Why is it that a joyful song can never move us the way a melancholy one can? Why is nostalgia so sweetly painful? After listening to the frenetic and high energy 'Libiam ne' lieti calici' from La Traviata, the bacchanalian drinking song that opens the opera, close your eyes and savor the sublime and poignant third act aria, 'Addio del passato'.
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Just like the story of the founding of Rome, the whispers of which could be heard long before that fateful day in 753BC, so the story of my wedding truly begins on Christmas day, 1861.Last month, I decided to post every 29th of the month about a little detail from my wedding. And I think it fitting to begin not with the wedding itself, but with the machinations of fate that helped to bring the event into being.
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Having recently deepened my understanding of the myths of the origins of the city, I have the desire to go back and tell a bit of the back-story, pre-Romulus, as it were. Rome may have been born in 753 BC, but the whispers of what would one day come to be stretch back at least to the 12th century BC. However, my bossy, slightly-OCD side is screaming that I have to go in order, so Aeneas and Lavinia and a whole cast of personalities are going to have to wait.
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Since starting this blog, I have been dreaming of an excuse to write about another one of my passions, Hermès, which unfortunately has nothing to do with the subject of my blog. Until now! On occasion of a second Hermès boutique opening on Via Campo Marzio, there just happens to be a very short-term exhibit dedicated to the leather of Hermès at one of the most stunning exhibition spaces in the city
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I must credit my officemate with the brilliant title of my newest blog feature: "Viva VEneRDI!" From today on, every* Friday, I will post about one of my favorite works by Verdi.... or Puccini, or Bellini, or Leoncavallo, or ANY Italian opera composer, actually. For the sake of those who aren't opera/Italian history/Risorgimento freaks (unlike myself), I will explain the connection.
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Doughnut Arch StreetRight. This one requires a bit of explanation. But first, I discovered yesterday the precise terminology of something that gets me rather excited: toponymy, the study of place names. My particular strain of toponymyphilia (ok, that word I completely made up) is focused on, but not limited to, street names (as you may have already noticed).
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A strikingly familiar image caught my eye while out running errands in Trastevere this afternoon. I had to stop for a closer look.
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A brand-new exhibition at Centrale Montemartini, un unususal museum that displays ancient Roman sculpture with a backdrop of early industrial age machinery, has been planned to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the tragic events of September 11th.
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According to news reports, early yesterday morning, the Fontana del Moro (Fountain of the Moor), the southernmost of the three fountains in Piazza Navona, was attacked and severely damaged. Surveillance cameras nearby recorded a middle-aged man climbing into the fountain and violently smashing a stone ten times against the figures decorating one of the four maschere (masks) that grace the fountain.
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On Being a Woman: "Why is it, when I am in Rome, I'd give an eye to be at home, But when on native earth I be, My soul is sick for Italy? And why with you, my love, my lord, Am I spectacularly bored, Yet do you up and leave me-- then I scream to have you back again?" Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
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