Carnevale | Venice: I am not making this up

Carnival strikes again

February 8, 2023 12 Comments

“Carnival hotels sold out in 600,000 for the festival.” I didn’t investigate this — 600,000 people will be staying in hotels? Unlikely. Perhaps a comma after “esauriti” could have clarified the statement. Still, I don’t doubt that that many people could be Venice-ing in some way and to some degree till Feb. 21. Can’t say we weren’t warned.

If you should happen to hear a loud rasping sound, it’s not a swarm of locusts warming up for mating season. It’s Venetian merchants rubbing their hands together. It’s Carnival time again!

The first weekend has just passed, but it seems to have gotten off to a curiously restrained start. The Gazzettino says there were 75,000 people, which is more than I’d want to spend a weekend with, but fewer than the 100,000 they report from pre-Covid days.

The novelty of an evening boat parade in the Grand Canal , a monster show on what appears to be a disguised dredge being pushed along by motor (the oars were fake — no wait, the oars were real, but the rowers were fake) did not enthuse the Venetians. It was a massive floating Las Vegas.

The boat parade the next morning, by Venetians who were rowing, was shorter than in past years, and there were fewer boats, as well. There were objections and protests about that, too, because truncating the trajectory meant that the mob scene that was so festive in the Cannaregio Canal was reduced to a simple mini-mob in the Erbaria at Rialto. Naturally all the merchants along the Cannaregio Canal have made their voices heard. Their palms are no longer rasping.

The uber-traditional “Flight of the Colombina” over Piazza San Marco was not held. Some explanation about the piazza being all torn up for the high-water-defenses work does not convince me, nor many others, either, but in any case no Colombina flew. Not Las Vegas-y enough? It used to be one of the major draws of the entire festival. Just more things I don’t understand.

No matter. We’ve got Carnival down here in via Garibaldi and environs, and that’s plenty entertaining for me. It’s wonderful how you can dress little kids up as anything and yet they still know exactly who they are. Some of them are pretending, but none of them is as good at it as some adults I know.

My thoughts are going no deeper. You can certainly upholster yourself as Giacomo Casanova, if that’s your thing. My own Carnival is kids, galani and frittelle.

The Christmas lights are keeping the festive spirit high in via Garibaldi.

How can one little word contain so much carnival?

You can have your newfangled frittelle filled with cream, zabaioni, and even pieces of apple. The classic Venetian variety is a heavy, dense, somewhat cake-like object. There’s nothing inside but raisins.

Galani (known elsewhere around Italy as bugie or chiacchere, among other names) have reached their culinary peak at the Pasticceria Melito just below via Garibaldi. The secret is rolling the dough to a translucent sheet, then deep-frying it. Carnival means nothing without this apotheosis of fat and sugar.

Bags of confetti (“coriandoli” in Italian) and other festive trifles are on sale in the supermarkets.

Go in for a bottle of laundry detergent and some toothpaste and come out with your Carnival costume.

The faithful ambulant amusement park has permission to stay from Christmas till Carnival, and if the weather cooperates it really adds to the madcap atmosphere.

Best of all are the shows — marionettes, magic tricks, juggling. The parents seem to love them as much as the kids do, though the dogs are a little harder to impress.

Are we going to be stuck here much longer?

The puppet dog was a huge success. He never obeyed commands, and they even found a way to rig him up so he peed. The kids were ecstatic.

Night falls by 6:00 PM, and yes, the show must, and does, go on.

The aristocrats manque’s can strut around the Piazza San Marco all they want. I like it better down here.

Events

Carnival, been and gone

February 26, 2020 15 Comments

These are certainly not the most elaborate costumes I saw, but the glowing parasols are the point.

Carnival (or Carnevale, if you prefer) isn’t something I gorge on every year; I tend to take a few little nibbles around the edges. And this year wouldn’t have been any different except that a former colleague from National Geographic, photographer Tomasz Tomaszewski, said he was coming with a friend to make pictures, and asked if I could give a logistical hand.

For three intense days (Thursday to Saturday) we wandered around — if you can call eight miles a day “wandering” — and it turned out to be surprisingly entertaining. This doesn’t mean I can’t wait till next year to do it all again, but either the quality of the costumes was higher than in some years past, or I’ve changed in some indefinable way, or something.

I hope you enjoy these snaps, because the story of Carnevale 2020 has not had a happy ending. Northern Italy (specifically the regions of Lombardia and Veneto) are in the tightening clutch of the COVID-19 epidemic. On Sunday there were only 20,000 revelers out of an expected 100,000.

In fact, the curtain fell on Carnevale two days early – Sunday nght at midnight, to be precise. I don’t know that this has ever happened, but missing the culmination of festivities on Tuesday (Martedi’ Grasso) has certainly made the scheduled participants unhappy. The 12 Marias are in tears because now we’ll never know who was the fairest of them all.

That’s just the beginning. The governor of the Veneto has decreed many decrees prohibiting events or places of any sort where people might gather in groups larger than (insert small number here). Until March 1 the schools, universities, and museums are closed. There will be no masses celebrated in church, even on Ash Wednesday, not even in the basilica of San Marco. Sporting events are all canceled.

But let me share a look back at a few sunny days when Carnival was fully fledged and nobody was worrying about anything more important than where to finally find a place to sit down.

Trailing clouds of glory, this couple proceeded at a stately pace beneath puffs and cherubs. The stately pace was more or less imposed by the weight of the costume (some of them went up to 26 pounds, or 12 kg), and walking slowly also made it easy for photographers to snap away. The most elaborate costumes made many stops on the stroll around the Piazza because almost all of this activity was undertaken precisely to be photographed. Just like the casinos want you to steal their ashtrays (I was told once…), people dress up here to be photographed. You can’t possibly offend them by asking. Or not asking and just going ahead, shooting away, which is more common.

Photographers were swarming like freaking locusts.

All it took was for one person to start shooting and there was a sudden rush from everywhere and the wild fluttering sound of camera shutters. It was like seagulls attacking a slice of pizza.

She was only pretending to play but it looked like she was having a grand time.

I give her credit for willingness to walk around with an entire fabric-store supply of material draped on and around her, but it makes me feel tired and slightly smothered just looking at her.

It seems slightly Zen to come all the way from Tokyo to sit by yourself, but perhaps her cavalier was out getting her cigarettes or something. Tomasz is immortalizing her and her cigarette holder; she told him that she had made the costume (or had it made; in any case, it wasn’t rented, as many people do to simplify matters).

There were far too many 18th-century-Mozart-Casanova-Marie-Antoinette costumes roaming around for my taste, but this French couple took it to a whole new level. They (or she) makes the costumes, and she told me that they changed their outfit every day — wigs and all. I secretly called her Melisande, but her real name is Charlotte and she comes from La Rochelle. She and her friends — two men were in tow — drove to Venice with their steamer trunks loaded with this glorious garb.

She was too perfect. Perhaps she was listening for the distant rumble of the tumbrels?

Speaking of French, this squadron was a sight to behold– three admirals, home from the fleet after a vigorous few months of bashing the English (I imagine).

These cafes are expensive, but if you can find a seat they’re the best place to give your costume a rest for a while.

If there’s anywhere the standard period costume really looks good (apart from the Caffe’ Florian, I mean), it’s in a gondola.

She needed a better position than a mere cafe table and she got it atop the balustrade of the entrance to the campanile.

I began to yearn for simplicity, the way you yearn for a pickle after a hot pastrami sandwich. These two Italian ladies were just what I needed.

Dotted nylons and sparkly sneakers — that’s her Carnevale outfit and I really like it.

Then this vision rose from the sea, a magical naiad combining fantasy, glamour, and dazzling simplicity. Even the pose was perfect.

This extraordinary headdress is all reef — coral, algae, shells.

The pictures were all of Venice and water. If we have to have acqua alta, could more of these creatures appear, please?

I forgot all about Melisande when I lost my heart to Ondine.

At the Rialto, another breath of non-18th-century air. Very few elements involved (not like the mountain of material with the white silk roses), but all the better for that. Finding a great hat that wasn’t a tricorn isn’t deeply difficult, but you have to realize that that’s really what your outfit needs.

I entertain myself by noticing reflections, and this one of the basilica’s facade was a nice change from the parade of people.

You can only look at so many costumes before your eyes seek something drastically different. Here’s a shop at the end of a long sunny street with people apparently walking through it. Photographer Tomaszewski, or his shadow, has paused at the right to look at something. Or nothing. His eyes might have been getting tired too.

Venetian Events

Wrapping Carnival

March 5, 2019 3 Comments

Today is Martedi’ Grasso (Mardi Gras) and Carnival is wrapping up. It wrapped up a few days ago in via Garibaldi, not with a bang, not with anything. On Giovedi’ Grasso, the stage, inflatable slide and trampolines were going full tilt, overrun by swarms of unchained children. The day after, nothing. Everything was just … gone.

There are still frittelle and galani on sale and the streets are still speckled with confetti, yet the revelers are nowhere to be seen. I think whoever’s still around has migrated to the Piazza San Marco, where the big closing events take place. I won’t be there. I’ll be sitting at home in the dark, like some addict, secretly eating the last of the galani.

Galani, the last batch. They are doomed and so am I.

Frittelle veneziane are somewhat difficult to find; lately everybody seems to want them filled with pastry cream or zabaglione. I stick with the traditional solid balls of fried dough. I bought this one not because I’m so crazy about frittelle, but because I couldn’t resist the chance to break off all those little stick-out bits. I’m so easy to entertain.

“Today there are mammaluchi.” Readers may remember that the Pasticceria Targa near the Rialto market is the only place I’ve found that offers a special Carnival sweet called “mammaluchi.” Not the knightly military caste drawn from the ranks of slave warriors (thanks, Wikipedia), but an equally dangerous pastry.

The Mamluks had a special sword, but I think this could have be just as effective in your average skirmish. It would just take a little longer for your adversary to collapse. The filling is dough, but of a moisture and density that make you take them seriously. Two is actually too many, but I didn’t let that stop me.

I receive absolutely no compensation for this mention, they don’t even know who I am. Just that wild-eyed foreigner who comes in every year asking if the mammaluchi are ready yet.

I didn’t go on a hunt for costumes to photograph, mainly because so many of them are so trite. I don’t judge, I know the people concealed within are having a wonderful time. I just feel embarrassed taking pictures that everybody else is taking, especially of something so unimaginative. Here, a group of massive costumes was disembarking from the #1 vaporetto.

I kind of liked these dudes, even if they had rented the garb. I was fascinated by the fact that all of them had 12 white dots. I have no idea how you play a game of dominos if all the tiles have the same number of dots, but at least they were being whimsical. I award points for whimsy.

And speaking of whimsy, this was the scene in via Garibaldi on Fat Thursday. The munchkins from the local nursery school are dressed up as either little pigs (the girls) or wolves (boys). The masks were handmade of the ever-reliable construction paper.

The pigs were especially adorable, not only because they were scarfing up frittelle and fruit juice but because they had to move their masks aside to make way for the food. The mask itself is a small masterpiece, held on by a circlet of pink construction paper.

This was an exceptional minimalist costume. The mask was a small cardboard carton just sitting on his shoulders, and he must have had fun making a sword that wants to be a Mamluk bread knife.

Seen at the Rialto market: A couple wearing chef’s toques, the father carrying their little girl on his back, disguised as a ….

…lobster. That’s what I always say, never leave home without a clean handkerchief and a lobster.

Yes, I know you want to stay out past dark, but it’s time to go home. Pack it up till next year.

Venetian Events, Venetian-ness

The Carnival-scapades

January 29, 2018 5 Comments

Yesterday was the second day of Carnival 2018 (Jan. 27-Feb. 13), and the festivities started, as they have for a number of years now, with a monster boat procession in the Grand Canal. The boats and rowers were decorated and trimmed and upholstered and whatever else seemed good across the gamut from minimal (a hat) to the glamorous (let’s all be Mozart for a day!) to the fabulously imaginative, funny, and irreverent. They say that during “Carnevale, ogni scherzo vale” (during Carnival every joke works) and the boat people showed they’ve got plenty of high jinks still in them.

Note: For an overview of Carnival garb, behavior and general atmosphere back in the glory days, I recommend my very own piece on masks for Craftsmanship magazine.

Further note: I promised Lino that I would convey his belief that this festival, amusing and picturesque as it may be, is NOT the real Venetian Carnival. He is extremely firm on that point. Other cities, most particularly Viareggio, are famous for celebrating Carnival with highly elaborate floats (“carri allegorici“). The floats of Viareggio are titanic constructions that can hold their own against any other carnival in the galaxy. But Lino contends that this sort of parade is not the Venetian Carnival and he strongly objects to the introduction of this foreign body into the Venetian culture. I am not going to adjudicate the matter in any way, I have only fulfilled my promise to add his voice into the festive confusion. Confusion there has always been during Carnival, even here, and history attests this. But no carri allegorici.

That said, I’d like to return to the floating (sorry) festivities. I’m a stout defender of Venetian traditions, but I have to admit that I found the whole thing hugely entertaining. That’s all I’m going to say.

The gathering of the boats at the entrance to the Grand Canal. We arrived around 10:45, and we began processing at 11:15. The weather didn’t get the message that it would be hilarious to rain or snow, so we made do with ordinary old sunshine. A good thing, too, because the day after was solid fog.

The boat in the foreground bears proudly on its bow the typical sign listing the stops that is displayed on the #1 vaporetto. Cute, but why?

Here’s why: The sign says “For today only, the ACTV will provide service by oar.” The crew is wearing the regulation necktie that is part of the ACTV uniform.

The battling Casanovas, comparing gondolas and, probably frills. Remember the gondola on the left, it will reappear further on.

I’m sure I’m missing something (I’m never wrong if I think that), but here we have a whaling longboat helpfully named “La Baleniere” (“the whale boat,” though the term usually means the entire ship). Instead of being rowed backwards, it’s been fitted out to be rowed the Venetian way, standing up, facing forward. Hazmat suits are always appropriate, so I won’t inquire about those, but the headgear looks like jellyfish brains or something else from the abyss. I’m not even sure what they were made of. Men wearing pink, though, is always entertaining.

The boats lined up to check in at the control station at the Customs House Point. The organizers threw bottles of water (never drunk) and packs of sandwiches (never eaten, at least not by me) into the boat. They took no chances that somebody might suddenly feel faint.

The star of everything was this enormous plastic mode of a rat, here being carried on a yellow boat to the end of the line where, at the crucial festive moment, he will be broken upon to release a mass of colored balloons. To get the joke you need to know that in the Piazza San Marco, one of the peak moments of Carnival, then and now, is the “flight of the Colombina.” In the very olden days a high-wire artistwould descend a wire stretching from the top of the campanile to the Doge’s Palace (no net. Fun!!). Or sometimes he or she was replaced by a huge model dove (“colomba”) which would burst open and shower the under-standers with clouds of confetti. Seeing that our procession will conclude in the Cannaregio Canal, far, far from the piazza and its glamor and history, the ubiquitous rodent was chosen as the mascot, symbol, patron saint, whatever we want to call him or her, of our lower-brow festa. I wish I could have gotten closer, this is the only picture I managed to make. The backward-looking eyes make me laugh. I wouldn’t have thought a creature this big would bother checking who was behind him.

Maybe he was watching for this, a dragon boat from the Canottieri Mestre. The American flag is flying…a yellow-haired effigy is standing…a model of a rocket is pointing…and all the rowers are wearing archery targets on their backs. Um….

And astern the flag of some unidentified nation (it is not the official flag of North Korea, I checked). But whatever that bit of fabric may be, I think we can surmise what it symbolizes. And a rocket pointing that way. Hilarious.

Wait: THIS is hilarious. The sign the central rowers are holding up translates as: “Mine is longer.” Badaboom.

The Addams Family, Uncle Fester rowing astern. The other family members were very white-faced, which was worth a photo but for some reason they kept looking the other way. Are they under witness protection?

She spent quite some time adjusting the black crape. We even have Cousin Itt in the form of the long blond wig on a stick.

Unlikely as it may seem, everybody manages fine with all those oars.

it does get squeezy under the Accademia Bridge, but we are not actually rowing the boat next to us. It only looks like that.

And speaking of squeezy, the overloaded vaporettos had to stay where they were, tied up to their boat-stop dock, until the procession had finished. That’s for everybody’s safety, obviously. And to allow all the passengers to crowd to the outboard side to make photographs of the spectacle, which judging by the inclination of the boat wouldn’t meet anybody’s safety standards. Fun!

Splashing along toward San Toma’, the boats seem to be organizing themselves by color somehow. Suddenly we’re in the blue section.

One caorlina’s crew maintained the roditory (made up — we need this word) theme by dressing as mice and loading the boat with cheese. Another hefty form of parmigiano adorned the stern as well.

Now we’re getting closer to the old satirical bone. Here the rowers are each carrying a cardboard rendition of a MOSE floodgate, complete with streamers of algae and the occasional barnacle. Algae also trailling from the boat, as you see. Check my last few posts about the condition of the gates to appreciate the satire here.

A quick refresher on what the real gates look like. They do not inspire mirth.

And while we’re on the subject of current events, this boat has remnants of jewelry strewn across its bow and the sign says: “Doge’s Palace, here’s what’s left of the Maharaja’s treasure.” Maharaja helpfully rowing nearby. For reference see my post “Lugash on the lagoon.”

Every square or triangular or rhomboidal inch was occupied by people, even up onto the roof of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi.

Behind us, yet more miles of the flotilla. In the center, the “peata” of the rowing club G.S. Voga Riviera del Brenta, bearing the soundtrack: music, singers, people yelling reckless happy phrases that added to the general atmosphere of revelry.

This little group demonstrated yet again that you don’t need an elaborate or expensive costume for carnivaling, but just a little imagination. Everybody in bathrobes and with towels wrapped around their heads; the two seated people are armed with the moveable showerhead and back-scrubbing brush. I think there’s a shower curtain there too. So: Bathrobes. How can you say you don’t have a costume?

And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the alligator will lie down with the young penguin ..

This caorlina was draped with wafty white fabric and clumps of big cotton balls to create a wintry Alpine scene, complete with rowers in down jackets and somebody on the bow wearing red reindeer antlers. Pay no attention to the blue and white bits in the background — that’s a white caorlina whose bow has been surmounted by a very large seagull head trailing sky-blue fabric. If they had wanted to create a real Venetian scene, they’d have added a few bags of garbage pecked and ripped open with the contents strewn wildly around.

A charming couple in fairly authentic mountain-dwellers’ (as opposed to mountaineers’) garb.

The gloriously bedecked man astern is Angelo Boscolo, who recently launched his gondola made of 350 fruit crates. However amusing this may be, he spent a year and a half at it, and scrupulously adds that it is 30 cm (11 inches) shorter than the traditional gondola, and that the crates are made from 11 different types of wood (classic gondola uses 8 types, possibly not those used for kiwi containers). On the thwart behind the seats has been carved a very Venetian saying: “Chi sa tace, chi non sa chiede. El mona sa già tutto” (Who knows, remains silent; who doesn’t know, asks. The asshole already knows everything).

First prize and a blue ribbon in the “Actually, why the heck not?” category.

The Rari Nantes Patavium boat club (in Padua) has an elegant 12-oar gondola, here made even more elegant without six of its rowers but with the addition of two tangoing couples.

Of course it’s possible to tango in a space the size of a bathmat. I admire them even more for doing it on a boat, where even the smallest rogue wave could add a few steps they never studied in school.

They made it to the end, this extravagantly dressed pair of rowers. It’s true that everyone was rowing against the tide, but somehow seeing them at it made it appear even harder and more thankless. In any case, this is the once- typical boat of Lake Como, and bears the banner of the lakeside town of Bellano. Five centuries ago the craft was simply called “batel,” used for fishing and also passengers; since 1827 it has been called a “Lucia” in honor of the heroine of the novel “I Promessi Sposi” who makes her escape across the lake in such a boat.

Our four boats of the Remiera Francescana moored near the top of the Cannaregio Canal, in what appears to have suddenly become the Red Zone (the facing boats belong to the G.S. Voga Riviera del Brenta club).

The crowds along the fondamentas were in full cry. Here, a very cool family.

Cool, as in wearing your sunglasses over your mask.

The view of people ashore was almost as good as the one they got of us. Fun!

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