Going West

Time to catch up... have been travelling almost since last time I wrote, and my travels took me to two very different places in the United States- from the frozen Mississippi River in St. Paul to the cactus strewn desert landscape of Arizona- a discovery for me.

 But as always, America behaves exactly as expected, and the landscape is so familiar through so many films we have seen all our lives, in the same way that  New York; L.A and New Orleans seemed like old familiar places when I first went.

We flew in to Phoenix, and then we travelled overland- to Winslow where the historic Route 66 runs for a while  along  the great railway track which  carries mainly freight from East to West- Washington to Chicago through Salt Lake City and onto San Fransisco. Winslow has one of the last  great, famous railway Inns: La Posada Hotel, frequented from  the 1930's with stars crossing America whose portraits are now proudly adorning the walls: Shirley Temple, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Groucho Marx...

The great romance of America is somehow tied to the roads or railway tracks- all those blues songs which involves railway stations- the Blues myth of the Crossroads, 

The railroads... Here is the back of the Posada Hotel with a train the must have been three miles long going West...

And Bob Dylans' song to Woody Guthrie: 

Here's to Cisco and Sonny and Leadbelly too
And to all the good people that traveled with you
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind

I'm a-leavin' tomorrow, but I could leave today
Somewhere down the road someday
The very last thing that I'd want to do
Is to say, "I've been hittin' some hard travelin' too"

 So, we travelled and along the the way we (Patty Les and I) tasted the great Mexican food of Arizona, drank plenty of Margaritas and revelled in the American travel romance...

Christmas and New Year: Where to even begin...?

Well, why not start at the beginning: this  Christmas started with Jeremiah and David and our brief but lovely  visit to Ravenna- and the revelation which was Bellini's Norma conducted by Riccardo Muti- although I had been looking forward to  Nabucco... 

This was a discovery for me, who, in my ignorance , had always  thought 'bel canto' was something fairly insipid... But no, this was opera just the way  I like it- i.e. featuring an unhinged soprano with a voice to wake the dead and shatter fine crystal, always aiming for some sort of murderous revenge.  Norma was of course exactly that, and Norma is a role  which Maria Callas famously made her own.  A young Cuban American soprano rose magnificently to the challenge of following in Callas' foot steps, and this is what David wrote for the Arts Desk: (https://www.theartsdesk.com/opera/theartsdesk-ravenna-riccardo-muti-passes-lifetimes-operatic-wisdom)

                                                                             

 And what a breathtaking introduction we had to the new generation of Italian opera stars in the best sense. Leading them all had to be 27-year-old Cuban American soprano Monica Conesa (pictured above by Zani-Casado) – because either you can handle every aspect of Bellini's high priestess with a guilty secret, and the role is of pre-Wagnerian dimensions (no wonder the German loved this of all Italian operas), or you fail utterly. Conesa triumphed on every count.

My very first Christmas at Casato di Sopra was memorable and eventful, full of joyful meetings and discoveries, laughter, mad conversations and flights of fancy,  greatly inspired by the week long presence of  the lovely and charmingly eccentric Stephane from Paris - right above- and also of  a Korean young couple who shared in our Christmas fun- which included all English trimmings, such as Turkey, Christmas crackers, plum pudding, charades and as a final twist the Christmas speech of King Charles the Third on You Tube.. 

But the whole time I was also working on the floorcloth- which is taking shape in the 'Chiesina'...

The Dante quotation which I saw in Ravenna by his grave will somehow find its way onto the floor- the above mentioned Stephane kindly sent me the picture and some type faces I might use. 

It is the last words from  the Purgatorio: and it conveniently mentions ONDA.. : 

Io ritornai dalla santissima Onda

 Rifatto si come piante nouvelle 

rinnovellate di novella fronda

Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle.

For New Year celebrations Jeremiah and David arrived, we were joined by my Onda neigbours Allessandra and Loris, as well as Andrea, Silvana and Giuseppe from our little Friday theatre group, and Hettie of course. The lovely Jeremiah, Heldentenor par excellence,  treated us to some of his wonderful singing from Tchaikovsky's  Eugene Onegin at Allessandra's insistence. How lovely!  My flat has been well used and is becoming what I wished it would become- a place of intriguing  encounters and happy surprises.

And that continued this morning even, with the young honey moon couple from Taiwan, Mibi and Vincent, who only stayed one night but even so managed to make themselves unforgettable by helping me to take the Christmas decorations down;  during which they  played me the latest Taiwanese pop music. On my tree they discovered some paper birds made by my Japanese  friend Satomi two Christmases ago when I lived at Via Roma... This inspired Mibi to produce a drawing on my wall  of this Eastern bird phenomenon,  called a HO in Chinese.  One is apparently supposed to make a hundred of them, then put them in a tin and any wish will undoubtedly  come true...

And in the studio there are some horses arriving, galloping around the Piazza. This painting is becoming something fairly light hearted and features a large amount of Siena sights- it has even got the Facciatone with a group of tourists enjoying the view... 

 Massimo Spessot, the Priore of Onda, has kindly given me leave to let it stay on the floor until I come back from my travels, to finish it off in the first days of February. I am leaving for London on Tuesday and then Minnesota and Arizona and my friends Patty and Les  on the 11th...!