Redentore, the best we could do

When last we spoke, Venice was on the verge of its annual celebration of the feast of the Redentore (held last Sunday).  By now the festa has come and gone, but this year the difference between the two was minimal.  “Reduced form” is the boilerplate description, but if you reduce something past a certain point it just isn’t it anymore.

We did not have fireworks, as all the world knows.  Without fireworks, I discovered, the festa can’t achieve liftoff.  Yes, people did come to Venice — according to La Nuova Venezia, 108 tables had been reserved for the usual dinners outside (68 of them along the fondamenta of the Giudecca), and a total of some 15,000 people came to join the Venetians making some sort of merry.  Fifteen thousand may sound good compared to nothing (let us cast our minds back to the desolation of the total lockdown), but it represented less than a fifth of the number that crammed the city last year.  I used to hate the cramming, but without it the evening felt strangely deflated.  No, actually, it felt partially deflated, which is not much better.

Seeing that we did not go roaming the city in search of entertainment, I only know what I saw in our little lobe of land, or what the newspaper reports.  It says that there were people eating outside around the city, along fondamente big or small, or in their boats tied up in the Grand Canal or some other major waterways.  That sounds nice.

To warm the general atmosphere to an even happier level, four large boats bearing a total of some 30 Venetian musicians moved around the Grand Canal, the Giudecca Canal and the Bacino of San Marco.  Floating music has a long tradition in this festival, although in recent years it has been co-opted by the big party boats blaring music at levels that would pulverize a small planet.  It must have been wonderful to have a bouncier, smaller sort of soundtrack as the evening drew on (for the record, the participants were Batisto Coco, Josmil Neris and Laguna Swing, Pitura Stail and Ska-j).  All these groups are on YouTube, and here is a small clip that shows how little it took — at least, compared to the labor and cost of a 30-minute fireworks display — to get the party going.

It looks really sweet and I send huge compliments to the organizers, etc.  Unhappily for us, none of these boats made it down as far as via Garibaldi — or at least not during the brief period I was roaming the waterfront.  So if this sort of thing is ever organized again (and I hope it will be, though probably everyone will want fireworks again), the landlubbers need to lub somewhere further afield.

So I can only report on Redentore as observed south of the Arsenal and north of Sant’ Elena.  But I will throw in some of the races held on Sunday afternoon, and a glimpse of the Patriarch going to mass, if that will help liven things up.  We’ll hope for better and happier things next year.