Or at least two of them: Let's start with Ettore Bastianini, the famous Barytone and the pride of the Pantera contrada. At the end of his illustrous carreer he became the Capitano of Pantera, and at his untimely death from throat cancer in 1967 his American wife took over that position. To celebrate the 100 year's anniversary of his birth, the Pantera laid on a free staged performance of Tosca at the lovely 18th century Teatro dei Rinnovati, situated inside the Palazzo Pubblico. The role of Scarpia was one of Bastianini's most frequently performed.
This was all very generous and nice of course, and Hettie and I went along happily. No one told us where we were supposed to sit, so we went in and installed ourselves on a couple of good seats a few rows from the front, where we remained, unchallenged, until a few minutes before the beginning of the performance, when a couple of officials arrived, in the company of some important Contradioli, and we were unceremoniously told to get out and take the seats that were allocated non-Contradioli. Now, this did not go down well- of course I would not have minded in the slightest if we had been told where to sit in the first place! As it now happed, I got angry - in Italian- once more in this theatre... (see December 11, 2021)
I'll have to watch it, I don't want to get a bad reputation after all... so, we were bundled away up in the gods, and this is what we looked like:
below a bad shot of Scarpia's demise: 'Davanti a Lui tremava Tutta Roma!' (some Pantera flags in the background...)
And now onto my own territory- that is to say the ONDA Contrada, where, in the crypt of the San Giuseppe Church, is housed the Museum of the ONDA with the original plaster sculptures, from which were made, in bronze or marble, the oeuvre of their most famous son, the nineteenth century sculptor Giovanni Dupre.
I went this morning at 10 to a lecture in this museum, and it was really quite interesting- Dupre was regarded as something of an innovator in his day, however conventional his work may seem to us. His dead Abel, plaster cast below, was considered shocking in it realism at the time- the marble is placed in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg.
Dupre said that he wanted to find beauty in reality, not try and enhance the real into something ideal, which was the contemporary approach to art.
I had only seen one of his works, the lovely little sleeping girl on a funerary monument housed in the Palazzo Pubblico. Here is another funerary sculpture, regarded as his masterpiece: the Pieta, at the Misericordia cemetary in Siena where we went after the lecture, a short stroll through the Porta Tufi. I was chatting amiably with Simonetta, one of the pillars of the ONDA, who thinks I have to become an Ondaiola...
Feeling suitably inspired by the morning's artistic pursuits I decided to continue in the same spirit and went to the new exhibition at Santa Maria Della Scala: Arte Senese, from the collection of the Monte di Paschi di Siena. And here I found another little gem, an Amor, from Giovanni Dupre, who excelled at children:
And then onto the Campo, where there always seems to be something going on- this afternoon it was the competition between the children of all the Contradas: the new generation of drummers and Alfieris, the flag throwers with their intricate manoevres (those that used to exercise under my window at Via Roma...) And here are the young Ondaioli, doing their best... we will se tomorrow who were the lucky winners!
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