You may already know this, but Italy boasts the largest aerial acrobatic team in the world: The “Frecce Tricolori,” or tricolor arrows.
The ten-plane squad was founded in 1961, but the first Italian school of aerobatics dates from 1930. The Frecce give exhibitions at air shows, and can also be scheduled for flyovers on special events and/or occasions (Luciano Pavarotti’s funeral on September 8, 2007, for example). The aforementioned three colors are the red, white and green of the Italian flag.
I am not a connoisseur of airplanes, but I’m a huge enthusiast of beauty and badassery, and the few times I’ve seen this group perform I’ve been thrilled to my follicles.
Two Saturdays ago the Arrows were booked to fly over Venice — something which is forbidden by law to normal mortals and planes — as part of a festive weekend marking the 50th anniversary of Ferretti, designers and builders of luxury yachts. The plan was fulfilled as advertised: Once from east to west, once from south to north. The whole thing took about five minutes, a tiny fragment of time which felt infinitely bigger, broader, longer, and braver.
And then they were gone.
The first pass was finished before my brain woke up to the fact that I could be making pictures. Hence the diaphanous though smudged contrails of the colors of the national flag.Meanwhile, the squadron has circled round toward the south, ready to head for Venice once more. You can just barely make out the formation in the low center of this image.There they are. These are Aermacchi MB-339 A/PAN MLU aircraft, whose maximum speed is 908 km/h (564 mph). I cannot say what the speed was in this case, but it can’t have been much slower than that. Any aeronautic experts reading this, please correct me, as I stand here with my mouth open. Yes, these are nine planes — the tenth one mentioned earlier gives solo exhibitions.Several seconds later, they’re over the Bacino of San Marco.Time to climb.
And swoop. All this to the most terrifying shriek of the planes.
Over in five minutes. Or maybe fewer. My sense of time got lost somewhere.And they’re gone, screaming their way back to their base at Rivolto airport near Codroipo in the province of Udine, 92 km/ 57 miles away to the northeast. So I guess they landed in about 15 seconds (made up). All I know is that they were home before I was.
Almost exactly a year ago, a huge pair of hands was installed in the Grand Canal in such a way as to appear to be pushing against Ca’ Sagredo, once a magnificent palazzo and now a magnificent hotel. They were evidently one of those bits of visual badinage so beloved of the Biennale, which was about to open. I seem to recall they got lots of notice.
But badinage is effective only when it’s fleeting. You can’t have the same old badinage every day, it would be like living in “Groundhog Day.” And yet that’s exactly what we had for a year, to the point where one long since ceased to laugh, smile, or even notice it.
On May 12, 2017, the hands were raised.
On May 8, 2018, the jig — or the contract, or the parking meter — was up, and down they came. And now I discover it wasn’t supposed to be humorous at all.
What goes up must come down, even if it means drilling and sawing all day. Some people, including the artist, are hoping they’ll come back, whenever they can find another place to prop up.
As reported by “La Nuova Venezia,” Lorenzo Quinn, the artist has said that “They’re my son Anthony’s hands, and they’re as important as the message they give.” There was a message?
Of course there was a message! I was totally mistaken to regard this construction as humorous. Because the message is a serious one (no points for saying “Desperate need for renovation of old buildings”). The message of the hands was to draw attention to the problem of “the constantly increasing global warming. We have to save the world” — that’s the message of the hands, and if you didn’t know that before, now you do.
I don’t know how much attention is paid elsewhere to International Women’s Day, but in Venice it’s “let a thousand mimosas bloom” day. The usual illegal street vendors are everywhere, there are sprigs and bouquets in the supermarkets and bars, little yellow balls all over the place, even on the tops of voluptuous chocolate cakes in the pastry shop down the street. It’s as if the entire world woke up and said “MUST. HAVE. MIMOSA.”
But this year some women’s groups in 70 Italian cities decided that flowers and even voluptuous chocolate once a year weren’t enough to draw attention to the plight of women. And plights there are, everywhere you look. Ironically, though, these advocates added a honking big plight yesterday to their sisters’ everyday burdens by calling a general 24-hour transit strike. On the mainland this inconvenience would be bad enough; in Venice it’s madness. A woman who had to get to work, or to her university classes, or to the hospital for some reason, was compelled to re-shape her day in drastic and, possibly, financially negative ways. As in, “I can’t get to work today.” Or at least “I’m coming in early,” or “late,” or “half a day,” or something inconvenient.
Their objective was to focus the world’s attention on women’s rights (lack of) and violence against women (super-abundance of). Right there with you; I just don’t see how slicing and dicing the day of hundreds of women is going to help.
The usual vendors. On the mainland they were patrolling the intersections and stop lights. I suppose the money they make goes to help some women?
For the record, I note that buses and vaporettos were scheduled to operate in the usual “protected phases” of 6:00 – 8:59 AM and 4:30 – 7:29 PM. This sounds good, but these numbers need to be decoded. The “until” time indicates when the vaporetto will be back at home base, which is usually pretty far from wherever you’re standing. That makes sense, of course — the pilot isn’t going to stop his vehicle at 8:59 in the middle of the Grand Canal and put everybody ashore.
Take the 5.1 as an example: If you’re at the train station heading toward the Lido, in order to be at the Lido before 8:59 means your last chance to board is at 8:04. Same with the return; the afternoon run begins at 4:30 at the Lido, so if you’re at Rialto trying to get to Piazzale Roma (A) you should just walk it, for heaven’s sake, you can make it in 20 minutes, or (B) take the #1 which leaves the Lido at 4:32 and reaches Rialto at 5:15 PM and Ple. Roma at 5:37. I suppose transit strikes work this way everywhere, but if you have the option of taking a taxi or an Uber or a friend with a car or a bike, you don’t have to make these calculations the way we have to do in Venice. While you’re waiting, are you thinking about violence against women? Possibly not.
As for mimosa nosegays, some illegal vendors acquire the blossoms by stripping the trees in private gardens, or wherever a tree may be found that isn’t guarded by armed vigilantes. Some people woke up to discover their mimosa trees standing there naked.
What is my conclusion? I have none, except to suggest that everyone try not to make women’s lives any more complicated or even perilous than they already are. That would be a start. You can do it even without a placard.
This branch never made it to the bouquet stage — some occult hand merely placed it here.
The exhibition poster: “Treasures of the Mughals and the Maharajahs.” This piece alone gives a glimpse of the insane gorgeousness of the collection belonging to Sheik Hamad bin Abdullah Al Thani of the royal family of Qatar.
Imagine a large room in a world-famous palace/museum, in which a lavish assortment of five centuries of dazzling Indian jewelry has been on display for months. This palace is in a famous, small, cramped, waterbound tourist city, a place not especially conducive to rapid escape. Imagine also that on the last day of the exhibition two men stroll in at 10:00 AM, deftly open a case, and mere seconds later just wander off, out of sight, with a pair of earrings and a brooch valued at 3 million dollars.
You can stop imagining. It happened on January 3 in the Doge’s Palace, and the jewels were not called the Pink Panther, but they might as well have been. The thieves are two men, caught on surveillance video, who didn’t even use a picklock, crowbar, bobby pin, small explosive; it appears that the case had already been slightly opened to facilitate the theft. It also appears that they had an electronic device that delayed the sounding of the alarm. Certainly it went off. Just too late to do any good; by then, the two thieves were lost in the crowd and gone.
The Sala dello Scrutinio doesn’t need any help in looking fabulous, but the dressing of this set, if we want to call it that, was worthy of the 270 pieces dating from the 16th to the 20th centuries displayed for the first time in Italy. It was as if Faberge’ had gone to India and came back to Venice. (Photo: Mattinopadova)
The city is agog, as you might suppose, and none more so than the parties directly involved in ensuring that this kind of thing doesn’t happen. Did the thieves have inside help? And how clever they were to plan this exploit for the last day, when the atmosphere was certainly that of the party being over.
There have already been pages and pages written in the press about this most unpleasant start to the New Year. Sparing you every speculation so far, may I merely note that the display cases were made by the Al Thani Foundation, as was the security system used. That certainly complicates the directions in which fingers might be pointing.
The items now at large. Most articles have pointed out that they were not among the most valuable, either historically or monetarily, of the items in the collection. If that makes anybody feel any better. (Photo: Corriere del Veneto).
