churches of San Carlino and Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza). She wants to include it in
a new college project. On my part, I was especially attracted this year by the
shapes of the maritime pine trees growing near Roman ruins and along avenues.
There are pictures and sketches attached.
One of the new things I
did last Christmas was visiting my cousin Gianluca. He is one of the two sons
of one my father’s siblings, his oldest brother who died about seventeen years
ago. His wife, my aunt, died two years ago. Gianluca keeps a photo of my aunt
and uncle on their wedding day on the piano my aunt used to play, she was a
contralto and sang in the RAI (the Italian BBC) choir.
I hadn’t seen my cousin
since a long time, as it often happens among relatives living in a big city
like Rome, besides I live abroad now so we have less occasions to meet. He
invited us to his new apartment, where his parents used to live. I couldn’t
recognize it, he did it up completely with the help of an architect, David
Micacchi who works at RAI. In origin it was an old traditional apartment with a
small entrance hall, a living room and a dining room, corridor, kitchen,
bedrooms and bathrooms. He completely revolutionized its structure. The
entrance opens in a big hall with a round open wall in the centre where the
kitchen is (cool!), on the right you have the doors leading to two rooms and
two bathrooms (one is en suite). The impression is of a very spacious ambience,
efficient and exquisitely tasteful at the same time.
The furniture, pictures
and ornaments are all carefully chosen. The carpets come from Turkey, some
terracotta artistic pieces are from Spain or other exotic countries he’d
visited, pictures are old printings in precious frames, even the radiators are
special pieces (they are especially designed for architecture, www.brem.it ) matching the furnishing. A wall of the bedroom has hand painted
wall paper (I think I saw such a thing only in aristocratic palaces before) and
one of the chairs reminds of a Picasso sculpture. Even normal chairs are
stylish black metal things.
He told me that he
usually finds his pieces in markets and antiques markets in Rome or in other
Italian towns. For example he bought two artistic mannequins from an English
artist (Susanna Hardage, www.susannahardage.com ) who exhibits her work at Ponte Milvio market
on Saturdays. My daughter and I soon booked an outing at Ponte Milvio market
with my cousin for next Christmas.
One of the most beautiful
things I saw in his apartment is the way he arranged the Christmas decorations.
The presepe (nativity) is SIA, beautiful silver and white terracotta statuettes
with a reindeer with candles instead of horn he bought in Frankfurt. The
Christmas tree was a maritime pine tree (how appropriate for Rome) almost
touching the ceiling with baubles and tinsels hanging and dangling from it.
Amazing!
We had a delicious
dinner with pasta all’amatriciana, polpettone al pesto and the classical
panettone, all prepared by his partner Antonio. We spent a delightful day with
them and I couldn’t help thinking that I will never attain such a tasteful,
rich and tidy kind of house, with such attention to details and always the
right object at the right place. I tend to accumulate, collect what I like,
heap things, and finally produce such an amount of stuff that I have to store
it in boxes. Needless to say my children are revealing a similar tendency. We
should donate periodically large quantities of spare items to free some space
in our house and tidy up a bit. And Valentina, my autistic daughter, doesn’t
help either. In short, we are a messy, overstuffed kind of family. But I really
enjoyed seeing my cousin’s apartment, it was like visiting an art and design
exhibition, one of my favourite past times.
When I am at my
parents’ house at Christmas I usually enjoy looking at old photo albums. This
year my daughter had the idea of scanning some of the pictures. Besides some
photos of mine when I was less than a year old (looking exactly like my
daughter at the same age, in the photo attached with my own mum), I found some
old photos of my parents when they were engaged and on their wedding day. My
dad looks very slim and very much in love; my mum is so beautiful that she is
like a star of her times: Marisa Allasio, Gianna Maria Canale or Giovanna
Ralli. In one of the photos attached she sits on a swing on the terrace of her
parents’ apartment in the popular district of San Lorenzo (Rome). She is about
twenty and definitely stunning.
While my dad was
studying at university to become a doctor, he also worked as a primary school
supply teacher for a while to earn some money and pay part of his fees (in the
photo he is with his class). He told me once that they gave him the lowest set,
with all the worse students of the school. The previous teacher employed a
stick to manage them. Instead he used a different approach. He started to play
games with them, using footballers’ picture cards and after a while he could
teach them a bit of maths and Italian.
I dug into a very old
album belonging to my grandmother (my dad’s mother, Orsola, mentioned in a
previous blog). She married a lieutenant of the Guardia di Finanza (the Italian
custom duty arm force). Here is a photo where she is only sixteen and another
one with my granddad after they married (about 1921), both dressed up for the
occasion and with a very austere, slightly frightened attitude. Taking a photo
was a serious matter at the time.
Another interesting
picture of them is the one shot in Meta (Meta di Sorrento, my grandmother’s
birthplace) in 1947. They are older, more relaxed. My granddad holds a white
cat under his arm, is smoking and looks upwards in a dreamlike mood.
Then there are my mum’s
family pictures. She came from a working class family. Her mother, Conforta,
was a country woman from Cortona (Tuscany) who met my granddad (a Sicilian) in
Rome. They lived in a shack at first, partly built by my granddad, on the
outskirts of Rome. I found a faded photo she took before her wedding. She wears
a hat, a white fur on her shoulder and looks very stylish.
Another photo shows my
grandparents in front of their shack with their four children: they had seven
in all. My mum is the girl sitting in the middle of the bench. My grandma is so
sunburned because she used to work in a vegetable garden at the time, a job
that only African and Indian immigrants do now.
The other photo of my
mum’s family gives an idea where workers used to live in the thirties in Rome.
It is an important moment because the women of the area have just made bread
and they are showing it in the photo. My grandparents are on the left, my mum
sitting, her face hidden by a loaf of
bread half her size.
The last photo I want
to show you is one shot in the 1960s. My parents are smartly dressed in dark
clothes for some friends’ marriage, smiling and full of energy. I think I was
only a fat little girl at the time.
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