An event I have regretfully still to attend for the first time is the opera at Verona’s Roman amphitheatre. I have, naturally, visited that exquisite city, the notorious setting of Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’, and have attended opera in another Roman ruin, the Baths of Caracalla: a production of Verdi’s ‘Aida’ complete with elephants and camels. That was way back in 1963 when I was a pubescent schoolboy. Fortunately today ‘Aida’ is represented without such exotica and is delivered as the truly intimate opera it is (once the grand ceremony of Act 2 is got through). Clearly, living rather near to Torre Del Lago, I have not missed out on going to a Puccini opera there. I forget how many times I have seen his unfinished chef d’oevre ‘Turandot’. (To read about a production I attended there go to https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/tantalizing-turandot-at-torre-del-lago-puccini/ and to visit the little palace where ‘Turandot’ grew up see my post at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/where-turandot-grew-up/

Romeo and Juliet bring me to mind Zeffirelli’s forceful film which I first saw in 1968 during a particularly bleak winter in Milan. That film brought the star-crossed lovers Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey out of the then standard fusty theatricals bang into a contemporary teenage situation, as it should be.

Franco Zeffirelli was superb at producing operas – his direction of ‘La Traviata’ ranks supreme – and the combination of Verona’s ‘amfiteatro’ with the production of Bizet’s ‘Carmen’, shown on RAI 3 a couple of nights ago was enthralling. Clémentine Margaine was an excellent Carmen. Gilda Fiume sang Micaela. Brian Jagde was Don Josè, and Luca Micheletti the bullfighter Escamillo. Marco Armiliato conducted the Orchestra and Chorus of the Arena di Verona Foundation.

‘Carmen’ also reminds me of another recording of the opera, that conducted by Sir Georg Solti. In particular the scream the heroine launches when she exits from the tobacco factory where she works and lands in a fight is blood-curdling. Who was responsible for that superb shout? My wife, Sandra, who was involved in the production!

It is incredibly sad that Bizet never saw the moment when his masterpiece would conquer the world’s opera houses to become what has often been voted as the best-loved opera of all time. In this respect this morning I came across something I wrote regarding Bizet and his operas. For he DID write others besides from ‘Carmen’.

How many operas did Bizet compose? Carmen, The Pearl Fishers (currently at the London Coliseum in a revival of English National Opera’s much-praised production). That’s two, for starters. 

But look through the catalogue of the composer’s works in Winton Dean’s book on the composer (J. M. Dent Master Musicians series) and there are thirty opera and operetta titles listed. What and where are the other twenty eight?

 A closer read will show that, of the remaining twenty eight operas, only three were actually finished, performed in the composer’s lifetime and survive to the present day. They are Doctor Miracle, The Fair Maid of Perth, and Djamileh. Another completed operetta, Sol si re pif pan, is lost, probably destroyed after its performance in 1873.

 Of these works Doctor Miracle is an operetta and Djamileh a one-acter. A further operetta, Don Procopio, only received its first performance in 1906. The other twenty three works are either projects, sketches, completions of operas by contemporaries or else have vanished. One project was based on Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa Harlowe, a subject eventually realised in Jonathan Harvey’s sensitive work premiered by English National Opera in 1990. Another, La Coupe du Roi de Thulé, which might have ranked second to Carmen in quality, sadly only survives as a few fragments thanks to the Widow Bizet’s habit of selling off pages from her husband’s manuscripts for much needed francs.

  Another strange fact about the operas is that, with the exception of Djamileh, written in 1871, and Carmen, in 1873, Bizet’s surviving works in this genre were all composed before 1867. So what did he write between 1867 and 1871? Four years is a long time in the artistic career of a composer who lived only one year longer than Mozart, his great idol.

The fact is that Bizet was singularly unfortunate in obtaining both appropriate libretti and backers for his dramatic works. Moreover, he suffered a spiritual crisis in mid-career which sapped at his self-confidence. After the early perfection of the Symphony in C, written at the age of seventeen but only re-discovered and performed 80 years later, the composer genuinely doubted his ability to complete any project. “I am afraid of my return,” he writes in a letter of 1858. Furthermore, he had to find money to care for his mentally ill wife Genevieve Halevy (second daughter of his old teacher, and a relative of the librettist of Carmen) in addition to his burgeoning family. This meant that for much of his life Bizet was forced into the kind of hack work loathed by most musicians: transcriptions, arrangements, copy-making and giving piano lessons to spoilt brats.

 Bizet was a natural genius whose first thoughts were usually his best. Of his lamentably short catalogue of finished compositions the least memorable works were written (and re-written) over a long period. The Roma symphony, for example, occupied the composer on and off for several years. His finest works, on the other hand, were, like the incidental music to Daudet’s play L’Arlesienne, put together in a matter of weeks.  

 To go back to our initial question: how many operas did Bizet write? Considering only the completed full-length works just two: The Fair Maid of Perth and The Pearl Fishers. Carmen is an opéra-comique, not an opera, since it has spoken dialogue. (The recitatives, composed after Bizet’s death by Guiraud in an attempt to turn it into an Opera, although skilful in their way, are discredited and unperformed now.)

One thing is certain, however: Bizet’s career as an opera composer began with a miracle, Doctor Miracle, performed when he was nineteen, and ended with another, Carmen, staged in 1875, the year of his premature death by undetermined causes, though that work’s sensational failure at its first performance must have had no little part to play in it.     

As an indication of how multicultural London has become I hear more English being spoken in our Apennine outpost of Bagni di Lucca than in the great Wen. As I come out of our local (mini) supermarket English is being spoken loud and clear. Round the villa’s cafes chatting sounds resound with the Anglo-Saxon tongue.  Sometimes the Home Counties accent is tempered with northern twangs especially Scottish, often acquired by local emigration to Glasgow. Then there are other intonations, barely decipherable to denizens of southern counties.

There has been, undoubtedly,  considerable migration of Londoners to the metropolis’ outer suburbs and beyond. Indeed, in much of London to be white and native-born is to be in the minority. During my recent visit there I visited cousins living in such outlying places as Reigate and Sittingbourne where the fabric of London population I remember from my school-days still survives. Some of my friends have escaped even further afield. The west and border counties seem to be particularly popular in this respect with Devon and Dorset, Hereford and Hampshire being especially favoured.

Some people have taken emigration route and landed up in Italy and Spain. Of these a portion are permanent residents of those countries who have sensibly decided to remain within the EU. They may pursue careers or, as in many cases, have retired there.

Regarding retirement a big question enters into the minds of those senior citizens. Are they going to be buried (or at least remembered) in their new lands or in the country of their forefathers? One English-born owner of a mill situated by the side of a turbulent stream which had washed away his means of access, a footbridge, at least six times (after each incursion of the waters it had been patiently rebuilt) was concerned that he might not die in his native land. This thought so possessed him that he eventually sold the idyllic mill to live in a retirement bungalow near Worthing.

Young families may regard Italy as the perfect place to bring up their young. With its traditional socializing patterns, Mediterranean climate, mythic catering, schools with educational patterns considered outmoded in England and strong cultural emphases Italy seems an ideal family-centred environment. Some families transplant with success. Others, however, decamp after a year or two to well-tested areas of the United Kingdom. The main reasons put forwards are that their kids did not get on well in Italian schools, that they could not cope with the bureaucracy, that  their language skills remained insufficient, or that their aged parents at home required company and care.  If these families are lucky enough to have a pleasant place to go to in the UK, like the West Country, then there is every reason to return. If, however, they hail from some of London’s less salacious hinterlands (some even include Dartford among these) then there is every excuse to remain in Italy and prevent their children (as they believe) from growing up to form a part of some pugnacious and drug-ridden gang.

It would be interesting to see how many British emigres to our Italian part of the world return to die in the British Isles. Of course, expiry in Britain may be accidental, perhaps during a trip to visit relatives for example. How many, on the other hand, are quite happy to die in their new-found paradise-land. A sculptress whose fine work included making statuettes for a well-known tMidlands pottery (an interesting location since Bagni di Lucca is famous for its own world-renowned statuettes) had her wish to become part of her beautiful Italian garden fulfilled and thus followed the path of another countryman, the composer Sir William Walton who found a place in his garden on the island of Ischia.

As for me, my wish where to be buried is the following. If fate commands me to die in Italy then I shall be cremated, courtesy of the Livorno branch and my ashes placed in a casket to be spread over the municipal grave we purchased for each other years ago in the borough of Plumstead, London. And if my decease takes place in the UK all the more convenient for my executors. (For more on Plumstead Cemetery see My Final Home | From London to La Costa (and Lucca and Beyond) Part Three (wordpress.com)

In both cases the order of service shall be the following:

Address.

Music:

Delius Walk to the Paradise Garden.

Poem: Donne Holy sonnet X

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and souls deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better than thy stroake; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die

Fresh water (Guadine) and salt water (Marina di Vecchiano) washed down with mineral water (and Peroni)!

Italian television news, if it wants to introduce something with a little eccentricity or pageant or both, will present items from the British Isles . The majority of these concern, predictably, the Royal Family; Prince(?) Harry’s confession in particular have had Italian housewives pontificating about his life-crises on the various chat shows which litter the TV channels. Recently, however, the focus has turned to a thirty-three year old nurse who may well become the UK’s most prolific baby murderer and be one of only three British women with a total life sentence. (The world’s most prolific baby killer will, no doubt, be a toss-up between Putin, the leader of the Third Reich or any of the tin-pot instigators of the various genocides which afflict the world).

 In a land where the ‘bambino’ is the supreme focus of adoration in the family, Italians are finding it very hard to comprehend why an attractive girl, a recent graduate from university and now in a career she wanted to practise, should set about murdering babies, injecting them with insulin and air.

 Apparently, even UK journalists are unable to reason why these horrific events should have taken place. A part- answer may eventually be declared by psychologists but only if they construct a new theorem that may explain those facts.

The way the events leading to Letby’s arrest unfolded over a period of over eight years is unsettling. Apparently, the professional opinion of doctors counts less than their bosses’. If one consultant suspects a murderess in the hospital’s maternity department then he/she had better be very careful to avoid being coerced into apologising to their suspect for believing that they could be other than innocent. Sadly, this train of events has been echoed before so many times in a society so flooded by hypocrisy as the United Kingdom continues to be. Just think of Saville for a start.

Moreover, was Letby ever observed when carrying out her nursing duties? Why did no one see when she filled in the hypodermic syringe with poison? Why did no-one link her presence on duty at all events where an infant mortality was recorded? How could all this have gone on for years without anyone noticing something irregular? Doubtless the fear the medical staff had of perhaps losing their jobs if they criticised managerial decisions must play a part in this atrocious neglect of what was really happening. Hospital managers ugh! They have far higher salaries that most doctors, take up the majority of funds the taxpayer contributes to the NHS and – judging by the straits the jewel in the crown of the UK’s care system now finds itself in – could well be largely responsible for the NHS’s current mess. It would be interesting to note how the rise of managerial salaries in the past fifty years compares with doctors’ and especially, nurses.

Murder is the most horrible of all crimes. When the act of removing another person’s most precious possession, their life, revolves to killing babies, when the killer is a nurse, when that nurse is a young woman capable of bearing her own children, when that woman looks so affectionate and happy with her smiles, when that murderer is so implicitly trusted…. then all explanations fail. For there are none!

To return to Italy, where the reason for the country’s declining birth rate is that parents cannot afford to give their promised offspring the finest of clothes, food and housing, where little lord Fauntleroy must have the best of everything and be spoilt beyond all measure, the case of Lucy Letby signals to many Italians that there is something very wrong somewhere in British society. For, just in Bagni di Lucca, the only case of a baby being murdered was that of Liliana Urbach gassed in a German concentration camp in 1944 aged just two.

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Cheeky doesn’t like rain too much. It washes away her scent and she can’t find her way back home from her wanderings. Yesterday’s rain was a case in point. We couldn’t see her, searched the forest and eventually found her at the chapel of the Madonna of the Snows. At least she knew where to seek protection!

Crowning a hill-top next to the town of Castelnuovo di Garfagnana is the massive sixteenth century fortress of Mont’Alfonso. It was built to defend the Duchy of Ferrara from Luccan incursions and to guard routes to the sea, to Modena and to Liguria. For long neglected and with its barracks used as farm buildings Mont’Alfonso has in the past few years been rescued from further decay and artfully restored.

The fortress is now an ideal location for large events and festivities. It was here that we attended celebrations for Piazzolla, the Argentinian Tango composer whose family hails from this area, an occasion described in my post at Don’t cry for me Sassorosso | From London to Longoio (and Lucca and beyond) Part One (wordpress.com). The place lent itself really well for that event and the nostalgic sound of the bandoneon permeated the smoke and succulent smell rising from the Argentinian-style beef barbecues.

Last night we were back for a Pink Floyd Tribute band concert. After an evening buffet in convivial company we settled down for the evening’s performance.

It was a truly amazing occasion. We’d heard the same band many years ago when they played in the inauguration of Crasciana’s repaved village square. This time the band had truly perfected their art and the evening’s performance could not have been bettered. All the Floyd’s great albums were played including ‘Ummagumma’, ‘the Dark side of the Moon’ and ‘the Wall’. We really felt we were actually listening to this, the greatest band of the psychedelic era, a band I remembered from my hippy years when I went to hear them live at Covent Garden’s Middle Earth venue.

Some say that the band gives out a depressing message. True, a large part of their compositions are in minor keys and the lyrics are often deeply dejected. However, it’s essential to go through these stages in order to reach sublimity. We are indeed born to suffer. The Buddha knew it better than anyone else. But realising this process can lead to the liberation of our whole being, of our whole life on this little planet hung aloft in a cosmos which knows no limits.

Unbelievably fifty years have passed since the first vinyl copies of ‘The Dark side of the moon’ appeared in our local record shops. Fifty years! Where does time go? Why does time go? How does time go!!!

For once that evening, looking out onto the mighty Apuan alps and breathing in the Floyd’s marvellous music played by an absolutely brilliant tribute band utterly devoted to their music, we felt that, for once, we had gone beyond Time itself,

Performance technology then would have been considered primitive by today’s standard. (The visuals of the concert in the fortress were quite stunning, indeed overwhelming!) However, all the central qualities of the Floyd were already present in their unique sound: the cosmic expanse of the chord structures, Dave Gilmour’s electrifying lead guitar playing, the use of a symphonic design which first came to the fore in the second album ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’ which, again, I heard live and at close distance when Andy Powell, now a noted musician but then a fledgling music student at King’s Cambridge, invited them to play for our college’s 1968 May Ball. At the same time the philosophical messages present in the Pink Floyd’s songs, the rising up against mind-control, the precarious state of the planet, the essential sadness of our human condition were all present and waiting to be developed into the apotheosis of their greatest creative period, the 1970’s.  

It was mediaeval mayhem and merriment with friends at Coreglia Antelminelli yesterday.

We hadn’t been back to this manifestation for some years, at least two of which had been interrupted by the pandemic. It was good to be here again where falconers, flag-tossers (sbandieratori), witches, fortune tellers, executioners, pilloried victims, lords and ladies lined the path to various inns where we feasted on farro soup, suckling pig and chocolate cake (not too mediaeval that last..).

Yesterday a little critter turned up in our garden from nowhere. It was sat very comfortably on one of the paths. Was this tortoise – or more correctly box turtle – an escapee from another garden. Somebody’s pet perhaps? That’s what we thought so we put it in a box and placed a photograph of it on our local Facebook community page wondering if anyone would claim it. The response was that similar specimens had landed near other houses.

No one stepped forwards to retrieve our errant tortoise. We then received a comment from a person in the know telling us that this charming fellow was in fact nobody’s pet but a wild creature which, like the deer, foxes, pine martens and boars that wander around our place, should be left well alone to fend for itself since any interference would lead to undesirable results – unnatural ones in fact. So, after a day in the box feeding on our veg and bread, we let the turtle out to return to its own life among the woods and bushes surrounding our place. Luckily we hadn’t yet given the animal a name so the parting wasn’t too painful.

However, later that same day we experience a parting which was quite otherwise. We received a message stating that a friend of ours had died earlier that same morning. After a successful operation at Pisa’s Cisanello hospital she had succumbed to a heart attack which, in her weakened state, ended her mortal existence. Wendy was a Buddhist – indeed she wrote to me – ‘I don’t want a service. I am a Buddhist. Just want to be cremated and my ashes scattered in the wind to be blown away.’

(Above photo from left to right, Sandra, Me and Wendy with her dachshund Margot last month)

Wendy’s wishes will be fully carried out by her son. And she has gone beyond this world with a copy of Buddha’s sayings which another friend considerately placed in her coffin.

The appearance of a turtle in our garden and the disappearance of a treasured friend on the same day? Was there any coincidence in these events?

My wife reminded me of the association between turtles and Buddhism. Many Buddhist temples have tablet turtle monuments that commemorate a monk’s life. When considering Buddhism, Buddhist monks and their temples, it’s inspiring to reflect on images of turtles and read the writing on their monuments. For Buddhists the turtle stands as a prayer, a wish and hope that life’s meaning will be revealed to the departed one.

Adding a tortoise to a memorial serves to emphasize the goodness of the dead person. Regarded in Chinese cultures practising Buddhism as an auspicious creature symbolizing long life (some examples have been known to live over one hundred years), the turtle conveys the message that the departed one was a virtuous person whose spirit will live forever. Moreover, turtles are truly powerful beings that can carry heavy loads. Indeed an ancient Eastern myth relates that a giant turtle called Ao supports our planet on its back.

Today we have completed reading a book aloud to each other. It’s by that brilliant writer on plants and their curative power, Marco Pardini, and is titled ‘La Casa delle Parole Ritrovate’ (The house of rediscovered words). An intriguing story interweaving a contemporary love story with the discovery of a seventeenth century manuscript describing another tale of love, this time set against a background of plague and the Inquisition Pardini’s first novel ends with a sentence expressing the thought that no death can ever truly be considered a final event.

We, too, believe this.

The theme of crime as a literary subject has been around for a very long time. That great epic of the Iliad might have been the first to start off the universal fascination with crime and mystery dealing as it does with the abduction of a woman who launched a thousand ships in a mistaken effort to get her back. Homer as a crime writer?

For me however, the modern crime novel starts firmly in the nineteenth century with authors like Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens whose inspector Bucket (‘Bleak House’) is the first in a line of detectives gracing this line of fiction and which include such unlikely-detective characters like Poirot Marlowe, Miss Marple, Clouseau and Campion. With Conan Doyle and Sherlock the golden age of crime fiction began and that missterly quartet of Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham, authors who once I thought very little about reading them but whose pages have now captured me.

The Film Noir visualized the epic American gangster-ridden, prohibitionist world with its angular shots and black-and-white celluloid. The fact that many of these Angel-faced assassins hailed from Italy and were first cousins to the Mafia was something that crossed my mind when I attended a fascinating evening with Marco Vichi, the author of the inspector Bordelli mysteries, at Bagni di Lucca ‘s villa Webb summer literary evenings.

I wonder how this detective’s name came about since ‘Bordello’ in Italian means a brothel. There is absolutely no doubt that crime fiction has spawned one of its most industrious offspringa in Italian Crime fiction. Vichi is a brilliant example of Italian authors writing this genre.

A good web page to find a list of his books is at

I nostri 10 migliori Marco Vichi Libri in Italia – Agosto 2023 | IlProdottoMigliore.it

Six of the Bordelli series have been translated into English and are available on Kindle. I asked Vichi when the remainder of the series would be translated. He replied ‘hopefully when I get another translator’.

Of course, there are also several brits that excel in writing crime in a country noted for the mysterious suaveness with which they dispatch their victims. After all Webster sent his Duchess of Malfi to no other place than our comune of Bagni di Lucca as part of his play’s scheme to do her in…Some of the more noteworthy ones are Timothy Williams (Converging parallels), David Hewson (The Savage Shore) and Patricia Highsmith (Mr Ripley).

Here are some other noteworthy authors of crime fiction set in Italy which I’ve read. They include both Italian and English authors.

Tina, Mafia Soldier by Maria Rosa Cutrufelli.

Originally published in 1994, Tina Cannizzaro’s story was inspired by that of Emanuela Azzarelli, a young woman who became the leader of a male teenage gang in the Sicilian town of Gela. Cutrufelli chronicles the events that shaped Tina’s life and set her on an irreversible path of crime and, ultimately, self-destruction against the backdrop of 1990s Sicily.

Riccardino by Andrea Camilleri

The publication of the Inspector Montalbano stories in English spans nearly two decades Riccardino is the final inspector Montalbano investigation. As usual, the setting is the fictional town of Vigàta on the south coast of Sicily.

The Measure of Time by Gianrico Carofiglio

Guido Guerrieri is a lawyer of middle years who practices in Bari, on Italy’s Adriatic coast. In this, Gianrico Carofiglio’s sixth legal thriller featuring Guerrieri, a case with uncomfortable links to the protagonist’s past finds its way to his door.

Here is a list of links describing further writings in the genre of crime novels set in Italy.

17 top crime novels set in Italy (deadgoodbooks.co.uk)

Amazon.it: Italian crime fiction

Italian crime fiction | Crime Fiction Lover

5 Books on Italian Crime Fiction – Italophilia (ishitasood.com)

17 top crime novels set in Italy (deadgoodbooks.co.uk)

The Best Books on Italian Crime Fiction – Five Books Expert Recommendations

I nostri 10 migliori Marco Vichi Libri in Italia – Agosto 2023 | IlProdottoMigliore.it

All in all, it was a very pleasant evening spent in the garden of the Villa Webb which once hosted another author who was described as being mad, bad and dangerous to know. I found Marco Vichi to be an author who is quite honest about the way he writes and who gladly answered my inquisitive questions.

To return to the title of this post. Does crime pay? Of course it doesn’t. But if one rephrases the question as ‘does crime writing pay?’ It may well do although clearly the field is very competitive and only the best will succeed.

Val di Lima’s village of San Cassiano’s triennial ‘Festa Del Crocifisso’ had to be missed out in 2020 because of the wretched covid pandemic.  The village’s inhabitants spared nothing, therefore, to make the festival a truly great event this year. And, after a regrettable absence of six years it certainly was!

We’ve attended the Festa on its previous manifestations as my following posts illustrate:

Before 2014

Triennial Festival Revisited at San Cassiano | From London to Longoio (and Lucca and Beyond) Part Two (wordpress.com)

In 2014

The Most Holy Crucifix Blesses our Valley | From London to Longoio (and Lucca and Beyond) Part Two (wordpress.com)

In 2017

The Solemn ‘Festa Triennale’ of San Cassiano | From London to La Costa (and Lucca and Beyond) Part Three (wordpress.com)

We attended morning Mass at this year’s return of one of the great religious celebrations in our part of the world. The beautiful floral decoration of the High Altar, the solemn atmosphere of the rite, the musical contributions from choir and organ all heightened the significance of the occasion.

We didn’t take part this time in the procession, a sort of spiritual ‘beating the bounds’ of the village, but returned for the evening’s concert given by the Corsagna band. It’s aptly named after Verdi who, in common with other notable Italian composers like Donizetti and Puccini, first learnt his trade playing in and conducting these bands which, unlike traditional English brass bands, also includes woodwind.

I though it excellent that, in spite of temptations to seek fame and fortune as pop singers, musically minded young people and particularly girls remain happy to join this musical camaraderie. The programme included marches, a Neapolitan rhapsody and some more contemporary offerings all played shiningly.

The finale of San Cassiano’s festival came with one of the most spectacular fireworks displays I have witnessed in a long time. To a very loud background of whizzes and bangs every variety of starry descents, silver showers, riverine sprays, golden deflagrations and multicolour flames graced the night sky against the background of the valley’s hills and the ancient church’s campanile decorated by rows of lights.

My thoughts were both exhilarated by the celebratory display and saddened to think that in another part of our continent such lighting of darkness accompanied by thunderous noises are a source of terror and death for its inhabitants now in the second year of an utterly senseless bombardment of their homeland.

Such is the paradox of human existence. I just hope in another three years’ time the martyred nation will be able to rejoice anew and that, of course, I will still be here to join in another ‘Festa Triennale’. It is, indeed, a very moving occasion celebrating the religious and community spirit of the area, bringing together not only the inhabitants of the surrounding villages but also relatives who have emigrated to the Americas and northern Europe. For an anthropologist the Festa is a complete vindication of Durkheim’s concept of “collective effervescence” and the identification of God with Society.