Casino Grande

I was describing The Dark Heart of Italy by Tobias Jones, an odd book that demonstrates within Italy’s dark heart hides an even darker place, then takes it back in a postscript.

I can almost understand the contradiction. Almost.

Everywhere you walk in Rome are monuments to Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi, heroes of the late 19th century when Italy belatedly and with untold difficulty merged its walled cities and foreign-owned principalities into a modern nation state able to collect taxes and participate in wars.

The merging process didn’t quite take. Italy still has more dialects than France has cheese, more cynics than patriots, and a rising political party ready to split their section of northeast Italy from the rest of the scuffed-up boot.

In March, Italy celebrated 150 years of nationhood. That didn’t take, either. The official merger was ignored and much more attention given to the matrimonial merger of a royal couple in Britain.

Italians live in a country much younger than the United States. They are more concerned with dodging small trucks in smaller alleys than voting in elections. Their best energies are given to discerning the freshest possible groceries and trying not to step on the neighbor’s dog’s droppings.

Italians casually display what is called menefreghismo – an I don’t care attitude to everything outside immediate family and friends. One highly impolite saying runs Non me ne frega niente! – “I don’t give a (blank) about any of it.”

It’s a useful attitude when it comes to living with blatant corruption in Italy’s only national sport, soccer; when lying politicians own the newspapers and television channels that report on them, when the accused endure decades-long trials whose decisions eventually are overturned, a place where convicted criminals often hold seats in parliament.

Italians admit they live in a casino – a brothel, a miserable confusion, a mess -- but they can smell the olive trees through the garbage.

Naive visitors come for the glories, not the ghosts, and there is nothing wrong with that. Pilgrims to Rome were amazed not only at the bones of the saints and the magnificence of St. Peters, but stunned by the falling-apartness of it all. They still are.

Americans complain how expensive everything is, how this storekeeper lied or that church was closed. We make our personal pilgrimages to Rome in search of Raphael, only to experience invisible hands in the backpack on a hot and crowded bus to the Vatican.

As I listened to the neverending complaints I thought about the joys of sunset at Hadrian’s tomb, Raphael’s erotic paintings in the Villa Farnesina. A freshly squeezed spremuta, the famous pizza bianca in Campo dei Fiori, sliced off cleanly with one terrific swipe of an enormous knife. Etruscan marvels in a spotlessly clean museum located inside a gorgeous palazzo located in turn inside a gorgeous park.

The trattoria down the street where you knock to enter. Nuns flying down the sidewalk. The marvelous marble of Chiesa Nuova which lost the right to be called “new” several centuries ago.

The first strawberries of spring. Homemade ravioli in a homemade sauce served by the person who cooked it. The shouting, the laughing, the unruly joy of it all.

Italy is an unstirred soup, a kettle of contradictions, a tantalizing work of art obscured by a long, dark passageway. A language so ethereal they invented an inflexible grammar to make it real.

All this... and I don’t begin to understand how it all fits together. Does anyone?

Italy: The Bad, the Worse, the Really, Really Bad Stuff and the OK Parts

By the first 100 pages of The Dark Heart of Italy by Tobias Jones, Italy is looking more than a little dark.

In the first 100 pages Jones has detailed political scandals, failures of the criminal law, pervasive corruption in Italy’s one national obsession, soccer.

It goes from bad, to worse, to the really, really bad stuff, and finishes later with the OK parts – sort of like a terrible, overpriced meal that comes with a really good dessert.

Jones talks about how Italian television is a mind-killing wasteland, how cynicism and alienation are the enduring posture of most Italians’ relationship with government and bureaucracy. All this, plus self-destructive terrorism, an ongoing, simmering sort of civil war that dates to the end of World War II. I could go on, and Tobias Jones does, in sometimes sleep-inducing detail.

After an effective and fact-supported dissection of the Italian attitude toward women and feminism – “there are basically no female role models in Italy other than those confined to the role of television confectionary...” Jones reports the following conversation:

“How on earth can you put up with all this nonsense?” he asks one of his female students, noted for her firm, feminist opinions.

“That,” she said smiling, “is exactly what we ask of British food: how can you possibly swallow that rubbish?”

“Fine. But the difference is that we don’t spend a third of our waking lives watching TV, consuming what’s been put on our plate by the country’s most powerful politician (Silvio Berlusconi).

“Fine. But I would rather have crap television than crap food,” she laughed.

What Jones describes is essentially true and verifiable – the scandal, the lying, the evasion, the cynicism, the deadly inability of anyone in Italy to find the truth because it is so overladen with lies. And I haven’t even mentioned the really dark parts where he talks about the failed “Clean Hands” political cleansing, Italians’ troubled relationship with God and religion, the baleful influence of organized crime, and so on until you almost can’t stand it anymore.

Jones published The Dark Heart of Italy in 2003, and it became a best-seller in Italy, proving that even Italians enjoy hating Italy.

And still, as most of us desperately want to believe, there really is another, much more lovely aspect to all of this gloom, another way of experiencing the boot.

In a revised postscript Jones gets around to admitting that “... I occasionally blush with embarrassment... (When I first wrote this book, five years ago) I was... fuming disbelief and fury at what I thought was happening in a country I presumed to call my home... (In this revised edition) I decided not to erase or soften my (words) because what made me angry then still makes me growl deeply today.”

“It’s only, perhaps, when you’ve been away that you realize the true value of the place,” he writes. “I was astonished at the intimacy and warmth of it. Whilst various sordid scandals make the news, the charm of street-level humanity goes unreported.”

More on this to follow...


NOTES

The Dark Heart of Italy by Tobias Jones. North Point Press paperback $15. ISBN 0865477248.

This appears to be the original 2005 edition, without the revised postscript which changes the conclusions of the book a bit. The edition I read was purchased in Rome in a Faber/Penguin edition: ISBN 9780571235926.

More information is available at the Faber web site.

Tobias Jones has left journalism for the fraught joys of community. He no longer writes a column for the for the London Guardian, but you can still read them here (“A Life Less Ordinary”).

Rome -- The fruits they are a-changin’ ...

May 21, 2011

The fruit and vegetables are changing... artichokes (carciofi) are done, except in restaurants catering to tourists. We are in the middle of peas (piselli), and now it’s strawberries and nectarines (fragole e nettarine).

I have yet to taste a single sour, flat, cruddy piece of fruit. Tomatoes, even purchased pre-packaged at the local supermercato, have that just-off-the-vine taste. Strawberries – at least the ones I bought yesterday – taste like they were picked off the vine as I ate them – hard to describe how delicious. Same for the nectarines... I lean over the sink and just devour them.

I took another walk in Trastevere today, this time with three goals – the Villa Farnesina and up the Gianicolo hill behind it to visit San Pietro in Montorio. On the way down the hill I managed to find an excellent Japanese restaurant on the big street Viale di Trastevere... and again, the four pre-sliced slices of orange were as sweet and delicious as you are imagining... and it’s not in season for citrus.

The Villa Farnesina was built by the richest man in Europe, the Sienese banker Agostino Chigi. He decorated this ravishing place with the assistance of Raphael and his helpers, architect Baldassare Peruzzi, and others. The paintings reflect the (now much reduced) gardens and orchards outside that originally led down to the Tiber (Tevere). Some are made to look like tapestries, with ruffled edges and faux tie-downs. It’s all erotic, colorful, cheerful, and the most fabulous love-nest you’d ever want to own. The large loggia rooms were intended to be open to the outside (now glassed in top to bottom)... peel me a grape and call me honey, honey.

The Gianicolo hill was the scene of months of deadly fighting between French troops defending the Pope’s rule of Rome, and volunteers from all over Italy who streamed there in defense of the newly-created and short-lived Republic (the wrenching of Rome from the Pope’s control took place a few years later). In this case the French won, with the loss of many lives. Garibaldi was there with a large contingent, and when the struggle was over, escaped to fight again.

The fallen Italians later became folkloric heroes. One of them died of gangrene at 21 from a battle wound. His words – poem, song, not sure – became the Italian national anthem. In the park at the top there is a 1941 fascist mausoleum in Mussolini’s favorite travertine marble with the saying O ROMA O MORTE enscribed above (this was one of Garibaldi’s mottos – another was “God and the People” and another was Obbedisco! ("I obey!") and another was... well there were several.

Along the path – actually a busy street – near the top of the hill – a spot with merry-go-round, big equestrian statue of, right Garibaldi, and a grand vista of the city – along the path is a row of busts of heroes – most looking like they could be working in any bar or wearing a business suit instead of military insignia and hats. The busts are very accessible both to passersby and to pigeons, yet have not been defaced or graffitti-ed. I don’t know if this is from respect or indifference. Either way, it’s unusual.

Another phenomenon... the asphalt below the vista lookout makes a perfect chalk board for lovers... I saw signs – big – many feet across – saying in effect that this marks the day that Alonso and Maria fell in love — and so forth.

I was pouring sweat. Not only was today hot, it had an undercurrent of humidity. At the very last moment, returning home, a few drops fell.

If you recall, I visited the church of San Francesco di Ripa earlier in order to see the voluptuous statue there, but only saw the feet and midsection. This time was even more – what, frustrating? Funny? – the church was closed for another hour, and I wasn’t waiting around. I made a return visit to Santa Maria in Trastevere – no wedding, but it appeared that a number of pre-teens were being rehearsed for an upcoming ceremony – not a bar mitzvah ... probably first communion.

I witnessed two weddings in progress... and afterwards on the way down the hill watched pigeons getting stomach pains eating rice off the paving stones.

A concert, a kiss and a half-eaten sandwich...

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

I have just purchased a single ticket for what sounds like a great concert, 28 May at the same place as before -- the Parco della Musica. I know the way there and back (basically, taxi), I know the place and how it works and the time is nice and early -- 6 pm, so I'll be home before it's too late.

Here's the program -- all eastern Europe:

Orchestra e Coro dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Constantinos Carydis direttore, lexander Toradze pianoforte

Borodin
- Danze Polovesiane
Šostakovic
- Concerto per pianoforte n. 2
Cajkovskij
- Sinfonia n. 6 "Patetica"

That's of course Borodin, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky. A powerful show. And if this link works, the red dot represents my seat...

I actually had wanted to go to a concert that is sold out -- the Israeli/Palestinian Orchestra for Peace, conducted by Daniel Berenboim... too bad. But this one will do.

This afternoon I managed to miss my school mates and an aperitivi party. As a warmup and wifi check-in I stopped for a glass of excellent red wine with peanuts and chips at Cafe Barnum at about 6:30, thinking to catch up with the gang in the Campo de’Fiore ... the wine and checking mail was fun, but although the cafes in the Campo were all packed, I never did find "my" group...

However, next best thing, I did finally find a friendly Lavandaria -- where they take your pants and your shirt and return them in 24 hours washed, dried and hung on hangars... what luxury!

I'll find out tomorrow where everyone was, but I don't think I missed much...

After turning my pants in to the red-headed lady behind the counter I decided to extend the evening by walking to Hadrian's Tomb (Castel Sant’Angelo) at sunset... glorious gigantic famous round thing on the Tiber... with a pedestrian bridge leading to it, lined with statues... of course I took pictures.

If you return into Rome along the bridge and on to the street in the same direction, Tomb at your back, the street leads you back into my neighborhood. I had not realized just how close these things are. From Hadrian's tomb it's a straight shot to the front of St. Peters... They basically are connected, and you can see one clearly from the other. Rome gets smaller every moment.

Wrote Jane Corey (we met in Firenze last Saturday) to ask how she's doing... Great, it turns out. In Paris visiting/staying with friends from Berkeley, eating salmon; tomorrow everyone's going to Giverny. Jane noted that in my case time must be going faster and faster... and it's true. So much I still want to do here -- walks in Trastevere, the Etruscan Museum not far from Villa Borghese, the Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Naples, and so forth... eating in every last tasty-looking hole-in-the-wall trattoria...

I'm keeping up with the work at school. It's getting easier, as we seem to be in a kind of review/holding pattern, repeating stuff we've studied earlier. A lot of this detail – the trapassato remoto? -- will be useless in conversation, but it's good to know more than one uses, I guess.

I'm hearing, reading and speaking Italian every day, all day long, and sometimes even the most humble human interaction can be surprising. There was a couple in a doorway embracing and kissing. She had a half-eaten sandwich in one hand, holding on to it with the same hand she was using to run her fingers through his hair. I know, it sounds creepy, but it wasn't, exactly. As I passed I called out "baciare e mangiare!" ("kissing and eating") and the guy looked at me and laughed.

Moments like that are why I'm in school. Not. Wait a minute... really? I guess so! Tell me what else Italian is good for. You can do opera in German, if you have to.

quick link to Rome photos... so far

Just click here and take a look... let me know your thoughts? One friend thinks I cleaned up Rome too much. The next photos will be for him: graffiti, broken pipes, dog droppings... can hardly wait.

the 18 hour trip north REVISED

May 13/14, 2011... the voyage north

Friday the 13th... after school I marched to Piazza Argentina and waited until 2 sharp for the Agenzi Viaggi (travel agent) to open and sell me train tickets to Firenze, and on Saturday Firenze to Orvieto to Rome, which they did. They also made a reservation for me at Hotel degli Orafi, which has become my/our favorite splurge in Firenze. It’s 4 four stars but feels like 10. Located literally at the foot of Ponte Vecchio... The Medici corridoio traverses the front of the building.

The corridorio was constructed by the Medici bankers back when the ufizzi (offices) actually WERE their offices, so they could walk back and forth unobserved and unmolested between the Pitti Palace on the other side of the river, and their uffizi, now The Ufizzi, the world famous art gallery. Once in a long while the corridoio can be entered and walked, but I’m informed the art inside is second rate... but just to be there and peer out the windows at the commoners below... would be something to do, I think.

Of course, having booked one day in advance, and wanting only a single bed/single room, I had room 204 with a view of the ventilator shaft. But still, it was the Orafi: all-marble bathroom, the best in shampoos and towels, just a very elegant, understated feeling. Actual, readable, books discretely placed on bookshelves...

I washed and walked 15 minutes to the piazza in front of the incredible Santa Croce (Dante is there, on a pedestal, but at the moment he’s under 360 degree wraps while some parts of him apparently are restored). Jane Corey walked into the square, looking like the highly lovely and confident solo traveler she is (“This wrinkled thing is the best dress I have... and the wrinkles are supposed to be there...”). We sat at an outdoor table at Ristorante Finisterrae on the square, squinting at the setting sun, catching up. Drank prosecco and ate bruschetta and a couple of the oranges and grapefruits that have been available for free in a pile ever since I first spotted this place in 2007.

Off to the incredibly fun and eccentric Teatro del Sale, not far from Santa Croce, on Via dei Macci.

I could write pages on this place, but to cover the main points – it’s run by and was invented by the chef Giuditta Pichi, who has one of the best restaurants in Firenze, on the same street: Cibreo. The Teatro feels like his living room, with enough space to invite a hundred people in for dinner and a show. You don’t just walk in, however. You have to be a member, and read the rules, which are all about honoring and respecting, and when you’ve joined (or they’ve found you in their computer from a previous visit) you then pay the 35E for dinner and the show, and you’re in.

They found me in the computer – this was a lot more fun and a lot more hectic than it might sound – and translated what they found as Anton Maksitov (close, I guess), written in silver ink on my burgundy-colored club card, good from last July 2010, to this July, 2011. I guess I better return soon.

Let’s run off a few things so you’ll get the feeling... Long line outside to get to the club window, where newbies receive a sheet of rules to read – handed out with all seriousness, no smiling – and then a return to the window with the filled out form and 5E. Then another long line entering the Teatro where at the front they take your evening’s payment.

In the first room, all wood, Giuditta is standing around, looking silvery and grandfatherly; there are rolled up T shirts for sale, plus: Teatro Aprons with double rows of buttons down the front; foodstuffs such as sauces, spices; the newsletter (5E to buy, free on the Internet, all proceeds to an Italian volunteer group bringing water to villages in Africa)... then the entry into the club. Small tables, folding chairs, a few couches, some theater-style seats... a roaring large kitchen to the right with something roasting that looks like (and turned out to be) lamb, pork and chicken turning on spits; a bakery in action... a table of help yourself hors d’oeuvres that this time included two sauces made of probably chick peas and something else, stewed beet greens with red chunks of beets, potatoes, lentils, rice, etc.

During the two hours of dinner new dishes came steaming out of the kitchen, each announced in an indecipherably shouted spiel from a cook leaning out the kitchen window into the room of diners. Sometimes you crowd at the kitchen window to get a plate of deep fried vegetables, or one delicious veal meatball in a sauce, or freshly baked bread sticks, and so forth... or half a large sardine deliciously cooked in fragrant oil, moist and bony. I got so full so fast I had to pass on several courses. At the end, a table full of whipped cream and crunchy biscuits and a flour-free chocolate torte and coffee...

Our table turned out to have, left to right, two women from Boston who were on a 10-day visit to Italy they won in a fund-raising auction (“I paid too much, but once I started bidding I wasn’t going to lose... We have to come back some time and pay regular prices...”) a mother and daughter from Holland, a couple from San Francisco who truly relished and analyzed each course – very good eaters; Jane, and myself. There was as much table wine and as much water, carbonated and not, as you wanted all night.

On the table, this sign:

CARI SOCI

SIATE CORTESI,

PENSATE VOI STESSI

ALLA VOSTRA

SPARECCHIATURA

.... Grazie

... which translates, very roughly, to please return dirty dishes to the kitchen...

OK... we’re stuffed, we’ve all met each other and wondered about the place... now two of the hosts stand in front and announce the evening’s entertainment as the tables are cleared and removed, the chairs lined up theater style, facing the elevated stage which holds one red velvet chair and two microphones. We are urged not to stand and walk during the 50 minute concert because “the floor squeaks, and we are recording tonight.” The flamenco guitarist was Juan Lorenzo. He played fast and well, but had an annoying habit of presenting never ending cascades of notes and rhythm – well played and sometimes exciting, but all variations and no theme, if you know what I mean. His nylon strings, not entirely in tune at the beginning, kept sliding south but he never stopped to tune except for a passing twist on the low E... I don’t imagine the audience cared, but it bothered me. His CD was for sale in the lobby – recorded earlier, of course.

After the Teatro disgorged us Jane and I took advantage of the cool night air to walk down to the Arno, talking all the way, and since we were so close, to my hotel and the rooftop bar (open to midnight; view of Duomo in one direction, river in the other) for a thrilling nightcap of a big bottle of water and some delicious free sweet pastry pieces... I sent Jane off into the night with abundant hugs – are we going to have stories to tell – and got to bed about 1 am, after checking out the 600 channels on the TV (TV – what an idea – hadn’t seen one since leaving California).

Saturday morning I enjoyed the lavish breakfast in the lavish breakfast room, then checked out and walked slowly back to the Teatro area to find my “family” before they left at 11 a.m. for a visit to Fabio’s mother, who lives in the center of  Chiusi (formerly the Etruscan capital, all those many eons ago). On the front door of Borgho Allegri 38 Fabio had left a handwritten note and map... he has a new workshop (laboratorio) two blocks away (due, quattro passi) where he works with an older Maestro making, repairing and refinishing furniture. Both were wearing gloves and smelling of fresh varnish. We shook hands by touching elbows.

It was fantastically fun to see Fabio again, ask about his wife and daughter (now as tall as him, plays clarinet in the school band which at this moment is visiting the band in Spain that had visited them here in Firenze). Before I figured out which hole in the wall was Fabio’s shop I noticed tiny, energetic Miu scampering in the street nearby. I knew then I was close. Miu, you haven’t changed a bit, and your humiliating doggy name still sounds like “meow” in English.

Fabio said in a dozen different ways that I was always welcome to look him up, that we are “family” in reality, that he would like to keep in touch and perhaps cook for Joselyn and I, and so forth. All real, all heartfelt, all just the best thing to experience on a sunny, fresh, Firenze morning.

I walked across town, paying respects to the Duomo along the way (newly auto-free streets make the neighborhood much more pleasant) and made my pilgrimage to the herbs and lotions store affiliated with the Sisters of Santa Maria Novella, officially Officina Profumo Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella SRL. Hadn’t been there for three years, but I knew exactly which lovely room to enter, what to ask for (thanks to Joselyn for emailing me the words on the label) and I think I was served by the very same grand lady who was behind the counter several years ago. She knew exactly what I wanted – rose and geranium lotion for dry skin – with milk – all white– bianco – and went and got it. I then asked her for a second one, explaining I probably couldn’t get back for another three years, at least, and it had to last. Also picked up some sweet almond oil for the J (olio di mandorle dolci)... no more carry-on for me, however.

I stuffed it all in my backpack, and killed some time reading the Herald Tribune and sipping a caffe latte on the S. Maria Novella square; then caught the train to Orvieto.

Homecoming... I hadn’t been there since the 1960s and the amazing horizontally striped Cathedral hasn’t changed a bit. Walking slowly through town I stopped for a two-flavor gelato (casatta and ciocolatto) at La Musa, Gelateria artigianale, and soon realized photos were out of the question as long as chocolate ice cream was flowing over hands and fingers. At the amazing edifice itself spent 3E to get inside, for a long, leisurely look at the excellent mosaics and frescoes inside. Joined an Italian tour group with priests and nuns, following along as the guide described the major fresco panels – I didn’t need a guide to tell me those ecstatic humans being pulled out of the ground by Gabriel’s trumpets were different from the other humans over there, beaten down en masse by devils, and angels with lousy assignments... Usually this kind of hyperventilating garishly illustrated Bible stories well, both offends and bores me, but in this time and place I was captivated by the energy and skill of the work. Over the altar is a smallish piece by Fra Angelico, all the rest finished 50 years later by another hired painter, this time from Siena.

On the short train trip back to Stazione Termini in Rome, the woman facing me in our compartment carried on unending conversations on two mobile phones. She was called and made calls constantly, no respite. Seem,ed to be enjoying herself, too. Very entertaining for her, and for me, watching.

I am pleased with myself at such an eventful 18 hours, finally writing this at about 11 pm Saturday evening. I wish all days could be this interesting and fun and friends-filled. Maybe they can. We can make it so, as Captain Picard might say.

A concert and a luthier...

May 10, 2011...  The concert last night at Parco della Musica was excellent. I found the room muffled the music a bit, but I had an exemplary seat – 14 rows back and squarely facing cellist Gautier Capucon... he was a bit over-theatrical – reaching out with his bow arm as if gathering a swirl of notes to him before starting to play. He kept lifting his off (left) foot from the floor. He endeared himself to me when he turned his head toward the first cellist behind him when the music called for their duet. Capucon played the Schumann Concerto; the orchestra (Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia) played a Schumann Overture, Scherzo and Finale, and after intermission the Brahms #1.

There were several unusual things about this concert. For one, the entire orchestra was off-stage until the appointed time for the concert to begin. I checked my ticket – was I in the correct hall at the right time? Then at precisely 7:30 they walked in and took their places... For another, they sat so that from my seat the first violins were stage left, the seconds stage right, with the violas behind them, and the cellos facing the audience from their seats directly in front of Conductor Semyon Bychkov. The basses (three for the Schumann, six for the Brahms) were located at the rear, left; brass to the rear right, and in between horns and winds. Dead center in the rear was the single percussionist who made up in volume and energy what several assistants might otherwise have added.

May 11, 2011... There is a coda to this... on my way home from school this afternoon I took another street on pretty much of a whim, thinking to find again the old man in the old shop who had sold me two perfect pens (and in this school, with answers to exercises necessarily written into tiny spaces, good pens are crucial). I have not found him yet (was he only a dream? No, I have two good pens and a pad of paper – where else could I have purchased them here?) but stumbled almost immediately into what clear was a violin shop.

It turned out to be the atelier of Claude Lebet (“Maestro Liutaio” or master luthier) who was out at the moment, but one of his several assistants undertook to answer my question – did they know the old man in the old shop? No, but since you play violoncello, would you care to try this one?

What a gift from heaven. I put down my school bag, picked up the cello and – it was really excellent – very loud and clear, from the lowest to the highest notes. Turns out it’s an exact copy of the original (insert maker here – I forget) cello now owned by last night’s performer, Gautier Capucon.

It wasn’t as good as his, being a month old, not centuries, but it played like a dream. If it turns out, I should have photos of another assistant playing it for me (so I could stand back and listen) and me playing, too.

The maestro arrived, I was introduced, and he went to work and ignored me. His work these days apparently is not wield knife and chisel, but to stare into the desktop computer of yet another assistant, and discuss web things. You can find him here...

Meanwhile, I was trying to remember the maker of my cello (Carletti natale 1941) and failing. I did discover that this shop will rent me a cello – a good cello but not like the one I tried – for 100E for a full month, case, bow included. A very very good deal, but one I probably won’t take him up on because I probably only have one or more playing sessions here in Rome, and I wouldn’t be playing it here in this apartment – no aural privacy, no music.

The maestro has published an authoritative and highly illustrated book on the instrument makers of Rome. As I left, the assistant offered me a gift – a peg holder made of leather with a tiny metal cup to catch the sharp point of the cello stick.

I was very impressed with the entire experience. It was a great pleasure to play, regardless of instrument. By the way, the one I tried would sell for approximately 22,000E.

visit to the Rome luthier Claude Lebet

Rome .. End of my first week here...

May 6, 2011... This first weekend was fun and full of events. Dinner with school friends Kathy (from Windsor CA), David, and his wife Tricia from Melbourne. We went to Avenue 60 in via del Gesu (short walk for P. Venezia) and enjoyed good food, esp. the wine (Kathy had me take photo of the label for her boyfriend. The report: we chose well). The place is clean, modern and well located, but only one other couple was eating there when we were – on Friday night! Never can tell why one place hits and another misses. Avenue 60 gets top reviews on TripAdvisor – in fact, that’s where I found it. Can anyone explain?

May 7, 2011... Saturday morning I bought flowers in Campo dei Fiori and journeyed (out by bus; back by Metro) to EUR (pronounced ay-ur) to join Ana Fitzpatrick to play cello/piano duets. Teleman, Vivaldi, Elgar (a bassoon sonata, very romantic) and Schumann...

Ana’s home is very comfortable, filled with art she has made (ceramics) or purchased, and two pianos, because she usually plays four-hands. Her friend and my future acquaintance Claudio was in Sienna visiting his elderly mother, which he does two weekends a month, bless him. All the time I spent with Ana was in Italian... I did OK but was a bit hard on myself that I didn’t have more words and phrases at hand... Ana has taught Spanish (she is from Argentina originally) and got in the habit of not only correcting me but interrupting me with the correction. I got used to it. She made us both a big salad (she became a vegetarian after her children did) and then did me a huge favor: Located an upcoming Schumann cello concerto/Brahms Symphony #1 and when I returned home I bought a ticket for next Tuesday night at the Parco di Musica (and now to find it and get there in time).

I got off the Metro at Colosseo, took a bus to Piazza Venezia (home of the huge monument that looks like a typewriter).. explored high above using Michelangelo’s famous steps. Walked home, slept well – very tired.

Sunday May 8 woke up early and treated myself to an early walk from here through Trastevere. Truly enjoyed the morning quiet. Found two possible places to stay with Joselyn next time we are here, both quite close (but impossibly more fancy): Hotel Residenza Farnese (four stars) just off Piazza Farnese; and in Trastevere: B&B Arco del Lauro. Both look possible... well located but on quiet side streets.

Took lots of photos, and when I arrived at Ponte Cestio Fabricio (the only bridge that spans an island in the Tiber) took out my Touch and followed the Rick Steves audio walking tour. I enjoyed his friendly voice, but soon realized it would have been easier to follow directly in the book RS Rome 2011 which I have here. Chiesa Santa Cecilia was beautiful – it was set up with white roses everywhere for a wedding or first communion. The well-lit statue of St. Cecilia was beautiful... this whole church was beautiful – a light and lovely hand – as if the ever-present nuns there were the architects, not the usual great (= egotistic) male builders. While I slowly looked around, a gaggle of nuns held a small service (sans priest) on the side – reading the bible, intoning prayers, and singing. One nun stood with one hand on keyboard and one hand on book. Beautiful. As I left, bells in the tower above the church exploded together. In the courtyard it felt as loud as the loudest ambulances and police.

At the farthest point of the walk – by this time I had finished the RS tour –  I entered the interesting church San Franceso a Ripa. Rick does not include it on his walk, probably because the church is not much compared to many others here and contains only one thing that stands out – but it’s so amazing – the sculpture by Bernini, of Beata Ludovica Albertoni (1671-4) who is, according to another guide, “in a state of religious ecstacy bordering scandalously on the sexual.”

Sunday services were in full service. It would have been too much to wander up the left aisle to the last chapel to view Beata. I could only bring myself to wander in sight of priest and congregation one chapel away from the goal. In that adjacent chapel was a little door opening on to the Bernini room. I could barely peer at Beata’s feet and drapery – but however hard I leaned over the heavy oak bench that barred the passageway I never could see her famous expression... will have to return on another day, I guess. But it was fun anyway.

On the way home I waited to eat until reaching the nearby wifi café which turned out to be closed. So I tried the nearby ristorante (forgot the name; provide later) which turned out to be excellent, with an Israeli/international chef. Traditional Italian – not exclusively Roman – food made very well. House-made bread with small dishes of dried tomatoes and chopped olives to spread on it; fresh green salad with a ball of bufalo mozarella sitting on top (also walnuts and lemon) ahh.. .and finally house-made (what else?) ravioli in a light red sauce, filled with various seafoods – shellfish and actual fish. Very fresh. Two caffe lungos to finish, and now, 5 pm and four hours later, I can still feel them whirling in my rapidly beating heart.

I’ve been studying intensely especially today – finishing what I should have learned in Level 4; preparing in advance for what’s coming in Level 5 (enrolling in a new class, higher level; wasn’t happy with the teacher in L4). I’m far from ready, but more ready than I might be otherwise.

How does it happen that in every class there always are one or more students who outshine everyone else? They get every line of every exercise correct... I study, too. What am I missing? Sufficient brain cells, probably.

lots happening in Rome

... and I guess I'm a tiny part of it. Please watch this space for actual "blog" comment in the next few days. I've been emailing and writing, going to school, struggling to get my apartment livable, trying to find better ways to get online, enjoying the filth and the flowers, the gorgeous, sunny fresh air and the cool nights... If one does not get toes smashed by a Mercedes, one could actually enjoy this place. I'm living down an alley -- Vicolo Bolo, which is just off Via dei Pellegrini, which is parallel to Corso Vittorio, which is next to... and close to my school. Many of the famous places here in Rome are no farther, in fact much closer, than my mailbox at home. In a mile or so I'm at dozens of churches, famous squares and fountains and all that. Rome. Too much to take in during one lifetime, but an easy place to spend a lifetime trying.

The best book I've read about Rome (actually, brought it along, even in its old hardback version) is "A Thousand Bells at Noon" by Franco Romagnoli... it's really a love letter to the city by a boy born there, a man who left, and an older man who returned. Remarkable. Now available in a $14.99 paperback version.

He died in 2008... wish I could have met him. See this NY Times obit