Events | Venice: I am not making this up

Regata Storica: The end of an era

September 8, 2009 4 Comments

On the first Sunday of September, one of the biggest events in the Venetian entertainment calendar (and absolutely the biggest one in the Venetian rowing calendar) takes place: A series of races in the Grand Canal known collectively as the Regata Storica, or Historic Regata.

The big ceremonial boats make the Grand Canal look even more splendid than usual, but they're just the parsley on the plate for everybody who's interested in the main dish. Bring on the gondolini!

It’s hard to explain why this might be important to anyone without providing a great deal of background, stretching back one, two, five, 20, and eventually 700 years. I would love to provide all that, and at some point I probably will, but for now I merely want to say that if you happened to hear an unexpected explosion yesterday, wherever you are (I’m imagining something similar to the sound of Mount Pelee’ erupting), that would have been the hopes, ambitions, sacrifices, passions, and dreams of two mighty men being blasted to eternity, despite the fact that it wasn’t fire, but water, that was the obliterating agent.

The immediate aftermath — continuing in the aural mode — was the sad, persistent wheeze of the air seeping out of the hopes, ambitions, etc. of two other men who were the immediate beneficiaries of the disaster, but who were men who also had spent a year preparing for a battle to the death and who realized as soon as they saw their adversaries swimming that none of the four them was ever going to be able to say which of the two pairs of competitors really was the best of them all.

This sad wheezing sound was amplified by the disappointment of all the spectators who had been thoroughly worked up about the event because they (including me) had spent years watching these two pairs of men turn each race into something gladiatorial. Over the years there has been rage. There has been bitterness. There has been euphoria. And now there has been a win with no victory, a loss with no excuse. “No contest” may sound great in a court of law, but it’s a calamity for athletes and spectators alike.

Venetians have been racing boats forever. At first there were hundreds of men aboard galleys racing across the lagoon, a practice organized and encouraged by the Venetian government in order to ensure that there would be enough seriously trained rowers ready at all times for whatever naval battles might be coming up. This would be roughly from the year 900 to 1300 AD.

Smaller races began to proliferate as the fruit (wealth and power) of the said naval battles began to give Venice many reasons and occasions to show its most important visitors how very rich and strong it was. The most spectacular of these races were performed on one of the world’s most spectacular stages, what Venetians call “Canalazzo,” or the Grand Canal.

I will tell you more some other time about the history of racing, boats and champions, the way the races have changed in the past generation or two, and much more which I find irresistibly fascinating. But for now, let’s get to the men in the water.

Martino Vianello and Andrea Bertoldini, training on their gondolino three months before the big race. Clearly a boat that doesn't play games. — Martino Vianello and Andrea Bertoldini training on their gondolino three months before the big race. Clearly a boat that doesn't play games.

The most important race of all races is the last one of the day, which pits pairs of men on the racing gondola, or gondolino, against each other. This is the only race in which this boat is used, and it is only raced by men. Generations of boys have slaved at working their way up through the racing ranks to reach the pinnacle which is this event, something so important that even to have failed in the eliminations is a strange source of pride.

Why is it so important? Yes, there is a money prize, but each official race awards money to the competitors. Yes, there is a pennant — red, white, green, and blue — to the respective racers finishing first, second, third, and fourth. (The following five boats get the swag but nothing more.) As with many competitions, the ones who win also get all the adulation, envy, and awe that they could ever want, spiked with the dangerous drug which is the insatiable desire/need to win again. And again. And again.

The most powerful lure of the Regata Storica is that whoever wins this race five times in a row is glorified with the Venetian equivalent of the laurel wreath, the bull’s ears, the green jacket, and the America’s Cup, which is the title “Re del remo,” or king of the oar. It sounds fruity in English, but it is so fiendishly hard to win five times in a row that I have to say that anybody who can do it deserves whatever he wants. The last pair to accomplish this feat was Palmiro Fongher and Gianfranco Vianello in 1981. And yesterday was Year 5, the day of glory, for Team A.

Tezzat and D'Este nearing the finish line in 2008, winning again.

Team A: Ivo Redolfi Tezzat and Giampaolo D’Este, who is commonly referred to as “Super D’Este” or “the Giant” because of his physical size and athletic prowess. They have won this race each year since 2005.

Team B: Rudi and Igor Vignotto, cousins who are known as the “Vignottini,” or “little Vignottos,” as they hail from the island of Sant’ Erasmo where theirs is one of the most common last names and this nickname helps distinguish them from the rest of their assorted rowing relatives stretching over generations.

The Vignottini had been within reach of this prize once (having won each year from 1995 to 1998, only to be defeated in the crucial fifth year by the same D’Este with a different partner). They started the count again in 2000 and got as far as 2003, when D’Este again stuck his oar in their spokes, so to speak. It just went on like this between them, back and forth, till nobody could stand it anymore, especially them, I’m guessing.

But D’Este and Tezzat were on a roll, having won each year from 2005-2008, and yesterday the moment of glory for which they had been striving seemed finally to be within their grasp. And everyone knew that not only did the Vignottini want to win, they wanted it with a fanatic determination I can hardly imagine in order also to savor the revenge of having ripped from their rival’s hands the very honor which those rivals had ripped from theirs.

It was going to be big.

A view of Venice in 1824. The gondolini start just before that little peninsula dropping down on the right, then race all the way across the Bacino of San Marco, up the entire Grand Canal to the train station just before that other little peninsula of land dropping down to the left, then back down the Grand Canal to the curve on the left, the "volta de canal."

We were all sitting in the gondolone, tied to a piling in the Grand Canal along with a slew of other boats, waiting for this. The race began at 6:00 PM, and usually takes about 35 minutes to run its entire breakneck course from the Giardini across the Bacino of San Marco, up the Grand Canal to the railway station, around a temporary piling and back down the Canal to the “volta de canal,” the traditional finish line in the curve of the canal at Ca’ Foscari.

Being as we were parked near the finish line we didn’t see the disaster, which occurred far away toward the entrance to the Canal, but we heard the incredulous voice of the announcer suddenly saying, “The blue boat has capsized!”

Here is the only bit of video which I’ve been able to find of this epochal instant (evidently everybody was looking somewhere else at the moment). You see, from left to right, the brown boat (Vignottini), blue (D’Este-Tezzat) and green. Look carefully at the right edge of the screen and at second 18 you can see the splash (helpfully highlighted by the sun) of Tezzat’s plunge from the stern; you see D’Este struggle to keep the boat stable, then at second 48 he falls and the blue hull capsizes.

watch?v=P62kXdfaiD8

Impossible to conceive that something like this could happen to these two paladins (water? isn’t that what they walk on?), instantly followed by the inconceivable idea that they were actually out of the race. Not because they’d been disqualified, but merely because by the time they’d have gotten the boat floating and raceable again, it would have been time to go home anyway.

Rumors immediately began to buzz. Clearly the Vignottini weren’t guilty of anything tricky, because they had almost immediately taken the lead and were several boat-lengths ahead when this happened. But had it been the green boat, which had been coming up on the left? Was it deliberate? Was it an accident? If it was an accident, how the hell could such a thing happen?

As questions crashed around in everybody’s overheated brains, the Vignottini rowed the entire course pretty much on cruise control, far enough ahead of the rest of the herd that there wasn’t much need to think about much else than where they were going to have the party. Because by then they knew that the entire island of Sant’ Erasmo was going to be dancing in the streets (I think there are two), not only because of their obvious victory but because the victors of the women’s race and the boys’ race were also from Sant’ Erasmo. In fact a friend of mine told me that as soon as it was dark, fireworks began to flare over the island.

We spectators, though, were sitting there feeling like somebody had just shut off the lights and left the building. An emotion which I have no doubt the Vignottini were also feeling, at least a little. And D’Este and Tezzat as well, as they were pulled into motorboats and taken away, shortly thereafter to be photographed in dry clothes but wet with tears.

Here is what happened, according to some authoritative sources (not the victims, of course, who immediately began to cry “foul” even though there was no sign of any such thing).

First, the starting line-up. D’Este and Tezzat knew they were going to have a bear of a race on their hands because of their position at the start. The Vignottini had a great position, D’Este not so much. When you’re racing in the lagoon, you’re dealing with factors even more challenging than your boat and your adversary, you’re dealing with the tide. Unlike swimming pools or crew basins, the lagoon is always moving, and not uniformly, either.

The positions are drawn by lot precisely because of this reality, to avoid any possibility of favoritism. Seeing that the tide was going out at 6:00 PM yesterday (and very powerfully, because the moon was just past full), everyone was starting out against the tide, but those closer to the shore were more handicapped by the outflow than those at the end of the lineup, out in the middle of the Bacino of San Marco. This is because the water moving out from the Grand Canal and the Giudecca Canal hits against the shoreline at the Giardini (because the shore is curved) and then does a sort of turn back upstream, thereby creating some forward-moving current for the people who are further out. Like the Vignottini.

img_9726-grand-canal-1-comp — The entrance to the Grand Canal, seen from the Bacino of San Marco. Not a lot of space for nine boats, all of which want to enter first.

I know this from personal experience, as I participated in a race years back in the Canale delle Navi which has a pretty strong flow with the incoming tide. Except that I was second from the shore, so I was facing the same turnaround phenomenon mentioned above. Thus the rowers out in the middle of the canal were flying away, and I, as the saying here goes, am still rowing. As Lino says, the “number in the water” can really punish you.

To prevent total anarchy, each boat is required to stay in its lane for 164 feet (50 meters), at which point the leaders and followers are supposed to be sufficiently far apart to allow for maneuvering without dangerous craziness. The dynamic is very much like a horse race, supposing that the horses had to stay in their lanes for the first ten seconds.

Second: Tension and human error. Tezzat (rowing astern and also steering the course) was obviously feeling the pressure. I can say that because who wouldn’t? The Vignottini were ahead but Tezzat hoped to overtake them, except that he couldn’t do it on their right because the entrance to the Grand Canal is relatively narrow and he would have found himself bottled against the pilings on the right and then running straight into a vaporetto dock. So he and D’Este slowed down for an instant to drop behind the squeezing boat and pass it on its left.

So far, so fine. But as soon as Tezzat did that, he discovered the next boat over on his left, the green gondolino, was moving rightward and on a potential collision course with him. So he instantly made a counter-stroke to turn his boat slightly to the right, out of the path of danger. He was already rowing pretty hard, because he was working against the tide, as I mentioned.

It was a matter of nano-seconds. The force of his counter-stroke was just a little too hard and his oar popped out of the water, throwing him off balance — just enough so that on a moving boat he couldn’t get it back. He fell overboard but the boat, obviously, kept going. This sudden unbalanced trajectory meant that D’Este, in the bow, lost his balance, because he wasn’t prepared for his boat to suddenly shift under him. He tried instinctively to correct the forces of gravity, inertia, momentum, whatever all that stuff is, but the boat had already taken on some water from its first swerve over onto its side and over he went, taking the boat over with him.

The word “over” is probably one which will never be uttered in the D’Este and Tezzat households again, for any reason. Because at that point everything was over. The Vignottini had debuted in “Canalazzo” in 1991, after years of rowing at the more junior levels. D’Este’s debut in “Canalazzo” was in 1992; Tezzat’s in 1994. They had all been facing off five times a season, on different boats, in different parts of the lagoon, for nearly 20 years. That’s roughly a hundred races, if I’m not wrong. And now that the five-year count has begun again for D’Este and Tezzat, it’s physically unlikely that they will be at peak form, as they were yesterday, the next time they could hope to have another chance at the title.

It’s over for the Vignottini, too, but in a happy way, even though this isn’t the happiness they’d dreamed of. They finally did it, but their joy is deeply dented by the fact that they won’t ever be able to vaunt the deepest meaning of “re del remo” because they didn’t truly defeat their adversaries.

So they are all unhappy, to one degree or another, including the men on the green boat (remember the green boat?) who did nothing wrong but who appeared to be the proximate cause of all this. Andrea Bertoldini, the stern rower of the pair, was near tears at the finish line. “Everyone is always going to think we’re to blame,” he said, th0ugh I suppose when people start to calm down they’ll see that he’s right.

So I was mulling all this over today, and feeling very bad as well for the wives of these guys, women who’ve also sacrificed years of family time for their husbands’ endless training sessions, not to mention sharing the tension and so on of every race. Frankly, I think being the wife of one of the two drowned rats must be as bad as being the rats, because there’s little that’s worse than seeing somebody you love in real pain and not being able to do anything to fix it.

On the other hand, these guys are as tough as Grape Nuts, and have competed in plenty of races over the years in which they’ve been penalized, demerited, suspended, etc. for all sorts of infractions and trickiness. Curses and insults fly. At least one — no names — has a bad reputation for spitting at his adversaries when they get too close. Or at least he used to. This is a game in which haloes don’t help you at all. In fact, they’re a serious handicap.

Third point: They tempted fate. Sorry, but you just can’t do this. Lino says, “Never underestimate your adversary,” and of course that’s true, but it only helps you if you haven’t reached the point where your mania to win overrides every other thought and instinct.

What I found out today was that the D’Este-Tezzat axis had long since booked the restaurant for the victory celebration party. They had it all planned out. And I’m thinking, That’s just crazy. Even I would know not to do that. The Venetians have a saying for it: “Don’t calculate the bill without consulting the barkeep.”

This extraordinary feat of confidence — and I admire confidence even when it’s not justified — is from a category of people (Venetian racers, male) who are known to be so superstitious that some of them won’t remove — or wash — certain articles of clothing which they are convinced bring them good luck. Why would they have thought they could flimflam the fates?

Luck — whatever that may be — is not a toy. Small children aren’t supposed to play with plastic bags, and grown men shouldn’t play with what they think the future is going to be. I thought we knew that. Now we know it again.

img_2846-grand-canal-4 — A palace balcony makes an excellent vantage point, especially if it's overlooking the finish line.

Boatworld, Events, History, Tourism

See you in September

August 31, 2009 1 Comment

There are two months here — well, two and a half, if you count the 12 days of Carnival — which are the most intense (polite way of saying “difficult”). They are May and September.

A brigade of lions could help with crowd control. This one doesn't look like leadership material, though. Worry has already taken a toll.

As we’re on the verge of September now, I can say I already feel its ponderous impetus, in the same way a river lifts at the unseen approach of a heavily laden barge.

On September 2 the Venice Film Festival begins (runs till September 12). This world-class event overwhelms the Lido, where our boat club is, which means that going to row and getting home again is going to be hard. The Lido is 6 miles [11 km] long and something like 1/3 of a mile [500 meters] wide, which comes to about two square miles [5.5 square km]. That’s not a lot of space for thousands of visitors all at once. True, most of those thousands spend most of their days (and nights) indoors, at hotels or bars or most of all, screening rooms. But they do come out occasionally, especially to go have a look at Venice, and I leave the rest to your imagination. The vaporetto stop at the Lido is like the fall of Saigon.

Then there is the Campiello Prize, an important national literary event whose peak moments will occur on September 5 and 6. So we add all the literati to the streets and vaporettos.

Fangs and claws. Now we're getting somewhere.

Then we throw in the Regata Storica, or Historic Regatta, which is always the first Sunday of September and this year will be on September 6. This draws mostly day-trippers, or people who are already in town for some other reason. I don’t believe many non-Venetians do more than come in for the day, and many more now stay home and watch it on television. But it does majorly disrupt some of the vaporetto service, seeing as the Grand Canal is blocked for about six hours for the races. Trying to decipher the official timetable for the day is like solving one of those innocent-seeming problems in logic which eventually unhinge you, problems which posit A, B, C and if not A but only B, or if A and C but not B, and so on. It doesn’t bother me because I’ll be out in a boat most of the day and into the night, but yes, there is disruption.

Or cannon. A bronze lion with a cannon might be all that's needed to keep the vaporettos in order. And quiet, too.

Then — because the foregoing wasn’t enough — an international show-jumping event, the Venice All Stars, is planned at the stable next door to our rowing club. This will be September 16-19. Workers have been slaving away at primping up the general area, since it is usually in a state of resigned degradation. The major arteries of the Lido (both of them) will be sclerotic, I imagine, with vans and horse trailers and cars. Equine events seem to involve more wheels than hooves, when you think about it.

But all these mammals, however many legs they may have, will require fodder. So to the restaurants (and also hotels), I wish a hearty mazel tov, this is your big (only; last) chance to recoup whatever losses the skimpy tourist year has inflicted on you. And I have no doubt that recoup you will. Then we’ll spend the next three days reading articles in the paper about how expensive Venice is and how people have been carried out on stretchers after getting the bill for a pizza and a beer.

This dude has got the right idea. He's not taking anything seriously. He ought to get to know the bronze lion, who is probably more stressed out than a carnivore with a cannon ought to be. — This dude has got the right idea. If he's serious about anything, he's seriously mellow. He ought to get to know the bronze lion, who is more stressed than a carnivore with a cannon ought to be.

I did in fact just make that last part up. What does happen, however, is that they get the bill and then go to some office and make a formal protest. Complaint. Denunciation. Assorted Venetians read these accounts and go, “Bummer, man.” Or the Venetian equivalent, which doesn’t immediately come to mind.

And on we go.

Events, History

Saga of the seven martyrs

August 3, 2009 1 Comment

Like the rest of the city, the long promenade along the lagoon from the Arsenal to the Giardini (public gardens) has experienced assorted mutations over the centuries.

This stretch of waterfront, some 100 years ago or more, was a tiny industrial landscape lined with boatyards sloping down muddy inclines into the water. Did I say “boats”? I also meant “ships.” This was a serious place where serious, unglamorous, important work got done.

But by the Thirties the boatyards were mostly moribund, and in 1937 they were demolished to make way for this corniche which was dubbed the “Riva dell’ Impero,” or “riva of the empire.” That would have been the one Mussolini intended to refound along the lines of the earlier Roman version.

But after the episode of August 3, 1944, the name was changed to the Riva dei Sette Martiri (the riva of the seven martyrs).

This is the beginning of the Riva dell'Impero, approximately at the point where the executions took place, and the small crowd is ready for the speeches.

It happened like this: The final phases of World War II in Venice were very tense, marked by an increasing number of events involving partisan resistance and reprisals. In this case, we skip almost immediately to the reprisal stage.

The Cronaca di Venezia recounted the story on July 1, 1945, on the eve of the first anniversary of the event in question. As with any story involving the word “martyr,” it’s not one that will make you smile.

Here is a transcript of the story, published in the Gazzettino a few years ago, translated by me:

“At dawn on 3 August 1944, a group of houses which extend from the beginning of the then-Riva dell’Impero to the limits of the Giardini was assaulted by the German soldiers. All of the inhabitants had to leap out of bed and let themselves be searched, mutely witnessing, astonished, the fanatical search for arms. Everything was thrown in the air, trampled, and often, in their rage, destroyed.

“Amazed, everyone asked themselves what could have happened, the reason for such a furor. They came to know later that that night [i.e., the night of August 1], the crew of a German torpedo ship moored at the Riva had abandoned themselves to an orgy and that the German sentinel had been offered, many times, wines and liquors. People overheard ‘evviva’ and other toasts exchanged between the crew and the sentinel.

“A few days later, it became known that the sentinel, drunk, had fallen in the water, and had been pulled out, and that no traces of any firearm or any other sign that could prove the cause of his death could be found on his body.

“But it was too late. The firing squad and the revenge had already taken place.

“That morning, 500 men of the neighborhood, after having been compelled to stand immobile for more than two hours on the riva with their faces against the walls of the houses along the left side of the via Garibaldi, were taken to the riva and made to watch the execution of seven hostages who had been taken from the prison of Santa Maria Maggiore.

“A little before the massacre, the Germans had erected two poles on the riva, between which a rope had been strung.

“The scaffold is ready. A motor launch from the prison arrives with the seven victims: Bruno Degasperi, 20; the brothers Alfredo and Luciano Gelmi, respectively 20 and 28, all from Trento; Girolamo Guasto, 20, from Agrigento; Aliprando Armellin, 23, from Vercelli but residing in Mestre; Alfredo Viviani, 36, born and living in Venice; Gino Conti, 46, from Cavarzere.

“The prison chaplain, mons. D’Andrea, hears their confessions and administers Communion. The butcher [executioner] offers them all a cigarette, which they accept. The few minutes which pass between lighting them and their disappearance seems eternal. How many people lining the riva or immobile at the windows are observing with terror the tragic scene.

“Now the seven unhappy ones are tied, with arms extended as if on a cross, to the rope stretched between the two poles. Their backs are toward the Lagoon. The sentence of death is read.

“A German official turns toward the 500 selected citizens and reads, in Italian: ‘During the night between August 1 and 2, by the hand of someone unknown, a sentinel of the German navy was assassinated during the fulfillment of his duty. The German Command has determined to apply the reprisal of war, for which in your presence these seven persons will be shot, guilty of terroristic acts; after which we will take from among you 150 hostages whose fate will depend on the outcome of the current inquest.’

“The chaplain extends the crucifix to each of the seven victims to kiss and the 24 rifles are aimed at their chests. Behind the firing squad the chaplain holds up the crucifix, on which the eyes of those who are about to die are fixed — and who give their last desperate cry, ‘Avenge us!’ A German officer raises his hand and then lets it fall, shouting ‘Fire!’

A rendering of the event is displayed to refresh the memory.

“The thunderous volley strikes even the rope itself, which breaks, leaving the poor bodies to fall heavily to the ground. A shot from the pistol to each temple, a few other shots to those who are in agony.

“The sacrifice is complete. In the light of the rising sun not even the echo of their last desperate appeal remains. The pavement of the riva is strewn with large bloodstains. All eyes are fixed on those vermilion stains, and from every heart arises a vow of revenge.

“The bodies of the Martyrs are placed on a boat and taken to the cemetery.

“To remove the clots of blood, teeth, and brain matter from the pavement, the Germans give brooms and buckets of water to the innocent children of the neighborhood.

“Then the selection is made from the 500 men and about 150 hostages are taken to the prison to await the results of the inquest.”

img_0786-martiri-10-comp1 — "The sacrilegious Fascist factionism wished, The barbaric Teutonic hand struck" (then the names); "May the light of your martyrdom illumine the way of the people reborn to liberty" (and the date). Evidently the candles were an afterthought, seeing as they effectively conceal the date being commemorated.

Later, they put up a very nice stone tablet, with seven symbolic electric candles, one for each sacrificial lamb, which are never illuminated. It’s true that they were unjustly condemned, but one also remembers that if they were in prison it’s possible that they were not, as they say here, the “shinbone of a saint.” Perhaps they were guilty of political crimes, or of homicide, or of resistance (which would cover both of the preceding misdemeanors).

But they definitely were not involved in the murder of any drunken German sentinel, and forming a cleanup squad of children has to be just about the worst thing in this entire appalling story. But then again, it wouldn’t be war without stupidity and death. It would just be another day in the most beautiful city in the world.

Now it’s today. Every year, on the anniversary of this event, the local Communist Party club organizes a commemorative ceremony. At six o’clock this evening they formed up their procession, and walked first to the monument outside the Giardini to the monument to the partisans to render homage.

Then they walked up the Riva dei Sette Martiri to the plaque and placed the large laurel wreath, and two large arrangements of scarlet roses, beneath it. There were banners, there were speeches.

A small mismatched group of onlookers/participants/curious bystanders watched and listened, and was photographed by various people, including me. (I apologize for the quality, I snapped these with my cell phone.)

Before the rituals begin, there's the hard work of setting up the accoutrements.

I turned around to look at the audience and there was a mountain of ship steaming ponderously past: the aptly named Costa Fortuna. I mean “aptly” considering the caliber of fortune which the seven martyrs (and the German sentinel, and the children) had been allotted. It looked as if the total passenger payload (2,716) was lined up on the brim of the topmost deck watching the panorama of Venice slip past as they headed out to sea. I suppose that we and our little banners looked as tiny to them as they did to me. I wonder if anybody but me happened to notice the empty silent space separating their moment here and that of the men whose last was spent at almost the same spot.

When thoughts like that begin to merge in my brain, it’s time to leave. So I headed down via Garibaldi toward home, just as the first gust of cold air hit my back. The wind had been rising all afternoon, but when I felt the temperature plunge suddenly I knew it was time to get going.

Ten minutes later I was inside, and it was raining hard outside. And that was undoubtedly the end of the Martyrs’ Moment until next year. I’m sorry it didn’t end better. But then again, it was also raining on the Costa cruise which at that point wasn’t even out of sight of land.

Speaking of martyrs and resistance and all, we were walking across the central piazza in Mestre this morning, the Piazza Erminio Ferretto. I casually asked Lino who Ferretto was, and he said, “He was a partisan in the Second World War. He was my sister-in-law’s brother.”

Excuse me? Yes, his oldest brother had married a girl from Gazzera, a town outside Mestre, by the name of Elvira Ferretto. Her brother was a full-bore freedom fighter who had spent part of the Thirties also fighting against Franco in Spain. He and his companions got caught by a Fascist patrol one night — they were hiding in a manger and got jabbed by the pitchforks the soldiers punched into the hay, testing to see if there was anybody under there.

I wonder if it’s good to dwell on these things or not. I’m thinking maybe not.

Boatworld, Events, Food, History

Redentor — how it went

July 23, 2009 1 Comment

The festival day actually started the evening before, with a huge storm. (Everyone agreed, obviously, that it was better to have had it Friday night than Saturday night.) It was inevitable; we’d spent the whole week under a hot, wet woollen blanket of weather, one of those classic mid-summer heat waves that makes you hold very still and concentrate on breathing.

At around 7 — actually, earlier — a large swath of gray-black clouds began to draw itself across the sky and the breeze picked up, but we knew the storm would (couldn’t, in fact) hit until the tide turned. So we were inside, around 8:00, when the first raindrops began. Big, heavy, aggressive raindrops, smashing into the pavement one by one. Then the rain really hit. And then it turned to hail. I love the hail, it hits the canal so hard the water looks like it’s boiling. The bits of ice blew and cracked and bounced against the Venetian blinds. And the air turned cool and we could breathe again.

Lino said, “Anybody who’s out on the water in a boat right now is a coglion (male anatomical part which is commonly referred to when needing to describe a person who is a dangerous mixture of stupidity and incompetence at a level which can create inconvenience or even danger to those around him.) This storm had been threatening since 4:00 and Lino has very little patience with people who can’t take care of themselves on the water due to ignorance of what, to him, are the most elementary elements of survival. Kind of like somebody who might sit down to read “War and Peace” who wasn’t too steady with the alphabet.

Saturday morning, the Big Day, 8:30 AM: I went to the cut-rate supermarket behind our place to get some last-minute supplies. I wasn’t the only person who had thought of getting a head start on the day; there were at least five people in line ahead of me.

As it happened, the late- middle-aged man in front and the attractive middle-aged woman behind me knew each other, so they were schmoozing over and around me, in a friendly sort of way.

Man: “Remember when we used to decorate the boat with the frasche (small leafy tree branches), and the paper lanterns with candles in the them. That was really beautiful.” (The yet older man ahead of him chimed in, “Really beautiful.”)

Man: “One year when we were boys we went and rented a boat to go out to watch the fireworks.” That was still the era when the late, lamented affittabattelli were in business. “There were about five or six of us. And we had bought fireworks, too, which we stashed under the prow of the boat.”

Tied up next to us were several sampierotas, so named because they originated in San Pietro in Volta.

The boat was something like a sampierota, whose prow is covered; it makes a very useful storage place, which is precisely why it’s made that way. I guess you have to be a 12- or 13-year-old boy to understand the point of bringing fireworks to a fireworks display.

“Then we saw a man on the fondamenta in a tuxedo. He asked, ‘Hey, I’m late to get to the galleggiante — can you ferry me over?” “We said, Sure. So he got on and sat down on the prow.”

(“The galleggiante” literally means “floating thing,” and specifically referred to a large heavy platform which years ago on the night of the Redentor moved slowly around the Bacino of San Marco, festooned with lights, carrying a band playing music. They have attempted a version of it the past two years, but I think it may have lost its true beauty when everybody became capable of bringing their own music aboard their boats. Or maybe it cost too much. Remember: No ghe xe schei.)

The story continues: So the boys were rowing across from here to there and somehow all the fireworks under the prow ignited. Which means “exploded.” I never heard what set them off, but once they start, that’s it.

“The man in the tuxedo had to jump in the water and swim,” our guy continued. “In fact, we all did. It was like a powder magazine going up. The boat pretty much caught on fire and just kept burning.

“It took us two years to pay off that boat,” he concluded. “We’d go by and pay the boat-renter 5 franchi, 10 franchi, whatever we had.”

What did your parents say? I had to ask.

“Oh we never told our parents,” he answered.

This was a fantastic start to my day.

The rest of the festa went pretty much as anticipated:

Our own little ship of fools, ready to party down.

Beauty. Merriment. Friends — some 14 of them, assorted. Food: the strictly traditional bigoli in salsa (whole-wheat spaghetti with anchovy sauce), sarde in saor (fried sardines in sweet-sour onion sauce), and bovoleti (tiny snails in oil and garlic). Some non-traditional meatballs, too. Lots of wine. And shortly before the fireworks began, we slaughtered the watermelon — there must be watermelon, it’s non-negotiable. The next morning you can still see shards of watermelon rind floating around.

The fireworks started 15 minutes late. This put a serious brake on the merriment, which is emotionally calibrated to the start of the uproar. At least I personally am so calibrated. Fifteen minutes is too long to keep your anticipation at its peak, especially if it’s practically midnight.

One of the most beautiful parts of the spectacle isn't the fireworks themselves, but the panorama of all the boats on the still water, and all the silent people looking upward in the bursts of light, entranced, like the animals who come out of the forest when they hear the magic flute. — One of the most beautiful things about the spectacle isn't the fireworks themselves, but the panorama of all the boats on the still water, and all the silent people looking upward in the bursts of light, entranced, like the animals who come out of the forest when they hear the magic flute.

I will say that while there are no bad fireworks, there are those which are great and those which aren’t. These were not great. The Gazzettino reported the next day that they were “probably the best there had ever been,” which is preposterous. Last year they were the best that there had ever been, and ever will be. This year we had lag, and long pauses, and repetitions. I can say they were louder than usual, but I don’t give points for loud. The hailstorm the night before was much more exciting.

We rowed the caorlina back across the dark lagoon, as other homeward-bound boats chugged past us. Put the boat away, policed up the campground, so to speak (many bottles and other detritus to dispose of), and then home. Which on the Lido means waiting for the night bus, which is not frequent, and then the night vaporetto, ditto.

It was a fine Redentor, but I wouldn’t put it up in my top five, if anyone is keeping score. Apart from last year, the only other truly unforgettable one was the year we heard that a friend of ours had just “come off,” as climbers put it, a mountain in the Dolomites the afternoon of the Redentore. I’ll never forget sitting in our little mascareta that night, not eating, the fireworks all blurry, throat hurting. Poor Giorgio. I think of him every year.

The doge's vow didn't mention anything about balloons, but it's obvious that without them this would be a pretty puny festa.

But the next day happiness reigns once again, as the sun pours itself all over the city and down on the three afternoon regatas, and the stands in front of the church selling balloons and candies in alarming colors, and then the solemn mass and blessing of the city by the patriarch.

Of the three races, the One that Counts is the third: gondolas raced by pairs of men. Back in the barely rememberable past the racers were all men who were not exactly athletes; in fact, the broad sash each rower wears (matching the color of his boat) originally functioned as a sort of truss, I think you’d have to say. Nowadays the competitors train in a seriously focused way, and so instead of having a race in which the battle lasts for the first five minutes, and then everyone just stays where he is till the finish, as it once was, now you have battles to the death all the way through. Especially between two specific pairs of men whose rivalry has reached a level not far from blood feud. I refer here to the brown gondola (Ivo Redolfi Tezzat and Giampaolo D’Este) and the yellow (Rudi and Igor Vignotto).

Two minutes till the finish and any joking is over. (The brown boat won.) (Unfortunately.)

The patriarchal blessing is bestowed on the city from an ecclesiastical station assembled at the entrance to the church of the Redentore. The current patriarch, Angelo Cardinal Scola, seems to like the vantage point. But there are plenty who remember other patriarchs of Venice, who were also cardinals, then popes, then saints, who did it differently.

Both Pope John 23rd (“Papa Roncalli”) and Pope John Paul 1st (“Papa Luciani”), when this was their humble parish task, took the ciborium containing the consecrated Host and walked to the middle of the votive bridge and intoned the benediction first facing the San Marco side, then turning and facing upstream. One can debate the various merits of each approach if one wishes. One can debate anything, but the old way was more beautiful and more appropriate. I have spoken.