Napoli: 7-10 October 2019

Napoli
5 October 2019

Naples has a particular allure to me. When I was young, let’s say fourteen years old, I met a man, an old Italian man. He was sixty five years old. (On reflection, that no longer seems old to me.) He was a cellist.  Born in Naples in 1907.  I lived only a few streets from his house in Hollywood.  It was in a neighborhood known for its Italianate houses. His house was a gem, a place for a poor kid like me to dream about.  Polished terra cotta floors. Dark stained wooden ceilings with painted borders. Elegant velvet covered sofas. Wall sconces with ecru linen shades. French doors with long draperies. Hand made cabinets.  A piano with ornate legs. It was elegant old world. The man was Cesare Augustus Pascarella. He was the son of a conservatory master teacher who had the patronage of Queen Margherita in Naples. When Cesare’s sister was born the Queen presented her with a pearl necklace.

Cesare was an avid teacher.  He believed that music was creation the opposite of destruction.  That it was a noble calling. It was a fortunate day when I met him; when he accepted me into his youth program. Though he was a cellist and I a violist he gave me private lessons. I played with his amateur chamber music ensembles in his home and in his youth orchestra at a college. I carried the baskets of orchestral music folders.  I set up the orchestra acoustical shell and the chairs and music stands.  I saw him more than once a week for several years. I ate many meals at his dinner table.  Now, we are going to Naples and I can get a glimpse of the world that formed him. Though it is one hundred years later, many aspects of the “old world” remain constant.

Arrival in Naples is not for the faint hearted. The central train station is in a challenging neighborhood.  Its squalor and traffic and chaos and sense of menace are overwhelming. There is a bustling taxi stand at curbside.  The taxis have meters and set prices for particular zones. It means nothing to the drivers. They charge what they want, what they can squeeze out of you.

Our hotel is elegant. It is the stuff of Cesare’s house. As we venture more into the city on foot it becomes clear that Naples is a mash up of high and low, elegant and peasant; by peasant I mean to say “dog eat dog”, survival of the fittest. I came to feel that Naples does not simmer, it boils. The women walk heads high like runway models.  The men are unsmiling, macho and slow to warm.  But after a day we settle in and come to terms with how to navigate the challenges.

Preliminary online sleuthing produced a photo from 1912 of the Liceo Musicale di Napoli where Cesare’s father, Ignazio, taught. Though not its name it was was referred to as the royal conservatory. With the San Carlo Opera across the street it had royal patronage from Queen Margherita.

Our first adventure in the city was a tour of the San Carlo Opera House. The Italians love opera and the San Carlo is a gem. Across the street is a Galleria like the one in Milan. Cross shaped. Glass covered. Marble floored. Elegant.  As we enter it it is clear this is the location of the 1912 photo of the Pascarella Liceo Musicale.  This is where Ignazio taught.  This is where little Cesare ran and played and had gelato as a child.

The Liceo still exists, though no longer in its former prominent second floor location.  Now, it is a small office in the back of the building.  I sent emails and texts, I made phone calls and left messages, I visited and knocked on the locked door all without a response. These pursuits move slowly, but they are off to a good start.

Another Naples connection is my viola. Vittorio Bellarosa made it in Naples in 1957.  His address is handwritten on the label inside the instrument.

We found Bellarosa’s workshop. It is now a gambling shop for lottery tickets and slot machines. He used to live above the store. It is interesting that he remained in Naples during the 1950s. After the war, Naples was challenged. Life was hard. Photos show people’s beds on sidewalks because their apartment buildings had been bombed beyond use. We found a few people who remembered him and one man to me addressed him as Maestro Bellarosa. Another spoke about Bellarosa’s “figlia” (daughter) in New York.

Naples is a pizza mecca. In Naples pizza is not simply crust with sauce and cheese.  It is a palette for an artist. The medium is dough and sauce and cheese, but the end results are like comparing Da Vinci to Picasso. Two examples stood out.  I thought I would hate “fried pizza”, but I loved it. The dough is rolled out about fifteen inches across.  It is dressed with sauce, cheese and filling, but only to the center.  Then folded over like ravioli and dunked into boiling oil. It puffs up and rises; in a few seconds it is done. Before it gets to us it is patted down for excess oil.  The shop is tiny.  The proprietors are part of the Sorbillo family. Two generations ago the Sorbillos had 21 children.  Today, Sorbillos are making pizzas all over Naples.

Another pizza, at da Attilio’s, was free form.  After dressing the center of the pizza the edges of the dough were stretched at six points. The stretched dough at each point was folded over a little pillow of ricotta.