“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.
This was us, a year ago.This is us, pretty much now.
I’ve been trying for a month to find some way to write a deep and detailed update on life here these days, but I give up. What follows is the best I can do.
After a year of the virus, and its varying grip on Italy’s 20 regions and 80-some provinces, all I can say is that we are not yet out of the proverbial woods, even though vaccinations have begun. There is an “English variant” now on the scene that has upset everybody’s predictions on progress. Even without this interloper, the danger of assembramenti (gatherings of people) remains paramount, though large numbers of people I see walking around seem not to be concerned. Exhibit A: Mask worn beneath the nose. Exhibit B: Mask around neck. Any time that the restrictions on gatherings are moderately lifted, the campos and fondamente clog up again with bright sparks, glasses in hand, masks lowered or even removed. And so the restrictions clamp down again. It’s like Groundhog Day.
On Saturday, Feb. 13, the Veneto returned to the “Yellow” status and Sunday’s headlines were absolutely no surprise: “Carneval movida, maxi-risk of contagion.” (“Movida” is the term for mass group socializing, usually on Saturday night.) “Saturday Yellow, immediately the movida, tens of calls to the vigili,” or local policemen. Whoever answered the phone repeatededly replied that “We don’t have enough officers on duty to send to make everybody wear their masks and stand one meter apart, even with the threat of a fine.” One wonders why there weren’t enough on duty for the easiest situation to predict since Christmas Morning, but one wonders in vain.On Feb. 11, this was the utterly predictable report: “Arrival of the Veneti in Venice: Mass gatherings and masks lowered.” (Note: “Arrival” isn’t the right word but I can’t find a better one. To give some idea of the impact implied, calata is the word used for dropping anchor.) Therefore, the rule is that from 15:00 (3:00 PM), you are forbidden to drink standing around. If you’re going to drink, you have to be sitting at a table. That’s until 18:00 (6:00 PM), that is, because that’s when the bars close. Too many people milling around with glasses in their hands and masks completely pulled down. Not sure if table rule will be only on weekends, or every day.
The year has been entirely color-coded, as Italy has struggled to maintain control of the contagion (and its social, economic, and medical consequences) by applying restrictions according to their level of contagion: Yellow is the least dangerous, Orange is the middle ground, Red is obviously the most dangerous (and at least one doomed region was labeled Dark Red for a while — I think that may have meant something like bomb-shelter-type quarantine).
Handy reference for what we can do, and how, and where.
But the restrictions kept changing, reacting to the bettering or worsening of the epidemic’s numbers. We have spun through variations of life involving the hours that shops/bars/restaurants could be open (restaurants closing at 6:00 PM was obviously problematic, though takeout was the stopgap solution), to the number of persons permitted to enter a shop (from one to as many as six), to whether you would even be allowed to enter at all. Oh — and sitting at tables inside was obviously risky, and sitting at tables outside not much less risky, so as recently as last week you bought your coffee at the cafe’ doorway and stood there drinking it al fresco. Except you weren’t supposed to be standing — assembramenti! — so you had to keep moving to avoid the potentially contagious assembramenti (gatherings of people), so you wandered away with your little paper cup, sipping the rapidly cooling teaspoons of espresso, looking for a trash bin. I gave up coffee abroad because the always-dependable cafe bathrooms were no longer available.
Permission to travel between towns, provinces, and Regions continued to mutate. Schools open, schools closed. Public transport restricts the number of passengers permitted during “rush” hour (“Six people can board,” I heard the marinaio call out as we left the vaporetto), but at other times there have been vaporettos that were completely empty. Except for us, I mean. Not made up.
Sunday, late morning, between the Giardini and Sant’ Elena. Feast your eyes, but just keep in mind (if you want to) that all these seats represent minus-signs on the ACTV budget. Just another link in the losing-money chain.
Some museums are beginning to reopen, though obviously with fewer visitors because cross-border travel is still generally forbidden. Venetians (or Italians) who’d like to see some of their artistic patrimony without scrimmaging through masses of tourists, this is your big chance. Most of the museums are open only Monday through Friday; the Guggenheim and Palazzo Grassi only on Thursday and Friday.
Today is Mardi Gras, but this year’s Carnival has been almost entirely online — that is, whatever remnants of the Old Celebrations they managed to retain. We did see some tourists (mainly from the Veneto) over the past few days, on and off, some of them in costume. But I can confirm that seeing a few random dressed-up people does not a Carnival make, especially when they are walking along streets in the late afternoon, where the few businesses that were open are beginning to close. Curfew for bars and restaurants is 1800 (6:00 PM) and slightly later for other enterprises. Supermarkets are open till as late as 8:30 PM.
The last weekend of Carnival did have its brighter moments, especially Sunday when the sun and the tourists combined to bring a whiff of normalcy to the city.
The spirit of Carnival, in miniature.Sunday morning we rowed to the Rialto, an idea that clearly had occurred to many others, including a heartening number of gondoliers. It’s been months since a gondola with passengers has been seen. There was also a wonderful assortment of regular Venetians, either in their rowing-club boats or out rowing their own, like us. And it’s always a treat to see a kid with an oar, as in the boat furthest to the right.And this one, too, with two people — presumably father and son — out in their little s’ciopon. Gosh: There were two kids rowing around? Where will it end?Friends from Arzana’, the association dedicated to the recovery of old Venetian boats, rowing a batela buranela. We caught up with them down by San Marco. I apologize for the quality of these images — cell phone cameras and sunshine don’t work together very well.I don’t know them, but they are clearly on a private boat. If there is one positive side to all these troubles, it’s that the pandemic has created space where people can come out and row around in the Grand Canal again. No longer is it surging and roiling with taxis, which over the years increased to a number that effectively took over the entire canal (I’m referring to weekend activity; obviously there continue to be barges during the week). Everyone who was gradually elbowed out by all the waterborne tourist traffic has been able to return home, in a way. It makes you feel like you belong here again.
We went out for a late-afternoon walk today; there was very modest activity in via Garibaldi. Carnival barely touched the city as it drifted past, unable to land. As always, it was the children who made it happy.
Mask-makers are impressive artisans, even though all their skill and talent are devoted to making something frivolous. Here is Mario Belloni at Ca’ Macana. Read more in my article about masks for “Craftsmanship Quarterly.”
Worthy causes abound, I’m happy to say, as we’ve discovered over the past few months.
Not to pick favorites (she said, picking a favorite), but there is a fundraising effort called “masquerAID” underway in Venice, organized by a group of Venetian mask-makers (mascareri) in order to raise funds for the purchase of surgical masks for the Red Cross volunteers. (Full disclosure: One of the organizers is a colleague and friend. But don’t let that sway you.)
Among the many things in its favor, it’s helping (A) health workers and (B) Venetian artisans. (B) is especially valuable, due to the now near-total lack of customers since the virus obliterated tourism.
Here’s the plan:
masquerAID
carnival masks for medical masks
Safeguard the artisanal production of traditional masks by donating medical masks to the Red Cross
MasquerAID – carnival masks for medical masks is a project of a nonprofit association funded by a group of Venetian professionals and friends to offer a contribution to the city of Venice in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.
Venice relies almost entirely on tourism and in the ongoing global crisis, when all activities have been in lockdown, many small artisan workshops are facing the threat of permanent closure.
The concept of our initiative is to underwrite a selected group of mask makers by enabling them to continue to ply their trade and overcome the most critical phase of the emergency as tourism has come to a standstill. MasquerAID – carnival masks for medical masks will provide the selected artisans with an opportunity to make income for the next two months. At the same time, proceeds will fund the purchase of medical masks helping the volunteers of the Red Cross engaged in fighting the pandemic on the front line.
A precious exchange using the carnival mask, symbol of lightheartedness, joy and beauty while working towards the greater good of our community: supporting these treasured and unique artisans and at the same time helping the Red Cross.
If you love Venice as we do, and wish to contribute to preserving the most precious gems and the soul of this irreplaceable world heritage site, please give generously and receive as a token symbol of our gratitude a traditional mask that has been made by our local craftsmen.
There are three individual mask designs available according to the size of your donation. All three have been inspired by the original “medico della peste”, the famous mask medical doctors used to wear at the time of the black plague: the long beaks were in fact filled with medical spices as a form of protection from the disease. These three masks will be a symbolic icon we use to spread a positive message worldwide, while at the same time be our symbol of gratitude and appreciation to you for your help.
On the basis of Solidarity and Beauty, please support Venice, support the people who work here and support the recovery from the ongoing state of emergency.
Donate towards medical masks and receive our special Corona Doctor Mask!
DONATIONS LEVELS:
FOLLOWER: For a minimum contribution of 25 € you will receive our special gift of a handmade miniature of the plague doctor mask in leather
FRIEND: For a minimum contribution of 100 € you will receive an exquisite, small, handmade papier maché mask
SUPPORTER: For a minimum contribution of 200 € you will receive a beautifully crafted, life-sized handmade papier maché mask
BENEFACTOR: For donations of 500 € or more, you will receive a beautifully crafted, life-sized, handmade papier maché mask. In addition, your contribution will support and promote the work of all the artisans involved in the project.They will contact you and thank you personally.
* all proceeds go towards the purchase of medical masks and to the production of artisanal masks in equal terms
Even a small donation could help MasquerAID Maschere Per Mascherine reach their fundraising goal. And if you can’t make a donation, it would be great if you could share the fundraiser to help spread the word.
Made by Carlo Setti for a theatrical production and based on real people (not the one with pencils stuck into his cranium). Papier mache’ molds are made inside out — not something you learn in a day.Fantasy runs wild at Kartaruga, where Francesca Cecamore can make anything she can imagine, or that a customer asks for.
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.
You can never go wrong with dogs.
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.Everybody was happy.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.The roses…..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.Good from the back, as well.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.As was this girl.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.
