29 May 2013, Mantova, Italia

29 May 2013

Mantova, Italia

Our trip is now in, somewhat, full swing.

We flew from Los Angeles to Zurich, non-stop, in business class. It was cushy and comfy. We were pampered. Life was good.

From Zurich we flew to Milan's Malpensa Airport and spent the night in the Sheraton Hotel which is on-site and has a view of the tall and snow covered Swiss Alps. It rained over night and we awoke to even snowier Alps.

From Malpensa Airport we boarded a train to Milan. Upon arrival and during our ninety minute lay-over we stepped outside for lunch at a sidewalk cafe in the sunshine under the tall plane trees which were in full bloom with new born spring leaves, baby-soft and brilliant green.

We boarded another train to Mantova (Mantua) and two hours later we arrived to our station and walked a dozen short streets to our inn.

Where we are staying is not a hotel. It is a converted set of apartments down a narrow crooked street. Our unit is on the second floor. It has a bedroom, a sitting room, a small kitchen set-up, and is extremely quiet and extremely comfortable with modern decor and ancient wood beams all painted white. The host, Cristina, is a warm and welcoming presence. Just the thing one wants after a two day journey.

Mantova is almost a small island. It projects into a small lake and is surrounded by water on three sides. The fourth side, the one sort of connected to the mainland, has a river slicing across and under it.

The small, historic and ancient city center--our part--is a cluster of buildings dating from the twelfth to the seventeenth-Century. It is so darn Renaissance, as if it were an effective urban planning project in a sixteenth-Century style. 

Today was a market day. Not much food. Lots of clothing and household stuff. Not much of interest to locals. Yet it was taken as an opportunity for the locals to dress up, stroll and visit. There is a traditional look here. The locals dress in the manner of my old Italian music teachers. Men, portly, in sports coat, tie and vest. Women in below-the-knee wool skirts and nice tops and sweaters buttoned to the neck. The women walked slowly, arm in arm. Grandchildren were doted on. Sweet gossip was exchanged. The pace is slow--andante-- and the people, the old and the young, are expressive and passionate.

We sat in a sidewalk cafe having breakfast and witnessed the goings on.

Breakfast is small. It is not a meal of significance. An expresso. A thumb-sized sandwich. A pinkie-sized sweet. That is all.

Style-wise, architecturally, the town is all of a piece. Nothing modern. At least, nothing that seems of the twentieth-Century, though the plumbing and electrical amenities are quite up-to-date.

All of the streets--narrow and crooked--are cobble stone. Not the neat and tidy flat pavers. The cobble stones are stones. Fist-sized, round and uneven. A challenge for cars, bicycles and for recently broken feet.

The center piece--the highlight--of Mantova is the Palazzo Ducale. We will visit it tomorrow.

Mantova was ruled for four-hundred years by one family: the Gonzagas. Imagine that. The U.S.A. has existed for two-hundred and twenty-five-ish years. We have had forty-some presidents. Mantova had only Gonzagas and the power passed from father to son for four-hundred years.

If one is powerful, I suppose, one needs a large house. The Gonzagas had a palace. It had, about, one hundred and forty rooms, still does.  Of interest to me are two musical issues. The first one involves Claudio Monteverdi who worked here for the Gonzagas in 1600. Monteverdi is considered to have invented the "opera" here in Mantova.

Before Monteverdi, music was considered perfect and beautifully constructed if it was simple and spare: one voice singing a simple melody with an accompaniment that stayed in the background. But Monteverdi was a modern guy. His sensibility was progressive. In his mind, the style was too simple. Why have just one voice? Why not two? Or more? Not just one line. Make it several. Beef up the accompaniment. Add some drama. Make it compelling. Throw in stories to illustrate and examine the great issues of the day, (which were the same then as they are now: power struggles, fidelity, deceit, consequences, etc).   Keep music from being pretty background stuff. Make it relevant and brain-feeding.

Monteverdi worked for the Gonzagas. He wrote Orfeo, the opera, for them. It was performed in the Palazzo. (We saw Orfeo, in a dazzling production in Berlin last October). And he composed and performed music for the Gonzaga court on select Fridays in the Palazzo in it's Hall of Mirrors which, long unknown, was recently discovered during a renovation when a wall was knocked down and the old room was found.

The other musical issue for me is the production of Verdi's Rigoletto which was filmed in the Palazzo three years ago.

It was filmed in real time. That is to say, Zubin Mehta conducted the orchestra in the Bibbiana Teatro two blocks from the Palazzo while, the singers (Placido Domingo) sang their roles in costume as if on-stage, but in this instance their stage was the Palazzo. They sang their roles--with the orchestra playing in their discrete ear-pieces--while moving from room to room, through corridors and down the streets of town. All the while the hand-held cameras followed them.

I saw it on television three years ago. It was exciting and I was attracted to the Palazzo and to the town. And I am thrilled to be here.

Rigoletto tells the story of a court jester, a buffoon with a sharp wit sometimes, too sharp. He has offended. He has few allies. He is the butt of jokes. What makes him serious though is his daughter and he is an over protective father. His daughter meanwhile is seduced and has ran away. Rigoletto, hasn't any sympathizers in the Duke's court. He is outraged over his daughter's antics. He seeks revenge. And his revenge does not go well as it is his daughter who ends up slain. 

Rigoletto is based on the Gonzaga court. But Verdi's original idea came from a Victor Hugo story about intrigue in the French royal court. But the Verdi's publishers thought it was too provocative to make the opera about a recent French ruler so soon after the French Revolution and Napoleon, etc. So Verdi looked for a ruler no longer in power. The Gonzaga's of Mantova were perfect. They were not royal. They had been out of power for over a century. They were not a hot button issue. Mantova was a tiny place without national ramifications.  The Gonzagas were ripe for the picking as they had become extinct as rulers around 1707.

The current town's people all seem to have a story to share about the Rigoletto television production from three years ago. It was made over several months during a the summer. Mantova was hot. There were mosquitos. The town, apparently below sea-level was sweltering and humid. The singers's make-up ran.

Tomorrow we will tour the Gonzaga's Palazzo Ducale's 140 rooms. Maybe we will sense the presences of Monteverdi and Rigoletto.

Marlow (and Wes)
29 May 2013
Mantova, Italy
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