Italian immersion

As mentioned, our friend Valerie came to town for a few days from her aerie in the beautiful hill town of Orvieto. We have no comparable scenery, so instead I tried to wow her with immersive Italian experiences. Valerie is also working hard on learning Italian, so one day we had coffee and Italian conversation with my dear friend Franca, who took this photo of us. You can see that Valerie jumped right in when it came to speaking la bella lingua. 

I look like I am trying to remember a word, which is how I often look when listening to Italian. 

We also played chamber music with cellist Luisa, who taught us several musical terms we ought to know. (Music Italian--the way they say things like "Let's try it again from the repeat" or "Who else has an upbeat?"--is dismayingly different from music English.) For additional immersion, we had an entertaining coffee date with my upstairs neighbor, Pia, discussing politics here and in the U.S., and saw the movie Parasite, which was, like all movies in Italy, dubbed into Italian. We were both pleasantly surprised by how much we understood of the movie, and by how good it was, since we'd ignorantly assumed it was some sort of monster flick. Which I guess it is, but not in the way we expected.

Although she's done a lot of Italian travel, Valerie had never been to Parma, so a trip there was our big outing. It's only a 12-minute train ride from Fidenza.

Our first stop was a traditional restaurant, Trattoria Corrieri, where we had torta fritta (fried bread), giardiniera (lightly pickled vegetables), two big platters of prosciutto, salame, deep-fried pork skin, pancetta (raw bacon), and other pork delicacies, and then--although none of us had room left--a tris of tortelli: potato (the green), cheese and chard (the white), and pumpkin (the red). By the end of the meal we were ready to sing the chorus of the Italian national anthem: "Siam' pronti alla morte!"

I was particularly keen to visit Parma's Galleria Nazionale, which I'd never seen. It's inside the gigantic Palazzo della Pilotta, which isn't actually a palace but a complex of very big, not very attractive buildings originally intended to house armories, stables, barracks, and other accoutrements of the ruling Farnese family's power.

In 1615 Ranuccio Farnese ordered the construction of a spectacular theater inside what had been an armory, in order to celebrate an upcoming visit by Cosimo de' Medici and a planned marriage uniting his son with a daughter of the Medici family. Both Ranuccio and Cosimo died before the marriage and the theater's inauguration both finally took place in 1628.

Built of wood so that it could be constructed quickly, the theater was originally decorated in lavish splendor with paint, plaster, and gilt. During World War II the theater was bombed and went up in flames, but it was immediately rebuilt and is now part of the museum. 

Today it's plain wood, undecorated, which makes it even more beautiful, at least to modern eyes. I'm sorry my little phone camera can't do it more justice. It was literally breathtaking to walk into that vast, gorgeous space. Especially since no one else was there.

I took a photo of this portrait thinking it depicted Ranuccio I, who built the theater. It's actually his grandson, Ranuccio II, the offspring of the above-mentioned Medici-Farnese marriage. Wouldn't you think that someone so rich and powerful could commission a more flattering likeness? And what's with that awful dress? The dog is cute, though, and maybe shows that Ranuccio II was not as evil as he appears.

Ranuccio II, Duke of Parma, by Franz Denys, 1662

We left much of the museum unexplored--there's an archeological section, a museum devoted to typesetting, and rooms full of paintings we didn't get to--but I snapped photos of a couple of canvases by Lionello Spada that spoke to me. 

One is his 1612 Capture of Christ.  The faces of the young men taunting and torturing Jesus are delightful, so full of stupid malice.

The other, from around 1610, is titled The Executioner Gives Salome the Head of the Baptist and was part of a whole room of paintings of people being beheaded, an interesting curatorial approach. 

I love the way the executioner, the servant, and John the Baptist's head all cast such sadly disapproving looks at Salome, who is too lost in lust to notice.  

Of course we also visited Parma's famous baptistery, the number-one sight in the city and, according to Wikipedia, one of the most important medieval monuments in all of Europe. The weather report said for once we'd have a day with no rain, but it started to sprinkle when we got there. Parma still looked great, though. This is the street leading off the piazza in front of the baptistery.

Here's a photo of the baptistery that I swiped from Wikipedia. It's a strange building, eight-sided and very tall, unlike anything else in the city, or anywhere else, for that matter. How did someone in the 12th century come up with the idea of a skyscraper for baptisms? 

The fellow who designed it was Benedetto Antelami, who also did many of the sculptures outside and inside the baptistry. He's the same Antelami whose work is all over Fidenza's own cathedral.                                                                          

Here is one of the baptistery's three doors. The receding arches are like an overture, signaling that there's something spectacular inside.

The baptistery ceiling, so far away.

The interior is one vast room covered in frescoes depicting the lives of saints, religious proverbs, apostles and church fathers, and various animals, stretching all the way up to the top of the domed ceiling. You could spend all day looking at all of it, if your eyes and your neck could stand it. Like the Farnese Theater, its scale and its beauty are awe-inspiring, even if you've seen it before.

Here's the baptismal font in the center of the room. Note the frescoes in the background. (Also the tourist.) Perhaps because of the weather, there was no one else visiting for most of the time we were there. 

Next door is Parma's Duomo, a typically huge cathedral full of frescoes and side chapels, with a famous Assumption of the Virgin by Coreggio filling the main dome. It shows Mary from below as she wafts into heaven, so you see mostly just her feet. After the medieval sincerity of the baptistery the cathedral, with all its gilt and Michelangelo-esque muscles, frankly seems a little crass.

There weren't many people in the cathedral, either, so we mostly had it to ourselves as we walked around. Suddenly I heard a woman's voice raised in loud lamentation. In between sobs, she cried out, "Per favore, per favore, ti prego. Ti prego!" ("Please, please, I beg you!" or, literally, "I pray to you").

I walked toward the side chapel whence the voice came, hoping to perhaps witness some genuine religious fervor amid the cathedral's ponderous and not very convincing performance of same. A man who seemed to be the sexton was moving in the same direction, and with much more purpose.

He strode up behind the woman, who was facing the chapel altar, and tapped her on the shoulder. "Keep it down," he told her in Italian. 

I was shocked until she turned toward him and I realized that she had been talking on her cell phone.  

She lowered her voice for a few minutes but soon she was yelling and crying just as loudly. I had no compunctions about taking a photo. But despite all that Italian immersion I couldn't understand much of what she was saying, beyond that she seemed to be having a fight with her mother.