Summering in Italy IS worthwhile!

Well, I have been waiting to write something interesting about our time here in Italy. Every day, all there has been to say is that we woke up late, ate lunch after doing some dishes and laundry. Then we went to the beach, then we went for dinner, a bike ride and then bed. Delightful, but not exactly “woo-hoo!”

However, finally we have had an unforgettable sequence of activities that make us feel that our choice to spend summer here has been worthwhile.

Here’s how it started: Pesaro has begun an initiative to keep the stores open after dinner, combined with little public entertainments like craft markets or street performers or concerts. We turned a corner one night early in our vacation, following the sound of music, and found a choir singing.

The smallness of the town came into play as one of the sopranos turned out to be a baby-sitter we shared a summer with a number of years ago. We have run into her here and there over the years, but this was special. Her choir specializes in ancient English music (of all things). They have a full program over the summer, and she particularly recommended one of their upcoming performances. It was an adaptation of Purcell’s mezz-opera The Fairy Queen, which is taken from Shakespeare’s A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream. By coincidence, our younger child performed the play this year to close Grade One, so even the kids knew the story quite well. It wasn’t too long or too late or too expensive. It all added up to be worth considering.

After the usual afternoon at the beach, that particular evening came. I had the wrong town in mind, but we figured out our mistake before we headed out. We drove off with the right town in mind, but in the wrong direction. We corrected that mistake, too, feeling more and more like we were dragging the kids, late, to some obscure and difficult grown-up entertainment.

Instead, it was true dream on a mid-summer night. We arrived in time. The performance was in an outdoor amphitheatre, part of a beautifully restored villa complex in a village in the hills above Pesaro. The moon was shining, the crickets were chirping in the pines, the moths were fluttering and a fountain was flowing. The music was old and exquisite. (I know Purcell’s Dido and Aeneus to be pretty, but still, you never know.) The instruments were so old that at every pause, they were re-tuned. In addition to the choir, there was a soprano with a slightly odd, but compelling, voice and a “sopranista”: a male soprano, singing in same register, but with a completely different tone. That’s something that sounds old-fashioned, I can tell you. There were beautiful Italian ballet dancers, with their long hair and summer tans, dancing as all the fairies in the story. It was an enchanted hour. We all loved it. Just to give it a perfect local feeling, at the table offering local wine and snacks after the show, we ran into a couple we have known (slightly) at the beach for several years.

The next night , after our afternoon at the beach, we went straight to eat at our favorite beach-side restaurant, and then we all biked down to go roller-skating at the beach-side, outdoor roller rink. The kids tried it last year, but it was my first time on old-fashioned roller-skates. Super-fun. The other end of local culture.

Oh. I also should mention that the Aperol Spritz aperitivo habit is still going strong. This year, we have discovered that the bar at the beach stand next to ours makes them, so we can enjoy them under our umbrellas, in our bathing suits, with whichever friends are still around, just before heading home from the beach in the evening.

If you ask me, vacations don't get much better than this.

The Triumph of the Delivery Modes I

This past week has brought into use for my family two new delivery modes for cultural data. In Earth-speak, we enjoyed old-fashioned culture in new-fashioned ways!

One of my questions has been answered:

The kids were seeing the Julius Caesar Shakesapeare-in-manga book lying around on my pile, with the bleeding hero on the cover, and the conspirators with their various reactions standing over him. They were curious. Finally, one night at bedtime, the six-year old said "Please, please can we read Julius Caesar tonight?" I said "Oh honey, it's dark to read this, and it's hard to understand, and it might not be good bed-time reading." The face went under the covers, to hide the disappointment. So...we started reading Julius Caesar in manga. I don't know this play, I have to study a bit now, to help understand the story, but how cool is that as a project?

QED Manga worked, by itself, to draw kids into the story. I'll update on our progress as we go.

PS We laughed hard at Monty Python's Julius Caesar on Aldus Lamps, too.

Manga Shakespeare part II

Wiley's Romeo and Juliet works beautifully. As is their stated mission, having the image, plus the written text to look at slowly enough to decode, makes understanding the whole work way easier than reading a play, and requires less suspension of disbelief than watching modern actors in a movie (or play for that matter). I lay in my hammock completely enthralled until I had to get up and do something for someone. I plan to show my kids' school librarians, and also everyone else I know.

Although this was not the publisher whose books I bought, I followed a link left in a comment to classicalcomics.com. Cool for their current titles, their plans, and lots of ideas about manga classics. (See "links to writers" here on my blog.) I'll being trying their Macbeth as soon as I can get my hands on it.

The marigold wonders nervously:
Will I embarrass myself with a new passion?

Incidentally, brilliant use is made of the graphic format by Marisa Acocella in Cancer Vixen: A True Story. Awesome book. In particular I found that the graphics add emotional weight to the sense of the long-drawn repetition of treatments. Writing alone could not convey the point with interest.

Manga Shakespeare!

This just in: How perfect is Shakespeare for manga? Completely. So much so that there are AT LEAST three different publishers simultaneously coming out with them. In fact, why did it take so long? I think it is the opposite of dumbing down Shakespeare: it is "smarting up" manga. Can manga versions of the big tragic operas be far behind? I have not yet really, REALLY loved any manga or graphic novel, but I really, REALLY want to. I bought Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar (which I have never read, seen or even looked at before), published by Wiley. Will this be my ticket to ride?

The marigold wonders nervously:
Will it be embarrassing in reality? Will my KIDS like it?