A very baroque'n'rollercoaster week
If I still ran a nerdletter about baroque stuff I’d be reporting events from the past week in there, but since I don't anymore, I'll have to make do with what's available, i.e. this newsletter…
This month I'm renovating my bathroom, so the first half of last week was dedicated to waiting for a basin cabinet to be delivered, as you do. It shouldn't have been an issue, when I ordered it they told me it would've been delivered on Tuesday, 25th June, so I thought that actually meant they would've delivered it on that day… you see, I sometimes forget I was born, and raised, and am currently still living in Rome, Italy — silly me! — and that when someone claims they'll be doing something at a date/time they most probably won’t. My Mum is still waiting for the plumber who two weekends ago told her he would've come to check the boiler “on Monday, signora, after 6 PM”. First things first, il signor A. (the aforementioned plumber) didn't specify which Monday. Secondly, he is an Italian plumber, so it's statutory he won't show up when needed. Ever.
They eventually did deliver the cabinet+basin combo, only they did so 24 hours later than expected, leaving everything on the sidewalk/pavement (sorry, can't remember which one is BEng and which is ’Murkan…) outside the front door of my flat’s building like this:
I was fuming. I had to do some sort of an “unboxing”, influencer-style, right there on the sidewalk/pavement, and then bring everything piece by piece inside, all by myself, in the heat of the early afternoon.
Thankfully my flat is on the ground floor (that’s if you're British; it's on the 1st floor if you're American… God, this is exhausting, Oscar Wilde was right!).
Renovation is supposed to begin after 15th July — I have a contractor and his squad booked for a couple of weeks from then, so hopefully Leroy effin’ Merlin won't mess up the delivery of all the remaining construction supplies I've bought from them… fingers & toes crossed!
Anyway, while I was waiting for the phantom cabinet, I managed to produce a steady sound from a 14 euro instrument of torture plastic fife that’s supposed to help people learn how to form an embouchure for a traverso flute, so my time was not completely wasted just waiting. This is a long story, anyway, I'll save that for another issue of this newsletter…
And then all of a sudden it was Thursday, and it took me two and a half hours (thanks to Max Pezzali’s fans clogging all the roads leading to Stadio Olimpico…) to get from my Mum's to a book presentation + baroque mini gig at Accademia Filarmonica Romana — the book being Vivaldi secondo Vivaldi, by Federico Maria Sardelli…
Maestro Sardelli talked at length about his book, in conversation with Michele Dall’Ongaro (a composer and musicologist himself, who is also Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia’s current president), then took on the recorder and played some rare Vivaldi and some variations on La Follia, together with Simone Vallerotonda on theorbo, and Enrico Dindo on cello.
At the end of the event I took the chance to get a couple of Mº Sardelli’s old books signed, too, since I was too shy to ask him to do so back in December, when I went to Florence to attend his masterclass on Jean-Baptiste Lully:
Was it an enjoyable presentation? Yes, absolutely. But am I happy I went there? No. Not because of the event itself, but because of something that happened after it, which eventually lead to me severing ties with a “friend” I had already given a second chance to (which is something I rarely do — I am a Capricorn, after all, wrong me just once and that’s already one time too many). There won’t be a third chance, it hurts right now but it’s still better than being treated like a fool.
On Friday afternoon I was in a really bad mood. Luckily enough I had something to look forward to: on Saturday morning I hopped on a train and travelled northbound, to Milan, to go to a concert at Teatro alla Scala.
(aside: had completely forgotten Milano Pride would’ve been that very afternoon, so when I arrived there were a kazillion people dancing to Raffaella Carrà right before the station!)
On Saturday evening I went to dinner with my friend Fiorenza, who is a local, so we chatted at length while eating the most delicious Chinese food at Il giardino di giada, a restaurant right next to the royal palace (yes, there's a royal palace in Milan, a neoclassical building that nowadays is a museum).
On Sunday morning I wandered around a little, glad the sky had cleared and that there was no sign of the muggy weather that had welcomed me the previous afternoon. Then I went back to my hotel and sat there writing for a couple of hours, took a nap, then in the late afternoon I headed to California Bakery to have an early dinner with Fiorenza before theatre. From there we then walked towards Teatro alla Scala (that's the best thing about Milan, if you ask me: you can easily walk to places in just a few minutes) and enjoyed one of the best performances of baroque music I've ever attended, ever: Maestro William Christie conducting Les Arts Florissants playing Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen — they're touring with it all over Europe, and this was their only Italian performance!
Fiorenza, who also plays taiko (Japanese percussions), has instantly become a fan of Marie-Ange Petit, the percussionist of the ensemble… in the video below you can see Mme Petit playing drums to Rameau:
And in this other video (on Facebook) at some point you can spot Fiorenza beating the hell out of playing a red taiko!
Of course, as I was in Milan, I went shopping… in fact I bought two books, because my Summer reading list wasn't already long enough:
Il cacciatore di corte, by Serena Luzzi — the story of Ferdinando Carlo Thun di Croviana, a “bigamous, rebel nobleman” from the Sacred Roman Empire under Leopold I of Habsburg;
Amanti e regine, by Benedetta Cravero — an essay about women and power at the French court, from the 16th century to the Revolution…
Oh, and Fiorenza also gave me this wonderful book full of Mateusz Urbanowicz’s illustrations of Japanese traditional shops, which is just delightful… grazie, amicicia!
Guess that's enough books for this month… maybe?
What luck to catch Les Arts Florissants doing The Fairy Queen. I have it on compact disc and treasure it.
Great post - the Benedetta Cravero looks promising, got her book on Mme du Deffand. Hope the contractors turn up...