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Global warming is the biggest issue affecting our planet today and, although we have had our truly cold spells this winter it seems a long time since snow had lain on our village paths for any period of time. Indeed towards mid-day the sun shines on our valley with almost spring-like intensity and wild daffodils are appearing in the woods.
Certainly the weather is not what it used to be when I first arrived here almost fifteen years ago and it is very worrying. Some things we don’t miss of course: those sheets of ice and burst water pipes, for example, but I just wonder what spring will bring us – last year expensive forest fires occurred in the tinder-dry undergrowth – and as for summer…should I arrange a holiday in Iceland?
One thing I’ll look forwards to is the Viareggio Carnival. The extraordinary huge mechanised papier Mache floats are world famous and their grand parade will take place on the following days this year:
Something absolutely not to be missed and something to take one’s mind off the awful event which will involve the lowering of one national flag at the European parliament. For how long I wonder?
Viareggio isn’t just sea, sun, sand and ice-cream. It’s also history with beautiful mansions ranging from classical to art nouveau. It’s a major luxury yacht building and service area. It’s a great fishing and sea food centre and it has a considerable artists’ colony. Together with its nearest English equivalent, Brighton, Viareggio has been the holiday haunt of the rich, the famous and the princely. Within its boundaries there are no less than two regal residences: the Villa Borbona on the Viale dei Tigli (‘Lime Tree Avenue’) and the Villa Paolina by the square which has a monument to Shelley, who unfortunately met his briny death in 1822, aged 29, off the Viareggio coast in a violent storm.
For last week’s fish Friday, I couldn’t miss my cod and chips. What better place to have it fresh from the sea of Viareggio with crispest batter but no soggy chips, and mayonnaise instead of vinegar…. mind you, I did miss my mushy peas… but not the rain!
P.S. The cat below is Ettore – a favourite of fishermen – sadly no longer with us on this planet since 2016 but in spirit with his statue. (Still miss my beloved cat Napoleone badly…..)
Other must-see places in Viareggio are the stunning art nouveau Villa Argentina (see my post on that at
Renata mentioned that she had helped to refurbish the princess’s rooms in the Villa Paolina. Last Friday I visited the villa and was certainly not disappointed!
The exhibition is set up in the stately rooms of the ‘piano nobile’ of the emperor Napoleon’s sister, Paolina Borghese. It has been refurbished with furniture and artistic items of the Napoleonic age, all curated by Renata Frediani who is an antiques collector from Lucca and an expert on ‘style empire’. Most of the precious furnishings, including the entire collection of exquisite dresses on display, were supplied from Renata’s own collection.
The exhibition is further enriched with evening dresses, also from Renata’s collection. They are of special interest as they are by the famous fashion stylist from Lucca, Dina Bigongiari Santini who died in 2004 aged 89. If you’ve never heard of Bigongiari, you should know she was Giorgio Armani’s favourite designer as well as of the Royal House of Montecarlo. Dina was much appreciated for her novel dress designs which have a truly refined, aristocratic quality. She opened her atelier during the post-war period in the historic centre of Lucca and also created the silk museum, (upon which textile Lucca founded its fame and fortune).
Dina Bigongiari ’s styling was innovative and of the highest quality. For me a definition of beauty would be to meet a lady wearing one of her dresses…
Set in the exquisite ambience of Princess Borghese’s pleasure palace with its delightful frescoed rooms, the Villa Paolina’s collection is certainly something to seduce one away from the esplanade and the ozone-laden air of Viareggio’s seafront.
These are the villa’s current opening times.
1 September to 14 June: Wednesday to Saturday 3.30 PM to 7.30 PM, Sunday 9.30 to 1.30 PM, 3.30 PM to 7.30 PM.
If your thing isn’t fashion then the villa Paolina houses no less than three other museums:
Museo Archeologico e dell’Uomo A.C. Blanc (local prehistoric and Etruscan finds.)
Museo degli Strumenti Musicali C. Ciuffreda (Musical instruments collection, including items from Tibet).
Atelier A. Catarsini: an artist’s studio and contemporary art exhibitions including paintings by one of my favourite local artists, the brilliant Fornaciari who lives round the corner from the villa.
To sum up do look at this leaflet about Viareggio’s civic museums:
This is an extract of what I wrote in 2013 when I looked over the fence at Giacomo Puccini’s last house:
A similar fate of neglect appears to be that awaiting Puccini’s last house in Viareggio. Not too many know about this house or where it is. I was determined, however, to find it and clear directions from a newsagent on Viareggio’s esplanade took me there. It’s, in fact, opposite the Pineta di Ponente, a couple of blocks from the seafront.
Why did Puccini move to Viareggio when he loved his little villa at Torre Del Lago so much? For two reasons: first, a peat extraction company had moved near his villa and started digging with mechanical means, producing noise which the sensitive master (or anyone else, for that matter) couldn’t tolerate. Second, the master’s health had begun to deteriorate, largely through his eighty-a-day (and five cigars) smoking habit (he especially favoured gold-tipped Sobranie) and it was thought that somewhere nearer a big centre like Viareggio would be more convenient, especially in days when roads and communications were not what they are now. In Viareggio Puccini had a ‘bungalow’ built for him by one of his favourite architects.
(Actually, I should add that Puccini had already owned the land on which he was to build his dream house since 1915. He had bought it, in fact, for his mistress, baroness Josephine von Stengel , who subsequently thought better and returned to her husband Arnold von Stengel ). Sadly, she died in 1926 just two years after Puccini’s death, aged just 39.
If you think that a seaside bungalow evokes visions of Peacehaven-on-sea then think again. The new bungalow is a marvellous thing, built in an eclectic style by architect Vincenzo Pilotti, and with ceramic decorations by Galileo Chini who went on to teach architecture and design at the court of the king of Siam (now Thailand) whose throne room he decorated. Indeed, there is an oriental perfume about this house.
I wonder, however, if, like the Chinese courtiers, Giacomo still hankered after his beloved Torre Del Lago. He certainly must have missed the easy reach of the second of his three great hunting passions, shooting at water-fowl on the lake. (The other two of the composer’s hunting passions, if you didn’t know them, were good opera libretti and beautiful women).
It is impossible to get into Puccini’s last house and almost impossible, too, to view its exterior in its entirety – so overgrown is the garden around it. One can’t even read the commemorative plaque placed on its façade clearly.
All this, however, is going to change. In 2011 a court decision resolved the litigation which had been going on as to Puccini’s house at Viareggio and authors’ rights. The Fondazione Puccini gained two-thirds of the remaining rights for the operas (from ‘Fanciulla’ onwards) and also received the Viareggio villa – acquisitions equivalent to a sum of well over a million euros. I hope that it’s going to open to the public in the not-too-distant future….
In fact, nothing changed until 2015 since there were further significant court decisions to be overcome, also relating to the fact that the property had become ‘demaniale’, i.e. state-owned. In Italy, if anything becomes ‘demaniale’ it regrettably may predict an atrophic disaster.
In 2016 I wrote (extract):
Viareggio’s supreme Chinese connection is a building which conveniently lies between Via Marco Polo, the first Italian traveller to China, and the Piazza Puccini. It was the house Puccini had built by his architect friend Pilotti (who’d also designed his villa at Torre Del Lago) with decorations by Galileo Chini. (Chini incidentally designed the scenery for Puccini’s last opera). With an almost Indochinese, indeed Laotian feel to it, the building provided the immortal maestro with a much needed escape from the noise that the newly-founded peat extraction factory near his beloved Torre Del Lago villa was now grinding out. (How could even the famous Puccini not have stopped this factory from being set up? What regard did the Italian government have for their greatest composer’s peace and quiet?).
Chinese-looking, indeed Indo-Chinese looking, is this highly attractive bungalow now thankfully saved from the disastrously dilapidated condition I last saw it in a few years ago. A victim of a typically interminable Italian law-suit the villa finally became the property of the Puccini foundation in 2012. The garden had been cleared of its brambles and I was at last able to read the plaque placed on one of its walls.
La comunità di Viareggio promette di costudire consacrati a GIACOMO PUCCINI
e casa e bosco che furono reggia e giardino alla splendente regina Turandot.
(The community of Viareggio promises to look after the house and the woods, consecrated to GIACOMO PUCCINI, which were the palace and garden of the resplendent queen Turandot).
Let’s hope they really carry out that promise this time!
The portico is lovely and reminded me of a sweet country place we’d stayed at Luang Prabang, Laos last December.
But the cherry on the icing was that it was in this very house that Puccini composed his masterpiece, Turandot, all about the tortured love of Calaf for the ice-cold Chinese princess, Turandot, who eventually melts into his arms when she discovers the secret word ‘Love’:
La casa e bosco che furono reggia e giardino alla splendente regina Turandot
If love makes the world truly go round then I was surely moved. Like his neighbours during the time Giacomo Puccini was composing his last opera, I imagined I could catch the music from this transcendently ecstatic work on his piano (now at the Villa Torre del Lago).
On Saturday 23 June this year I was privileged to visit Puccini’s last house at Viareggio for the very first time. The visit had to be pre-booked and was to be described as an overview rather than an official visit. No interior photographs were allowed to be taken, principally for the reasons of security and for the fact that, frankly, the present condition of the house is rather dilapidated and not what your standard historical villa tourist would like to be presented with. The visit was free but its aim was to encourage visitors to publicise its presence and to help in finding generous benefactors.
The house looks towards the pine-wood and not towards the beach. Evidently Puccini didn’t like the sea! Another thing: Puccini was only able to enjoy the house for very few years. It was finally completed in 1921 (with the characteristic Italian tradition of ‘tettoiaggio’ i.e. placing a flag on the completed roof and having a party) and in 1924 Puccini died in a Brussels clinic after a supposedly successful operation.
We were greeted by Signor Viani, who has a distinguished family tree which includes one of Italy’s greatest twentieth century painters, Lorenzo Viani. We were then shown around by three charming girls from Viareggio’s secondary schools who were very well prepared in their knowledge of the house.
They explained that the true architect of the house was Puccini. He would thumb through ‘House and Garden’ type magazines from all parts of the world and when he found something that he liked, whether it be the design of a balustrade or the beams on a ceiling or the shape of a fireplace, he would consult his architect Vincenzo Pilotti. (Strangely, a school friend, who became one of the United Kingdom’s most distinguished architectural writers, but who sadly died at the end of last year, signed his brilliantly written critiques of modern architecture in ‘Private Eye’, Piloti –this time, of course, alluding to Le Corbusier’s trade-mark of standing buildings, stilt-like, on rows of concrete pillars).
Even if Puccini called it his ‘bungalow’ the house actually has two storeys although the ground floor could more appropriately be entitled the basement.
The details of the house are absolutely stunning and all chosen by Puccini from his artist friends, especially Chini who was in charge of the ceramics:
I felt that the house owed quite a bit to Frank Lloyd Wright, in particular the Darwin D. Martin house with its horizontal emphasis and its layout with an L-shaped format. I was told, in fact, that Puccini received house design magazines from the U.S.A. where he’d scored a great success with ‘The Girl from the Golden West’, starring Caruso as Dick Johnson in a work specially written for the greatest tenor of all time, in 1910. (For more detail see my post on Enrico Caruso at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2017/03/30/the-greatest-of-all-singers-his-villa/ )
We first visited the piano nobile. Here we were shown Giacomo and Elvira’s son Antonio’s bedroom with his en suite bathroom complete with attractive tiles and a bidet. We saw the dining room with a dumb waiter connected to the kitchen below and a service room where Puccini’s servants would wait to attend to their famous household at dinner time. We then saw another fabulous bathroom with beautiful chamfered orange tiles and next Giacomo and Elvira’s two bedrooms (for they slept separately, although their beds were placed with the respective headboards next to each other and just divided by a wall. Puccini’s bedroom had a little door leading down a narrow staircase to his study in the ground floor (or basement) where he would do his composing, mostly at night.
We then walked down a long and wide corridor leading to the main staircase and were advised not to descend if we suffered from respiratory or allergic dysfunctions. It was easy to see (or smell) why. The dankness in the basement, the mould of the walls, the floor, which until quite recently had been submerged in a foot of water, emanated that decayed smell of advanced decomposition and putrefaction which one associates more appropriately with Edgar Allan Poe tales.
Here were the servants’ quarters and an ample kitchen with a large cooking area. Here too was the central heating boiler, albeit a little rusty. Here were the pipes leading to the chunky radiators in the floor above and here, too, was the creator’s kernel, the piano room and, adjoining it, the library where he would keep his music scores (which included everything from Palestrina to Wagner to Debussy and to the latest productions of Schoenberg – Pierrot Lunaire).
It was empty, all empty: the piano on which he composed everything from Madama Butterfly to Turandot, now in the pristinely kept tourist mecca of Puccini’s house in Lucca; the shelves decayed and vacant, the decorations and stencils eaten away by the inexorably devouring dampness.
And yet….
….I have never come closer to Puccini’s ethereal presence as in this house. As we entered the maestro’s study situated below his bedroom and reached by a hidden staircase and were told that it was here that he composed all that remains by his own hand of ‘Turandot’, and as a recently discovered film (now digitally projected) showed him in this very room, walking past the same staircase that was next to us, looking into the fireplace that stood before us I felt my whole being shiver and my eyes became moist. It was an overwhelmingly traumatic experience which I have never quite experienced before and which I did my best to hide at the time.
We emerged into the garden which Mr Viani and his volunteers had cleaned up so that it now looked less like a Cambodian jungle than ever before. We admired the sprinkler system Puccini had had installed, the first one in Italy. We saw the caretaker’s house with, below, the garage where the master kept his last car, a Lancia Lambda which Puccini regarded as the best vehicle he’d ever bought (he usually didn’t drive his cars after the disastrous accident of 1903 which almost cost him his life and preferred to be chauffered instead (even on a motor-bike, in the side-car, naturally…). The garage entrance was the first in Italy to be self-opening. Puccini loved the latest technology!
I was particularly moved by the paw marks of Puccini’s favourite English setter dog set in concrete near his kennel. I don’t know the name of the dog but dogs were Puccini’s companion for many years in his favourite occupation (apart from writing operas and seducing women) which was hunting.
I could not find much sign of the radio aerial on the roof of the house for Puccini was also one of the first Italians to own a radio and receive broadcasts. At an evening with friends that included Toscanini he switched on the radio and heard a live broadcast from the New York Met of his opera ‘Madam Butterfly’. Toscanini said to Puccini, listening intently through the somewhat crackly reception ‘that proves Giacomo that you and your art truly belong to the world.’ So true!
Later, as my friends and I relaxed in the wonderfully restored art deco (Aldo Castelfranco, 1938) setting of Viareggio’s premier bathing establishment, the ‘Principe di Piemonte’ we admitted that we all of us experienced the same haunting feeling that Giacomo Puccini was looking at us with his gaze, half of ‘mestizia toscana’ and half of ‘spensieratezza’.
I have visited many houses of famous composers: from Beethoven’s in Bonn, to Mozart’s in Salzburg and Vienna, from Dvorack’s in Prague to Handel’s in London but never, in their beautifully restored and presented interiors, have I felt such almost frighteningly real presence of their illustrious musicians.
I applaud Mr Viani and his small band of volunteers who have saved our princess Turandot.
He was born in the centre of Moscow in 1956. Not wanting to do military service he opted out for the best alternative, which was to become a student in a medical school. Graduating as a doctor he found employment in a pulmonary unit (but he still smokes). He did that job close on twenty years but when ‘perestroika’ occurred things changed drastically. Money was not forthcoming for his work-place and so he found himself out of a job. He decided to travel in Europe instead. In Venice in 1996, he found he had no money. He had to survive somehow and so picked up various jobs around the place, Sometimes he was a plumber or a builder, sometimes he collected snails and found mushrooms. Eventually he took the job he still holds now: Viareggio’s bubbleman. “It’s not really a job”, he declared. “I don’t know who’s having more fun, me or the kids.”
Then one day, just over a year ago, something happened which, as the phrase goes, went viral, He was creating bubbles, as was his wont, in the passage to the Neptune bathing establishment and next to the shop with the big art nouveau number 48. Suddenly the shop owner came out and started hosing down the pavement surrounding the building. “Out of here” he shouted to bubbleman. “Why?” asked the Russian. “Get out of here you scum or else I’ll smash your head. Who are you anyway?” “I am a human. You are a fascist” replied Boris, for that was the bubbleman’s name. Then the shop owner turned his hose onto Boris, soaking him. By this time a small crowd had gathered. They liked bringing their children to watch the bubbleman. Boris has a way with them. “What’s going on?” one of the audience asked. “It’s him; I want him away from my shop-front. He lowers the tone of this neighbourhood,” said the shop-keeper.
One person was recording the incident on his mobile. A hand covered his phone lens. “Stop it” said a voice.. But it was too late. The event had been filmed and then posted on Facebook. It became viral. Eventually, Viareggio’s mayor came to know of it. He arranged a meeting between himself, Boris and the shop owner. The latter was forced to apologise. “It became a little out of hand” he admitted.
Boris told me he does many other things apart from amusing children. “I can heal people from their back pain with my massage. I also have a technique to help those who are suffering from worsening sight. My method does work. Look at me. I once had to wear two different types of glasses – now I need none.”
“And what about the shopkeeper?” I asked. “It’s water under the bridge. Who has had to pay has paid”, he replied .
Meanwhile a child came up to Boris. “I want to make bubbles myself”. “Do you really? I’ll show you how then”, said Viareggio’s bubbleman.
And so Boris took the child under his wing and showed him how to blow bubbles. The child was so happy to see the great suds soaring up in the light evening wind. The child’s parents proudly watched.
Meanwhile the great carnival procession of the fantasia-town was taking shape. “After all,” said Boris to me as I bid goodbye , “life’s just like a bubble. Sooner or later it will pop into nothingness.”
Are you carrying out your New Year’s resolutions and have you decided what to give up for Lent (making New Year’s resolutions?) – those forty days, beginning on Ash Wednesday (February 14th this year – same day as Saint Valentine’s???) and ending on Holy Saturday which Jesus spent in the wilderness resisting Satan.
Italy celebrates the time before Lenten abstinence by holding carnivals in many towns. The word ‘carnival’ comes from Latin ‘carne vale’ = farewell to meat. That’s why Mardi Gras – marking the last big feast before Lent starts – is the day before Ash Wednesday.
Carnival is a time for letting off steam and reversing traditional roles: subordinates become masters, partners are swapped, rules broken and masked balls take place . A useful Italian word to learn for this time is ‘veglione’ = all-night dance party. The previous way of doing things transforms into chaos and from this disarray a new structure arises, reflecting the burgeoning spring. (It’s no coincidence that ‘Lent’ comes from Anglo-Saxon ‘Lenten’ meaning spring).
Because of the carnival’s R. C. associations there’s been no similar tradition in the UK since the reformation. The North London Notting hill ‘carnival’ takes place in summer and is a misnomer since it’s actually a festival inspired by Caribbean culture. The West Country carnivals are protestant in origin and occur in November, the Guy Fawkes and gunpowder plot month. However, carnivals go back to pre-Christian times: the Roman Saturnalia and the Celtic Samhain.
Italy has its ‘big five’ carnivals which all should try to attend. They are
CARNIVAL LOCATION
FOUNDATION
CHARACTERISTICS
Putignano, Puglia
1394
Papier-Mache allegorical floats and the figure of ‘Farinella’
Venice
Founded 14th century but suppressed by Napoleon and resuscitated in 1979
Wonderful baroque costumes and masks. A lot of cultural activities: arts exhibitions and music included
Acireale, Sicily
Very, very old.
Lots of fresh flowers decorating the floats
Ivrea, Piedmont
Mediaeval in origin it’s the only Italia carnival with an unbroken tradition.
Teems with folklore and tradition. Battle of the oranges (wear a red cap if you don’t want to get pelted) Particularly rich in Napoleonic costumes. Famous for ‘Mugnaia’. Beautiful floats
Viareggio, Tuscany
Dates from 1873, the time of the town’s expansion as a major seaside resort
World-famous floats designed by some of Italy’s greatest designers. First place to use papier-mâché in 1923. Great political satire. Lots of ‘veglioni’. Absolutely unmissable.
Rome had a carnival once (remember Berlioz’ overture and Goethe’s travel diary?) However, it was abolished in the nineteenth century because spoil-sports thought the horse race down the Corso had become too dangerous. What a shame.
I was at Viareggio’s unmissable carnival last Saturday when the floats made their inaugural parade down the wide seaside promenade. The event was quite stunning and the weather held – important when the floats are made of papier-Mache! There are three categories of floats and each category is separately judged. This gives a big chance for smaller float builders with fewer resources than the gigantic ones built at the ‘Cittadella’, a special site for float construction and exhibitions which opened in 2001.
Viareggio is particularly hot on political satire (even Mrs. Mayhem made an appearance this year), world issues (especially environmental degradation) and social commentary (poor disabled access and smoking are big issues). The first category floats presented the following issues.
Number
Float Title
Issues
Symbols used
CATEGORY ONE
1
In un mondo che prigioniere è (in a world where we are all prisoners)
We are all subject to being punished for freedom of expression
Cell doors, swaddled human figures
2
Fumo negli occhi (smoke in your eyes)
Smoking causes death
Skeleton, cigarette butts
3
Proxima ventura
Towards a better future
Galleon, giraffes, helicopter
4
La pace di cristallo (fragile peace)
Threat of war
Prostrate dove with world figures above it
5
Papaveri rossi (red poppies)
Stop wars
Red poppies, WWI soldiers
6
No tu no (Not you)
Increase disabled access
Pulcinella on wheelchair, barriers
7
Ozio, vizio e vitalizio (Leisure, vice and annuities)
Against political corruption
Cicciolina, Razzi and Berlusconi
8
Aspettando Godot (Waiting for Godot)
We’re all waiting for dreams which never seem to materialize.
Huge tramp and text from Becket’s play
9
E’ come credere alle favole (It’s like believing in fairy tales.)
Fake news
Pied piper and mice
There were five second category floats and nine category three, all equally inventive and dealing with essential issues like plastics waste, political corruption, war-threats etc.
See if you can distinguish which floats are which in my panoply of photos taken last Saturday:
A lot of the carnival fun is also to do with the float actors and their costumes, the public and especially the children who have a real field day at this event!
Wouldn’t it be great if the Italian carnival tradition were brought to the UK, There could be such opportunities to allegorize ‘swivel-eyed’ Conservative in-fighting (to say nothing of Labour) not to mention the political figures who could be wonderfully sent up. In my mind’s eye I’m already imagining a Brexit float shaped like a double-decker filled with the usual suspects … It would certainly help to relieve public frustrations at the tragi-comic mess that is going on in those islands to the distress of the NHS, crime figures and education.
The Viareggio carnival continues as follows:
Seafront parades on:
Domenica 4 febbraio – Ore 15,00
2° CORSO MASCHERATO
Domenica 11 febbraio – Ore 15,00
3° CORSO MASCHERATO
Martedì 13 febbraio – Ore 17,00
4° CORSO MASCHERATO notturno DEL MARTEDI’ GRASSO
Sabato 17 febbraio – Ore 17,00
5° CORSO MASCHERATO notturno
Al termine la proclamazione dei vincitori
Grande Spettacolo pirotecnico finale (ie great final fireworks display)
