travelswithalice

I'm in the Sculpture Garden resting my feet and trying to digest the contents of both my hurried lunch and the lecture I came here for. Lunch was very good so I was unhappy about rushing through it. I barely made it to the 1:30 lecture- I was the last to be admitted to the limited group of 25.

Giacometti, Tall Figure Sculpture III

First, the lunch. Cold soup of tomato and grilled vegetables, I think, and two bruschettas, one with buffalo mozzarella and one with marinated cherry tomatoes. Plus oatmeal cookies which I had to pack away in a napkin for later as it was time for the lecture.

The lecture. Sculpture from Picasso to Today. It was fascinating. I am always amazed at how much one can say about any work of art. How much artistic, cultural, or revolutionary value one can assign to an art object and its creator. I don't think the lecturer appreciated my question after an expansive discussion on the significance of Duchamp's bicycle wheel fastened onto a stool (I forget the title):

Do you think he intended to do all that?

Duchamp's bicycle wheel

At home in Manila, in the lanai. jazzradio.com on cue, ceiling fan softly humming, and beyond the wall, the backstreet is buzzing. Nice.

All too soon, a car horn starts honking to the accompaniment of a chorus of movers shouting. Well, it's not paradise all the time, but I love it here.

My thoughts, however, drift back to Gargnano. my ever and always go-to place. In good times and in bad. In the sun and in the rain.

Two whole weeks now since Stuart and I drove into the small village of Villa, in the town of Gargnano, on the sunset side of Italy's Lake Garda.

As we stop at the curb outside Valerio's Hotel du Lac, his mother, the beautiful Mrs Arosio, who owns and runs nearby Gardenia Hotel with her husband and two other sons, is just leaving. She stops to chat and give us a welcome hug, saying her son will be happy to see us again.

Just like that, we're home.



It's easy to feel at home here. Or even to wish it was home. Winston Chuchill did. D.H. Lawrence actually set up house here- right across the road from us- with runaway inamorata Frieda. And of course, so did Benito Mussolini, whose former villa just down the road, is now a spa hotel, the Villa Feltrinelli.

At Valerio's, on the delicious balcony outside Room #1,  the kiwi canopy shielding us from the late afternoon sun is heavy with fruit. A glass of red wine is set beside my all but forgotten book, iPad, and iPhone all piled up at my side table.


I'm busy listening to the water rushing rhythmically up and down the boat ramp below me. And studying the mountain range across the lake, trying to pinpoint the exact spot where tonight's full moon will make an appearance.

We couldn't have timed our stay better if we tried. The first full moon of August is scheduled to appear at dinnertime tomorrow. Tonight's moon will be less full only by a smidgen. We watch the mountain ridge like expectant children at Christmas Eve, eager to see the very moment of the moonrise.

A telltale glow appears on the mountain top, close to where it dips ever so slightly. And as advertised, the moon slithers up to the waiting blue sky. And to a barrage of camera clicks from every table!



Dinner under the stars and a full moon. What could be more delicious than that? We linger over our bottle of wine as the moon trails a river of silver across the lake.

It's rare for me these days to see the inside of a church except on holiday. But I do like lighting vigil candles in old churches. I light them in memory of Mommy and Daddy and of Stuart's Mum and Dad. This and the smell of incense remain the best parts of my religious experience.

I also like sitting on a church pew and being quiet. Allowing the dim, cool silence to embrace me. That's why I prefer old country churches- of any denomination- to cathedrals.

The cathedral in Milan fails me on several levels. Powerful floodlights have been installed all around, just below the ceiling. The resulting brash light shows off huge paintings mounted on swinging steel brackets. They remind me of fabric and pattern samples in textile and carpet shops.

The lights also illuminate from inside the painted glass windows that are a sad, unsatisfactory substitute for real stained-glass ones. The original windows were damaged in the last war and proper restoration would be prohibitively expensive. They of course would have been naturally illuminated from outside.




The carved cross-vaulted ceiling turned out to be another "just for show" element. It's not carved at all, it's painted to look carved.


When I sat on a pew, I felt more a compulsion to take photos than a desire to let the moment find a hushed place within me. There was of course the constant clatter of tourist footsteps and the not-quite muted voices of tour guides; but none of these bother me. I understand that these are inescapable features in a major tourist attraction that is forced to mutate into a business enterprise to enable it to generously open its doors to curious people like me.



Selling souvenirs too is necessary to generate funds to make the enterprise financially self-sufficient and economically viable. In this particular case, the souvenir booth is an imposing all-glass kiosk inside the church, with a spire that reaches high towards the ceiling. A gesture mimicking that of the very cathedral it's very much a part of.



I believe it takes more than having a couple of menacing guards standing at a church door, waving away inappropriately dressed people to engender dedication and reverence in a consecrated place of worship.

Enough said.

Romeo & Juliette onstage at Arena di Verona

I just overheard somebody say that the Verona Arena is cheesy.

I don't claim to know all that much about this.  But I've been to a few opera houses, seen a number of operas, and been to the Arena often enough. (Notice the judiciously selected words few and a number and often.)

I think the Arena is fantastic. Never mind that most of the people you find there are really not there for the opera. I suspect very few people actually go to the opera just for the opera anyway.

But I wish people didn't  take children there. (They expect children to keep awake, not to mention behave, until the final death scene?) I wish people didn't take pictures all the time. It is so irritating on several levels. The flash, the click, the monitor light, the constantly moving arm. Some people hum the tunes.

And then there's the performance. There are frequent substitutions. There are few big names. They used to say there are no microphones, so the singers have to be of a certain calibre to be invited to perform here. Not anymore. There are microphones now.

So what?  The music is always great, the stage unique, the architecture timeless.

I love the sheer size of it. I love that the stage occupies almost half of the ampitheater, all the way up the steps on both sides of it and all the way up the back. (The theatrical trick of players showing up in the aisles up and down theaters make infinitely more sense here.)

I love that the stars and the moon form part of the backdrop.

I love hearing the drone of airplanes flying above and thinking how wonderful it must be to look down from a plane window at the scene below.

I love the lighting of the candles in the cheap seats.

I love the gong-person calling the time.

I love the fact that performances can be interrupted by rain.  No rain checks, no refunds.

I love the sound the empty plastic bottles make as they roll down the stone steps.

I love the uncomfortable seats. (The red velvet cushions on the front seats are gone, replaced by thin waterproof ones.) They keep me awake throughout the performance.

I love the bar on the side in front selling over-priced prosecco served in cheap souvenir flutes.

It's all part of the charm of the Arena. The being there.

Opera is meant to be bigger than life. In the arena, it is.

Besides, people who really go for the opera are there too. And most importantly, so are some of the best performers in the business.

With Margarita beside the Adige

With Marilou & Eddie at Milan's Torre di Pisa

With Margarita & Maurizio at Verona's Il Bertoldo

trompe l'oeil ceiling at Milan duomo

Yayoi Kusama dots at Louis Vuitton

Caffè Sottoriva in Verona

Outside the refectory containing Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper

Sunset over Asolo countryside

Full moon rising over Villa di Gargnano

Moon-river on Lake Garda