June 27th: Chamber music and Marco

(Hold on, I'll get to the guy in the picture in a minute....)

This weekend ends our time of playing musica di camera, chamber music. We had three concerts the evenings of the 25th-27th to wrap things up, and now we segway into the opera, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, which we have five days to put together before the performances next week.

Unfortunately, our Beethoven septet for winds and strings was doomed from the beginning. Due to a combination of a sick horn player and my ridiculously long hospital visit, we had to put off the piece until the last concert, and then we only played one movement after rehearsing three. But, it was enough to get to play it at all, and we pulled it off pretty well, regardless of the fact that the wind was so strong we missed notes trying to keep our music on the stands.

All three of our concerts took place outdoors, and the venues were incredible. The first was at an outdoor ancient-Greek-looking amphitheater, complete with the rounded terraced steps -- I know there's a name for this I just can't think of it. The second, in a large stone building with pillars, statues, and no roof (okay, semi-outdoors), and the third, on top of a hill in a small quiet town overlooking the mountains nearby. Although it's always difficult to perform outside for acoustical reasons, the spaces were beautiful, the audience welcomed us, and the performances all went very well.

The day of the first concert, I ate at a local bar with Caroline while waiting for the bus. The couple who works there has seen us American students often, and usually try to make friendly conversation while we eat, as is customary for the small family-owned restaurants in town. That day the father asked us why we had our instruments with us, so we told him we were musicisti playing a concert that night out of town. Then he told us about his son, an actor in Rome. Caroline and I were both politely impressed, and asked questions about his work. So the father promptly began to pull out publicity photos of his son, a nice-looking 24-year-old acting student, followed by newspaper articles and magazine clippings. While we couldn't quite understand what the nature of his acting career was (it seemed like he played a part on a soap opera type of show as well as a popular cop drama), evidently this kid's pretty big in Italy. The dad offered to give us his email address and let us know when he'd be in town, which he was a couple of days later -- Caroline and Patrick had the chance to talk with him at Mr. Bloom a few nights ago.

Just in case you're curious, the kid's name is Marco Iannitello (the pic above isn't mine, obviously), and here's a couple of links I found to his publicity pages:

http://www.rbcasting.com/site/main.rb

http://lnx.studiofidemi.it/web/index.php?id=189

Piu presto (more soon),

-Allie

June 26th: Sprained Ankle

No picture for this post... you wouldn't want to see it anyway.

For the last three days, I have been in a bandage and walking with a crutch, the result of a sprained left ankle. Starting from the day I skipped the trip to Siena, the pain and swelling had only gotten worse, so finally I decided to see the doctor. He said it was probably a sprain, but was also worried about a possible small fracture, so he told me to get x-rays. So on Thursday, I headed over to the city hospital (fortunately, right across the street from the university) to get it checked out.

I arrived with Danilo, the office worker employed with the Oberlin program, at about 9:15 a.m. Since Italian is his first language, he was able to help me through the initial checking-in process at the pronto soccorso (emergency room), which was a relief. After that though, he had to return to the office, so I was alone. I'll admit I was a little nervous, but there were people around who helped me out. While standing in line at about noon for x-ray results, one friendly 30-something man with a broken finger joked with me, saying that the wait "probably isn't making a very good impression on you during your vacation." "No," I assured him, "it's the same way in the U.S." ...Little did I know I would be there until 5:30 that afternoon, totaling about eight hours in the hospital that day: once I got x-rays done, I was forced to wait for a couple more hours until I could get results, and then several more until I could actually get in to see the doctor. The x-rays were fortunately negative for a fracture, but I did have a nasty sprain, probably aggravated by the huge amount of walking we students do every day. The doctor advised me in a mix of Italian and very bad English to keep the bandage on for 3-4 days and "no walk."

So, I took the bandage off today, and am feeling a lot better. Keeping weight off the ankle for the weekend has been good, and given it the time it needed to start actually healing. In the meantime, the other students haven't let me hear the end of it... nicknames this week included "Crutchy," "Hobbles," "Lamey," "Tiny Tim," and "Itzhak Perlman." Danilo, after finding out that I'm also recovering from a bad cold and an ear infection, promptly dubbed me "Disaster," and so far that one's stuck.

More soon,
-Al

June 21st: Giostra di Saracino

Ok, now that I told that story, I can go back to the original post.

Today was the daytrip to Siena. I decided not to go because I’m not feeling too well. I’ve had a sore throat for the past few days, and I’m also nursing a swollen left ankle – a recurring problem, not serious, but also not something that I want to make worse by taking an on-foot guided trip through a big city. So today will be spent on housekeeping matters in my room instead – clothes put away, postcards sent to friends, laptop battery charged, and blog updated. Also I just spent an hour doing laundry, which is possible with the help of a huge bottle of detergivo I bought at the supermarket. The convent is the only student housing where there’s no washer and dryer, and I’m not sure it's possible to tote all my dirty laundry across town to one of the apartments, where it would cost me 7 euro per load.

Anyway, now the fun part.

Last night was Giostra del Saracino (Saracen Joust), the biggest annual event in Arezzo. Since Wikipedia can give you the brief summary of the day and its significance better than I can, here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saracen_Joust

Erin (bass player) and I decided to team up and stick together for the evening, since we both wanted to go right after dinner. None of us really knew what time to show up; the tickets said 9:30, but we heard through the grapevine that there were other things going on for a few hours beforehand. It’s a good thing we went out earlier, otherwise we would have missed the citywide procession into the arena. Beginning at about 7:00, the crowd of locals started gathering around the Duomo, where everyone involved in the spettacolo had gotten into costume. Then, in time with the music of the trumpets and drums, they marched from the cathedral to the arena. The procession of nearly 400 involved included musicians, flag-bearers, archers, noblemen on horseback, even a few little kids in character as pages or something... and finally, the riders themselves.

This probably lasted for an hour and a half or two hours, while the people of Arezzo roamed around the city to catch different parts of the procession. We mostly just followed the crowd, and ended up seeing the whole train twice. The first time we had missed the flag-bearers at the beginning – the sbandieratori I saw prepping in Cortona last weekend – so the second time we got to see the actual display of waving and twirling and throwing, although we had to jump up on a ledge to see over the crowd.

Describing the scene doesn’t do it justice. This was the biggest thing I had seen since getting here. From 6:00 to the time the procession ended, the church bells rang incessantly, the drums boomed out the march rhythm, and the trumpets blared simple medieval tunes in time with the drums. Of course, in the old town (the part within the walls where we live), its historical significance is huge – the first giostra took place in the year 1535, and it's been an event off-and-on ever since Renaissance times, but was definitively restored as a historical reenactment in 1931. Literally the entire town turns out to watch the procession and joust. For the Arezzo locals, it's not just a fun evening, it's a matter of regional pride.

Somehow we figured out where the entrance to the arena was, and made our way in right as the announcer started introducing the event. Oberlin students got $5 standing-room tickets. The four jousters represent the four quarters of the city, and we ended up settling in the corner of the colors of Porta Sant' Andrea – my quarter. (This is pretty much completely arbitrary for Oberlin students, but most of us chose the colors of the quarter of the city in which our housing was located. I picked green-and-white for Sant' Andrea, even though it’s not where the convent is located, only because someone had bought me a Sant' Andrea scarf the night before at Mr. Bloom. These are also Carlo’s family’s colors, which is fortunate, because he had only half-jokingly threatened to withhold gelato from Mara when he saw her wearing fuschia and gold last week, and I didn't want the same to happen to me.)

The joust was pretty cool, although not as exciting as the procession. After about forty minutes of buildup (medieval music, sbandieratori, processions within the arena, the announcing of the four quarters), the runs began. The jousters flew from one corner of the stadium to the other to hit a huge knight-sized dummy, the goal being to hit as close to the center of the target to score as many points as possible. Each rider ran twice, for a total of 8 runs throughout the evening, after each of which the score was tallied and the result blared over the loudspeaker by the announcer.

Because Lauren and her roommates went home slightly earlier than the others, and I wanted to get to town with someone else instead of walking alone, I left with them after the final run. By the time I got to the gelateria, where Carlo, Max, and another regular had been watching the end of the event on local TV, the result was in. The victor was the jouster of Porta Crucifera, a different quarter than anyone I knew lived in. As the event wrapped up, other Oberlin students streamed into the gelateria. When Carlo saw Mara, he made peace by way of a sad face and a point at her scarf, saying, “We lose together.”

Just like after the soccer matches, the town went crazy. People in cars blaring their horns, people waving flags, kids shouting, and bars packed. I walked into town with a friend, where we ran into Azzurra and Luciano, ordered some drinks, and watched the proud victors march past our bar chanting and yelling. A general murmur of disgust rippled through the bar, as the marchers were on another quarter's turf and no one in the bar was with the Porta Crucifera. I'm still not sure if this joust is actually an extremely competitive thing, or if it's more friendly competition, but it sure didn't seem like it then. Like I said, it's about regional pride, and the Italians are fiercely devoted to their roots.

The picture at the top is of one of the musicians as he marched by in the procession.

More soon,


-Allie