Hallowmas Eve

Tonight is the Eve of the Feast of All Hallows - Halloween. It still isn't a big thing in Italy, unlike the British Isles and North America it is simply what the name originally meant: the Night before the Feast of All Saints. Tomorrow will be the big day - Ognissanti is the day for families to come together and remember loved ones who have died and to make a special trip to the cemetery.

I've noticed that pastry shop windows are starting to go all the way with pumpkins, witches, skeletons but candy for Halloween isn't all that popular - a torta di cioccolata, well that's another story. As for pumpkin carving that probably strikes most Italians as the waste of a good filling for ravioli. But the young students at the school where my friend Larry teaches carved jack o'lanterns for a good cause. Larry mentioned on Amoroma last week that for €10 a family could take a pumpkin and participate in a pumpkin carving contest. The proceeds went to the the Haiti Cherie fund to feed street children in Port-au-Prince. There are some really fine and frightening examples of the pumpkin carvers art on display - I particularly love Carmen Miranda.

Trick or treating isn't a big thing and given that most people live in apartments probably not all that practical. And children here don costumes more for Carnivale in March than for Halloween. Which brings me to the pictures accompanying this post. Those would be of my friend Marc B. and members of his wild trick or treating crew. Every year the family go out - en masse, if 4 can be considered a masse - to trick or treat in their neighbourhood. I recall a Star Wars theme one year and it appears that this year has taken on a decided Tim Burton tone. That would be Marc as the Mayor of Halloweentown, Justin as Jack Skellington, Erika as Sally and out of camera range putting the finishing touches on Erika's costume Christiane who I understand will be a witch for the festivities.

Now I may be wrong but it seemed to me that during the last few years I was handing out treats at the door the costuming became more and more mundane and at times minimalist - come on kid a red ball on your nose doesn't mean your disguised as a clown! In fact I recall some older kids just showing up in their pseudo-ghetto drag with a pillowcase and mumbling "trek er tret." So its nice to see the famille B. entering into the full spirit of it all. I hope those candy sacks are overflowing by the time you get home guys.

Happy Halloween Everyone!

31 ottobre - San Quintino

Mercledi Musicale

Last week another legendary performer left us - Edie Adams, a wonderfully talented singer, actress and comedienne died at the age of 81. This clip from one of the last I Love Lucy shows has to be simply one of the loveliest moments in television.



And Laurent, welcome home honey.

29 ottobre - Sant'Ermelinda

Digital

Most of us where busy snapping photos of the glorious Baptistry at Parma with our state of the art Pentax with all the bells and whistles. Meanwhile this gentleman with pad on lap and pencil in hand was sketching. Back to the original meaning of the word digital!

28 ottobre - Santi Simone lo zelota e Giuda Taddeo

The Best Pizza in the ...

... okay maybe not the world but certainly so far of all the pizza I've eaten in Italy, and that's going some.

Now I'm not talking that doughy bottom burnt disc topped with watery tomato sauce and stringy processed mozzarella-style cheese food that you get at Pizza Pizza. I'm talking about the thin perfectly crisped circle that serves as a platter for all manner of consumables from riccola to roast potatoes throughout Italy. That wonderfully versatile item that can be served as snack, lunch, dinner or even dessert and can be found on the menus of even the most respectable restaurants.

But it was not always thus. In its native Napoli back in the 1880s it was reviled by many. To Carlo Colledi, the author of Pinocchio, it looked "like a patchwork of greasy filth that harmonises perfectly with the appearance of the person selling it." And it was generally considered as contributing, along with most of the food sold by street vendors, to the on-going outbreaks of cholera in the steaming slums of Napoli. Then in 1889 Raffaele Esposito, a local pizza maker, was called upon to bake a few samples for the very popular Queen Margherita. Apparently his combination of tomato, mozzarella and basil leaves met with Royal Approval (if the above document from Her Majesty's Mouth Office Inspectorate is to be believed) and was immediately christianed the Margherita. It was was just what pizza needed to send it on its way triumphantly around the world.

But enough history - much of which I found in John Dickie's delightful Delizia, thanks again Larry for the recomendation - and on to my own pizza nirvana experience.

Picture it! Sicily Torino, October 23, 2008 - the waiter at La Fila, a family owned ristorante on Pizza , places before me a perfectly baked pencil-thin round. It's topped very simply with a few ample swirls of fresh tomato sauce, flecks of roasted garlic and a liberal sprinkling of oregano. I cut into it, take a piece in my hand, bring it to my mouth and ...

... Going ...

... Going ...

... Gone!


Pizza Perfection! Now if I can only get them to delivery to Roma!

27 ottobre - San Frumenzio

Lunedi Lunacy

In the 1950s the Italian market was flooded with things "Americano" and many young man had dreams of being just like their American movie heroes. The brilliant Alberto Sordi had great fun with this in Un Americano in Roma - poor Nadno worships everything Americano and even threatens suicide unless someone pays his way to New York.

On his way home from a Hopalong Cassidy movie he practices his gun slinging on a few unsuspecting Romans.



Sordi started his career in the unintentionally funny (extras with wristwatches, telephone poles at the Battle of Zama) Fascist epic Scipione l'africano in 1937 and ended it almost 70 years later as one of Italy's best loved performers. I only wish I had been able to get a subtitled version of this - but I find the situation and the physical performances really don't need words all that much.

27 ottobre - San Frumenzio

Contentment

It was a sunny, warm autumn day when we visited Villa Torlonia last week.



24 ottobre - Sant'Antonio María Claret y Clará

Spotty

No I'm not talking anything I should be quarantined for! Its just that my blog posting - other than stuff I put up to be posted at a certain time - and blog reading is going to be a bit spotty over the next few days. I'm on a five day glut of opera going in the North - Torino, Genova and Parma.

That wouldn't normally stop me but... I left packing until last thing and forgot a few things including the power cable for my laptop. Unfortunately its a Dell - I can just hear my MAC friends clucking their collective tongues now - and try as they might the nice guys at Computerland on Via Principe Amedei couldn't find a North Dell cable adapter even on their Universal connector. Damn Dell!

Anyway I should get back to regular posting next week including a bit about the operas - yes I know Sage, you can hardly wait!

Baci a tutti

23 ottobre - San Giovanni da Capestrano

And The Gods Are Good

I mean is this a gift from the gods or what?



My friend Carla was here two weeks ago to take a cruise from Roma and showed up at dinner with two jars of peanut butter - one has since gone the way of all things peanut-buttery. Then Ron and Gord showed up with a tub bearing the Kraft bears and 2 kilos of smooth, creamy peanutty goodness. And then if though they had not showered me with enough - hmmm showered = peanut butter, nope - then my old boss from Ottawa Yves, well he's not actually old more like my former boss, sent me.. well let me tell you about Yves.

Yves and his lady friend Linda were on a cruise - what is it with everyone I know and cruises, I thought that was old folks stuff, oh yeah sorry - and scheduled to stop off here for a day. We were going to meet at Piazza Navona have some pizza, a litre or two of wine and maybe some gelato and Laurent and I was going to get to meet Linda. Saturday morning Linda phones from the ship - poor Yves had taken ill during the night, the message was sort of garbled but had something to do with speedos and lemon juice I believe. Anyway Reader's Digest version they were being quarantined on the ship for 48 hours. We were disappointed and so was Yves - he said he had a small gift and wanted to see my face when I opened it.

Two days later when their ship docked in Bari they trotted off to the Post Office to send me my parcel. Now from previous postings you may realize that a trip to PostItalia is a major expedition but they took time out from their busy schedule to brave Italian bureaucracy to send me two jars of peanut butter. Now that's some boss!

And Yves, if you read this I had nothing to do with the quarantine signs all over your office - honestly!

As you can see I'm set with Peanut Butter now until at least Christmas - okay maybe the end of November. Grazie Carla, Ron and Gord, Linda and Yves - okay you may not be gods but you qualify ast the least as Peanut Butter fairies!

23 ottobre - San Giovanni da Capestrano

Mercoledi Musicale

Last week the opera season opened here and we were treated to the rarely performed Amica by Pietro Mascagni. When operas are rarely performed there is often a very good reason - they aren't worth performing. I love to say that Amica was the exception but sadly not. When the intermission last longer than the second act and when the heroine throws herself off a mountain top and you don't give a damn then there is a problem.

However being Mascagni there was a really nice orchestral introduction to Act II and the full stage of the Teatro was used to project the lovers escape into the mountains. As stage craft it was the high point of the evening.



Perhaps he should have written music for travelogues?????

22 ottobre - Santa Maria Salome

Landmarks from My Youth

Back in the 60s and 70s I spent a good deal of my time, and salary, at Sam The Record Man's. Not one of the many franchise stores that suddenly popped up in suburban malls but at the Mother House in downtown Toronto - Yonge just above Dundas. The Yonge strip from Queen up to College was a pretty mixed area - strip clubs, bars, cheap souvenir shops, at least one blue cinema, few good restaurants - Diana Sweets where the waitresses wore white handkerchiefs pinned to their black uniforms - and some where merely looking at the menu in the window could subject you to botulism.

It was gaudy, slightly bawdy and neon lit with one sign dominating it all and telling you that "Yes, this is Sam the Record Man." Sam's was four floors, but at least 6 levels, of records, records and more records. My friend Alan worked in their classical department and if Alan said "buy it you'll like it" I did. He was seldom wrong and his legions of customers knew that. I remember one occasion when Alan was fired or quit or possibly quit before he was fired. After a week Sam Sniderman (yes there was a Sam and he's still a moving force in the Canadian Music Industry) called him up, things were patched up and Alan returned to work. Sam knew a great salesman when he had one.

I moved away from Toronto in 1978 so I'm not sure when Sam's started to decline. Perhaps when Sam gave up control, maybe with the advent of those suburban stores or the appearance of the mega record stores, but certainly with the general downturn in the music industry and Internet downloads. After a series of bankruptcies and changes the store finally closed in June of 2007.

The property was sold to Ryerson University and the store sat empty for a year, the twin discs no longer spinning over Yonge St. But two weeks ago, as part of Toronto's Nuit Blanche, they lit up for one last time and spun as they had since the late 60s.

It must have been a lovely sight.

And this from a press release by Ryerson University:
Ryerson is committed to preserving the legacy of Sam the Record Man and the iconic sign for the city and people of Toronto. On October 6 removal of the famous sign will begin. Following the construction of the new Student Learning Centre, the sign will be remounted and displayed in a new permanent home on the Ryerson campus.

21 ottobre - San Gaspare del Bufalo

Lunedi Lunacy

Though North America has been hard hit by the recent financial crisis, sadly some grand old institutions in Europe have also suffered the economic after effects.

Will one be wanting fries with that?

Thanks to my friend Naomi for a early Monday morning laugh.

20 ottobre - Santa Maria Bertilla Boscardin

Mercoledi Martedi Musicale

A day late with the musicale here but its been a busy week - my friends over at Italian Notebook were celebrating one year of letting us in on the joys - and frustrations - of living here and I've been doing a bit of the tourist thing with Ron and Gord. But this rather lovely video - with lots of shots of Villa D'Este gardens - combines the Fountains of Roma with Frank Sinatra, not a bad combination.



And just for nostalgia's sake here' the trailer for the movie that inspired the song. And I repeat: Clifton Webb!!!! What was Dorothy McGuire thinking??????



16 ottobre - Santa Edvige

Three Keys in the Fountain

No I haven't got the lyrics wrong - for anyone who might just remember the old movie with Dorothy McGuire mooning over Clifton Webb (whatever was Dorothy thinking mooning over Clifton Webb????????)

It nice to see that there are less people around town now that tourist season is officially over.

Down at Fonatana di Trevi the best vantage point for picture taking is the portico of the Chiesi di Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio. Though I've been there several times I had never noticed these padlocks hanging from the railings surrounding the steps.


So what was this? A new form of thank offering to the Saints for favours granted? A prayer token in the Chinese style? A whole lot of bike locks that had been left behind?

No to all three. These are lucchetti d'amore(padlocks of love) - the latest trend in declaring your undying love. Apparently the tradition (can something three years old be a tradition?) started on a lamp post at Ponte Milvio and now has spread to a more upscale neighbourhood. After writing names on the lock, you attach it the fence and then throw the key, as a symbol of your deathless passion, into the fountain.

Which one will the fountain choose?

15 ottobre - Santa Teresa d'Avila

Lunedi Lunacy

Someone we know recently decided to clean up his Facebook Friends list - he recieved a strongly worded e-mail from someone who had been removed. They were upset that he no longer wanted to be their "friend." He was totally flummoxed by the reaction - the offended party was a cousin of someone he went to school with 20 years before.





"I poked you but you didn't poke back!!"

13 ottobre - San Teofilo di Antiochia

La Ceci - La Diva

Trying my best not to do an impersonation of poor little Mimi or one of those other fragile operatic heroines I sucked back a tin of eucalyptus cough drops and headed out to the Parco del Musica a few Thursdays ago. There was no way I was going to miss this concert - Cecilia Bartoli had brought her Maria Malibran show home to Roma and if all the opera queens where going to be there so was I - come death or destruction.

Now there are some blogs where La Ceci is shredded into little pieces by the cognoscenti- she's breathy, the voice is too small, she makes strange faces and contortions when she sings, her repertoire is too limited and the sniping and bitching goes on and on. Like many of these posters, whose greatest complaint seems to be that she's successful without having to appear on some of the world's larger stages, I had only heard her on CD or seen her on DVD so I really wasn't sure what to believe. Yes there are times on record when she sounds like she's climbing Mount Everest and yes there are some strange facial tics when she throws off the coloratura runs she is famous for. But to all those commentators all I can say is: desert your Ipods and flat-screens ladies - go and see her in person 'cause the only way to judge La Ceci is on stage.

Resplendent in royal blue and sporting a diamond necklace, Cecilia shows us how a Diva accepts her due. She knows we love her and damn she just loves us back.

My dear friend and She Who We All Love to Obey Opera Chic saw the same programme in Milan a few nights before and wrote about it in her normal witty and wise manner so I won't even try to compete. I agree with much of what she says - once past the Romantic stuff, which frankly isn't to my taste either, we heard some of the most incredibly virtuosic singing that can be heard today. And she is definitely a stage animal - her connection with those around her and her audience was electrifying. As OC says we may not know what Malibran sounded like but I won't let any of the opera bitches tell me La Ceci isn't in the same league!

And a Diva who wants to give her public a treat changes gowns for the second part of the programme. The necklace may be gone but the voice sparkles brighter than the diamonds anyway.

OC mentions La Ceci's interaction with the instruments and no where was that more apparent than in the Willow Song and Prayer from Rossini's Otello. Much of Asisa appiè d'un salice is a duet for singer and harp and here the two shimmering sounds intertwined until at one point they were indistinguishable but what I found most striking was the incredible half-voice she used for the repeat. It was a distracted whisper but a whisper that reached the back wall of the auditorium. Dramatically it was intense and as telling as all the glittering flights of coloratura in later arias. That to me was one of the most breathtaking and heart-stopping moments of the concert.

The other Rossini numbers showed of her lightening coloratura with the Cenerentola rondo - one of her signature roles - getting two outings; the second as an encore with new variations. And a little encore item written by Malibran's father the great Manuel Garcia was utterly delightful - it was fortunate that a small flamenco ensemble just happened to be waiting in the wings just in case we called for more. Laurent wondered out loud what would have happened if we hadn't demanded an encore - as if that was going to happen!

11 ottobre - San Alessandro Sauli

We Gather Together ...

And no I'm not early with this wish - for Canadians this weekend is Thanksgiving - hey the harvests come earlier when you live in an igloo! Also our holiday is based on the old Church of England calender which designated the second Sunday of October as Harvest Thanksgiving.

I remember this Hymn from my childhood as we celebrated the harvest in our small parish church - I love the pure Englishness of it being matched with what is obviously more than a flower show in this video.

We've celebrated Thanksgiving in Mexico, Egypt, Poland and when we lived in Chicago we had two - ours in October and American Thanksgiving in November. This will be the second year we've celebrated here in Rome and we are breaking with a few traditions. Because Laurent is heading for Tokyo early Monday morning we are having our Thanksgiving meal on Sunday as lunch - but in true Roman style not until around 2 pm which means we'll finish at 8 pm.

Where food is concerned we're going fusion and I don't mean tomato sauce on everything. Our Thanksgiving meal has always started with Smokey Pumpkin Soup but this year that will be replaced by Pumpkin Ravioli in a red pepper-cream sauce followed by the more traditional fare of the season with a few small changes. Its almost impossible to get a whole turkey here - the butcher looks at you as if you're mad that you would think he would even have such a thing. But you can buy turkey breast, thighs and drumsticks - though again when you ask for the whole breast the butcher regards you with some suspicion because you aren't asking him to cut it into scallops - so our guests will be dinning on turkey bits! And rather than the traditional green along with their whipped potatoes (with prosciutto and mozzarella) and glazed carrots our guests will be having sauted chicory with garlic and grilled zucchini. Desert will remain as it always has been, my friend Naomi's incredible Apple Mousseline with Zabaglione sauce - there are some traditions you just don't play with - except we just may get some fresh fig or chestnut gelato to go with it. Or maybe both!

One tradition that will continue is celebrating the festival with friends. Our old friend Ron and his partner Gord will be arriving early Sunday morning and joining us and our Roman friends Larry and Vin. I've lost count of the number of holiday meals we've shared with Ron but it will be wonderful to have him and Gord here with us this year.

To all our other friends - we wish we could gather around the table with you as we have in years past but as lunch starts on Sunday we'll be toasting you one and all.

And I leave you with this little poem from my friend Carole Collette:

May your stuffing be tasty
May your turkey plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
Have never a lump.
May your yams be delicious
And your pies take the prize,
And may your Thanksgiving dinner
Stay off your thighs!

09 ottobre - San Daniele Comboni

The Navel of the World!

That's where we going for our 30th anniversary - who says we don't know how to celebrate in style???

Okay I should clarify - Laurent is scheduled to work in Athens the last week of November. Because our anniversary is the weekend before we decided to leave a few days early and celebrate in Greece. Yeah so what's that got to do with navels? you ask. We're going to head up to Arachova, a charming hillside town on Mont Parnassus near Delphi.

Clear now? No?

Okay, well according to the ancient Greeks, Zeus sent two sacred eagles from the ends of the earth to find the centre of the world. The eagles met over Delphi and it was declared the omphalos or "navel of the world."


View Larger Map

With the help of my friend Yannis we found Xenonas Iresioni, a lovely guest house in Arachova. We've booked a room with a fireplace because by November there should be snow on the ground and skiing season will have started. Skiing in Greece? Yes it appears that Arachova is a popular ski destination for upwardly mobile - and mobile equipped - young Athenians. According to my friend Parsi we can expect to see all the smart set with their SUVs converging on the ski slopes. That really won't bother us as neither one of us skis - but they'd better leave room at the bar cause we both can do apres-ski very well thank you!

09 ottobre - San Donnino di Fidenza

Mercoledi Musciale

On Monday Yellowdog Granny responded to the every lovely Valeriya's version of Mambo Italiano by voicing the opinion that Rosemary Clooney's is better. And she won't get an argument from me and its not just because she could shot the tail of a rattler at 100 paces - though that may have something to do with it. There are more versions of Bob Merrill's arrangement of this old Italian melody than you shake a Grisinni at but Rosie's is still the one.



Unfortunately that clip doesn't give the full version so here's Rosie again with a video created by tangermarine over at YouTube to celebrate her Italian roots.



08 ottobre - Santa Reparata di Cesarea

For Dora

Pie Jesu Domine,
dona eis requiem,
requiem sempiternam.

Merciful Lord Jesus,
grant them rest,
rest everlasting.

06 ottobre

Lunedi Lunacy

Hey Mambo Italiano Russo-Italiano???????



Frankly Valeriya leaves me speechless!

06 ottobre - San Bruno

"Quote... Unquote"

My friend Larry over at Amoroma suggested that John Dickie's Delizia! was a good read - and as always with Larry he was right.

These pictures are from a wonderful lunch at a little restaurant in Pesaro. Being by the Adriatic the menu was big on seafood. To start an incredible antipasti of frutti di mare - shrimp, marinated salmon, fresh sardines, crayfish, squid and a type of smoked trout.

Dickie's Cosa Nostra, a history of the Italian Mafia, is a best seller and I can see this one, subtitled The Epic History of Italians and Their Food, going the same way. His premise, and in my mind rightly so, is that Italian food is not good old fashioned country cooking that tourists - and many Italians - believe it to be. It is a urban cuisine based on the taste buds and pocketbooks of the city dweller.

These clams had been cooked in a tomato-zucchini-garlic broth and tossed with penne - pasta con le vongole is a favorite all over Italy.

History tells us that people in the countryside ate poorly - poverty does that.

The poverty of the peasant diet still echoes in a number of proverbs that have been handed down.

When the peasant eats a chicken, either the peasant is ill or the chicken is. Among the poor of the countryside, chicken was a costly rarity reserved for the sick. Peasants were often only able to eat animals that had died of disease.

Garlic is the peasant's spice cupboard. Spices were essential to sophisticated cuisine from the middle ages until at least the seventeenth century. But the rural masses couldn't afford them. Garlic, leek and onion, by contrast, stank of poverty. Which is not to imply the well-to-do refused to eat these pungent vegetables - just that they looked down on anyone who had no alternative when it came to giving food flavour.

St. Bernard's sauce makes food seem good. St. Bernard's sauce was the most important ingredient in the peasant diet for most of the last millennium. But happily the recipe* has now faded from memory. It means "hunger".

A history of Italian food written as the story of what peasants actually ate would make for a stodgy read. Many pages would be devoted to vegetable soup. There would be a substantial section on porridge. Bread made from inferior grains, and even from things like acorns in times of hardship ...

Delizia! - John Dickie
Hodder & Stoughton
http://www.hodder.co.uk/

The frito misto was piled high with octopus, shrimp, calmari and other seafood goodies. Lightly battered it only needed a few squirts of lemon to bring out all the flavours.

Dickie looks at Italian cooking in various urban centres over six different periods right up to the new prosperity of the past few decades. I'm particularly intrigued by the chapter entitled Faulty Basil - how great a wordplay is that?

The primi (pasta dishes) were so big that there was no considering a secondi (meat-fish dish)but there was room for a creamy coffee sorbetto. The whole had been accompanied by a nice wine from the Marche, aqua frizante and finished with a coffee and local amaro. And it cost half of what we would have paid for the same meal in Roma.

*Despite Dickie's comment I was able to find a recipe for St. Bernard's sauce but how faithful it is to the original I can't say.

04 ottobre - San Francesco d'Assisi

Love .....

I found this video posted on Jeff's blog this morning and was astounded by its simple beauty and dignity. I have heard this passage most of my life in one form or another - at weddings, funerals, retreats and prayer meetings. I have heard it read and repeated in the worship context of the Anglican, Presbyterian, United and Anglo-Catholic churches. But until this video I don't think I had ever heard it.



Thank you Jeff for sharing it with me this morning.

*For anyone who may not be aware Prop 8 is an attempt to overturn the same-sex marriage laws in the State of California by defining, in very narrow terms, what constitutes a marriage.

02 ottobre - Santi Angeli Custodi

Just to Let You Know

You're a GENIUS!



But you knew that already, didn't you?

02 ottobre - Santi Angeli Custodi

Mercoledi Musciale

What the hell, it worked during the Great Depression - and looking at my retirement savings sure as hell brings on a great depression these days.



Ain't Ginger the cat's pajamas? And ig-pay atin-lay, etcha-bay obody-nay peaks-say hat-tay hese-tay ays-day.

01 ottobre - Santa Teresa di Lisieux

Il Ciclo di Mesi - Ottobre

As the cold winds begin to blow through the valleys of the Dolomites, the grape harvest is pressed and the vineyards prepared for the winter. I'm not sure what the aristos are doing in this one - other than tasting the wine. But then that's what aristos do, isn't it?



01 ottobre - Santa Teresa di Lisieux