Despite the fact that Lent has now officially started and that, traditionally, we’re supposed to give up something, there’s no excuse for missing out on some very worthwhile events at Bagni di Lucca:
This Friday at 6 pm you are invited for a free aperitif and olive oil tasting at the Hotel delle Terme (that’s the one next to the thermal baths).
One could then have a pizza in town before moving to the Casino for the free inaugural concert starring singers, Eleonora Tirrito and Valentina Bartoli, celebrating the start of women’s week.
On Saturday the art exhibition opens at 10 am.
At 5.30 pm in Bagni di Lucca’s Library (ex Anglican church) there will be a seminar entitled ‘Homage to Paolina Borghese Bonaparte’. It will include a documentary film Napoleon’s sister.
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Incidentally, did anyone listen to that amazing concert on Radio 3 last night in which Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque played the following pieces by renaissance and classical women composers which I doubt most men know anything about?
Francesca Caccini: Selections from Il primo libro delle musiche: ‘Romanesca’ No 4 Madrigal ‘Maria, dolce Maria’; No 34 Canzonatta ‘Fresche aurette’;No 28 Canzonatta ‘Non sò se quel sorriso’
Isabella Leonarda: Sonata duodecima, Op 16
Francesca Caccini: Ciaccona from Il primo libro delle musiche, ‘O chiome belle’ from Il primo libro delle musiche
Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre: Violin Sonata No 2 in D Les Sommeil d’Ulisse from Cantates françoises, No. 3
(You can hear pieces from the concert for a few more days at
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002zg9)
The fact is that only in recent years have ‘hidden’ women composers and artists come out of the cupboards power-freaked men have placed them in for too long.
Some women still ask why there’s an international woman’s day anyway and why there isn’t an equivalent men’s day. The problem is that for too long women and men have been treated un-equivalently. ‘Mendelssohn’, for example, brings to mind Felix and not his brilliant composer sister, Fanny from which he borrowed several of his themes and even passed off quite a few of her works as his own! To say nothing of ‘Schumann’ when Robert springs to attention and Clara, his wife, with her equally fine compositions is neglected. Indeed, Clara was brainwashed by the conventions of the time to give up composition when she married Robert and devote instead to caring for and nurturing her husband’s obviously ‘superior’ talent.
(Recognize some of the hidden women composers of the past?)
Fortunately, such absurd views are now ever more being dispelled in the modern world. Well, in many places. I read today that Google is refusing to remove a Saudi government app that lets men track and control women. Through this imprisoning technology men are given power to grant and withdraw travel permission and set up SMS alerts when passports are being used by (their…) women.
Just for that situation there’s reason enough to continue to celebrate an international women’s day.