Five sculptures remain in Spoleto from Sculpture Nella Citta, the renowned 1962 art exhibit, which was a part of that year’s festival.  Calder’s Teodelapio is the largest (and most famous as well, I suppose), by design.

But Lynn Chadwick’s Stranger III brings out “the thing that is winged” in view.    & the other two, by Consagra and Francina, have their own respective virtues.

For a somewhat different take on art in the city, there is always this candid photo of winged rain-gear from last year’s trip.  (Note nonna’s place in back.)

Can’t find the name of this deconsecrated church.  Seems like, last time, there was an historical marker.  So far, I haven’t tracked down a single reference.  In any case, I’ve always liked the way it looks.  Today, no cars blocked the view:

Enjoyed the chance today, in the first place, to return to the Opera House.  Lovely hall, as seen from the orchestra level this time.  Incredible acoustics.

Excited even more by the finale of the piano competition, this time in concert (so to speak) with the Spoleto Orchestra.  (More about that later.)

But first there was the familiar “pony tail” guy, who tuned the piano for at least a half an hour, at times it seemed with the intent to solicit a confession of some sort about something.  (Hey, that’s about the extent of my Italian.)

Then there was the other “hair” guy, one of the judges we’ve been following, who turns out to be the Orchestra Director.  Quite young, and an entertaining presence on stage, with the fingers of his free hand forever taming the mane.

Eventually, the competition arrived: two males, each playing the same piece: “Rhapsody in Blue.”  Wonderful, wonderful, just wonderful, is all I can say.

Then the (younger?) ladies played something else.  Sounded vaguely familiar to me, especially at first, but I could never place it.

Amazing way, in any case, to spend a free afternoon in a pretty hilltown.

For three days now, we’ve been going to the Strumenti & Musica festival.  (In our case, we’ve snubbed the Fisarmonica in favor of the pianoforte—in lots of the playing, a might heavy on the forte.)

What a blast!  Young adults in their early twenties, sometimes younger, all auditioning to play in an ensemble (we think)—or for some other prize we haven’t figured out.

You can cut the competition with a knife.  One mother thumped her daughter on the back (in a gesture of encouragement, one presumes)—so hard it almost took the wind out of the girl and the room.

Another prima donna (if males be such) moved around like he owned the place. And as for Palazzo Leti Sansi itself, here’s hoping Rebecca’s photographs do the trompe l’oeil (optical illusion) justice!

The judges even joined us at nonna‘s kitchen for lunch one day, though they probably think it was the other way around.

as my best friend of long standing has reminded me to do.

I forgot to mention our visit to the Chiesa di S. Franceso

 

in Foligno, perhaps because a photo exhibit got between

the two of us and our intended destination (once again).

 

But as I’d said, before truth broke in with the mindless chatter

about distractions every now and again: O what’s the matter?

 

Blessed Angela of Foligno!  What great marvels has the father

worked in you?  Born into property, married early to another,

 

She gave him children (as they were accustomed then to say);

she loved them dearly (to accept what a church folder portrays).

 

Illiterate she was, also a custom; still exceedingly vain and proud,

she dictated instead: “I searched for ways to be adored or honored.”

 

She came to hear the grace of God knocking at the door of her soul.

Coming as late to this sacred place, we can hear the locking of doors.

 

“Sto chiudendo la chiesa,” a whisper sends us off to do research

with a key to punctuate his sentence: “I am closing the church.”

For a poem of a better and a different sort, see “The Art of Europe” website.

Start with the Teatro Nuovo, opened in 1864, & surely renovated at some point. Truly a grand old building, however much right-sized for this small Italian town.

Then there was the crowd.  All ages.  All fashions.  All so glad to be there.

Finally, two short comic operas.  Each wittily directed and acted by Paolo Rossi.

The shorter, an experimental piece about hospitals by Franco Donatoni, left us with about as much universal slapstick as it did allusive puzzlement.

Puccini’s Girogio Schicchi offered some of the same challenges.   But being more traditional, it had all the fine music, the singing, and the (updated) pageantry to carry us along.  Quite enjoyable!  Maybe we’ve yet to arrive as true opera buffs, Rodger, but tonight–a special night, all around–was a start.  A wonderful start.

But if you cross a Mercedes with a Yugo

a) Do you still have a luxury car?

b) (And will it cross the road?)

Picture, ideally, to follow.

Fragolino, the dessert accompaniment served by our dinner hosts, turns out to have quite a history, one whose strains of truth are proving hard to sort out on Wikipedia.

In one version, (after it had been introduced from the U.S.A.) Vitis lambrusca brought a parasite that began to destroy European wine production.  In another varietal of this narrative, the importation was made (first into France) for the exact opposite reason: to fight the phylloxera plague.

Either way, its cultivation was eventually banned in Europe, nowhere more stringently than in Italy, where sale and distribution were made illegal.  And today, the real fragolino is not to be found.  (Even so, what remains will do.)

On a poetic note: the Isabella cultivar was brought to several former Soviet nations, through the seaport of Odessa.  Given its port name among Georgians, “Odessa” wine was once described by the poet Osip Mandelstam in these most appropriate images: “fleshy and healthy like a cluster of night itself.”