A visit yesterday to Pescia’s Paper Museum in a historic cartiera, (paper mill) was well worth it.
The museum houses fascinating industrial equipment.
There was also a smattering of current art using the hand-crafted paper the Magnani company continues to produce.
An installation using items once belonging to workers at the paper mill was also visited.
We even learned how to make our own sheets!
Tea-time teaser. Taste the difference between Italian (Spanish actually) and British Digestive biscuits? (Both bought from our local supermarket at Borgo.) PS. Hope they get those UK chocolate digestives in soon!
Celebrating the spring equinox with firstly a visit to the Compitese camellietum, now in its fullest glory.
and, secondly, to the lake of Gherardesca which is all that remains of the giant Bientina lake which once covered much of the piana di Lucca.
What more wonderful way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon than at Pisa’s Teatro Verdi matinée of Vivaldi’s miraculous oratorio ‘Juditha Triumphans’ in a beautiful staged performance directed by Carlo Ipata and his Auser musici.
I was amazed at the composer’s virtuoso use not only of the human voice but at his multifaceted instrumentation which included a Lombard mandolin, a seductive viola d’amore and a ravishing chalumeau.
(In my opinion more bullied women should behead their tyrants just like Judith did with Holofernes!).
Strange how opera performances go these days. ‘Juditha Triumphans’ as an oratorio was never staged in its time. The audience were even unable to see the virgin singers as the virtuoso orphans were kept behind nun-like grills in the chapel where the red priest was music-master.
Today, however,Juditha is frequently theatrically staged with its dramatically bloody story. At the same time friends in London had to witness a Handel opera as a concert performance from a church pew…
Ps Our seats were equally dramatic in the loggione: five stories up with a perpendicular drop to curdle the veins but visually very good
Here too we were able to enjoy the great tenor Titta Ruffo’s collection of the costumes he wore for his performances, also displayed around the loggione.
On the 150th birthday of Viareggio’s carnival: an extraordinarily comprehensive exhibition at its modern art gallery. Not to be missed!
https://viareggio.ilcarnevale.com/programma-eventi/le-grandi-mostre/
Don’t cry for me Villa Argentina – my all-time ‘stile liberty’ stunner at Viareggio with an exhibition of gorgeous cinematic costumes from the Anna and Giorgio White atelier.
There’s more about this seductive villa in my post at:
Swanning around Pieve di Compito and its very special camellias yesterday.
Pieve di Compito is a lovely place for a visit with its gentle hills and mild micro climate. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts (e.g. at https://longoio.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/thankyou-camellia/ ) camellias arrived here in the early nineteenth century, largely thanks to English ex-pats who chose to stay among these hills during the torrid Tuscan summer in the plains. The camellietum can be visited any time (see my post at https://longoio.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/one-hundred-roman-farms-and-one-thousand-camellias/ ) but it’s when the festival takes place during the March week-ends that it’s possible to visit the gardens of the historic villas and truly take in the wonderful ambience of this extraordinary plant without which no-one would have been able to drink their favourite cuppa in this world.
Yesterday was a true-blue almost paradisiac day for the last week-end for the Camellia festival of Compito. One leaves the car at a parking and catches the local shuttle bus service to this absolutely delightful valley, for the roads are narrow and only locals are allowed to use their vehicles. Alternatively, of course, one could bike there.
I’m not an avid watcher of ‘Match of the Day’. At my school, anyway, we were brought up on rugby although I admit a penchant for supporting local football team Crystal Palace whose scarf colours are protecting my throat in this inclement weather.
However, I fully go along with what Gary Linecker has expressed regarding UK government legislation on ‘small boats’ immigration. The ones to be criminalized are the gangs running people-smuggling rackets – not the unsuspecting victims who have fallen into their hands!
As Bob Dylan sings in that seminal album ‘John Wesley Harding’ :
“I pity the poor immigrant
Who wishes he would’ve stayed home”.
Finally got caught up by the dreaded COVID (after two years scot-free) and now even need to have a blood transfusion to make up for a weakened immune system. Anyway at least it’s raining outside. ..
Absolutely nothing but praise for Saint Luca hospital’s staff especially its very punctilious nurses.
(Now planning my escape, however!)
The absurdity of Brexit trundles on with Rishi Sunak’s latest effort to make the Good Friday Protocol work. I had always understood that citizens of one country shared equal rights and privileges. However, this is now clearly not the case. Citizens born in Northern Ireland will have certain rights denied to those born and living in England, Wales and Scotland. These rights have been written into the constitution to get round the awkward conundrum of being in the EU and not being in the EU.
I just wonder how many other mature democracies in the world have a dual class citizenship system? Government official and slave-workers in some sub-saharan mish-mash perhaps.
Whatever the case dividing the United Kingdom population into two separate castes depending on whether they live in Northern Ireland or not is just another demonstration of the surrealistic absurdity of the Brexit machinatory system which has already ground down the majority of the populace of those islands into a semi-incoherent pulp.
