Living in San Giorgio di Pesaro and Kingston

From Tuesday to Saturday last week the 61st San Remo Music Festival took place. This is the Italian equivalent of the Eurovision Song contest but instead of lasting 1 night it lasts 5 nights. Each evening on television from 9.00pm to midnight the competition unfolds with the winner finally (!)being announced late Saturday evening.

On Italian television variety shows it is traditional to have 3 presenters – one short man and two tall, beautiful women or one old man and two tall, beautiful women or one ugly man and two tall, beautiful women or one short, old, ugly man and two tall, beautiful women. In the last couple of years the San Remo Festival went against this trend and had a single presenter and a show which had been declining in popularity bounced back. However, this year it reverted to type and had: Gianni Morandi the Cliff Richard of the Italian pop world; Elizabetta Canalis best known for being the current girlfriend of George Clooney; Belen Rodriguez an Argentinian showgirl who is famous in Italy for a series of television adverts and her body. And the show was a great success with over 50% of italian television viewers opting for the festival. We opted instead for going out. 

The idea of one man two women presenters exists in other types of tv programes. The highlight must be a programme called “Vivere Meglio” (Live Better). It aims to give advice on health and lifestyle issues and has the winning combination of 1 short, old, ugly man with 4 tall, beautiful women.

On Friday night the play “La Casa della Luna Calante” (the house of the waning moon)was performed by some citizens of San Giorgio. The play was based on a short play by Furio Bordon called “Le Ultime Lune” and tells the story of an old man who is leaving his house to move into an old people’s home and before he leaves he has a conversation with his dead mother about the highs and lows of his life. In the second act he is in the home and talks about his life in the home and his preparations for death. It is a very bitter-sweet, tragic-comedy. The producer of the San Giorgio version Giuliana kept the basic outline of the play and added some comic scenes about the individual characters in the home. Opting to stress the comic elements in the play was a wise thing to do which in the context of a Friday evening’s entertainment in small village in Italy with an amateur cast. They also opted to use mostly dialect instead of italian. When you talk to people in San Giorgio about the use of dialect they also say that if they want to tell a joke then it works better in dialect. Unfortunately for me it meant most of the verbal humour was lost as some characers spoke pure dialect, others a mix and some pure italian. So it was like listening to a badly tuned radio where some sentences would come across loud and clear and then fade into a incoherent noise and then a few more words in focus. However, all the audience enjoyed the play. There was lots of laughter and lots of applause. Applause when the actors came on and people recognised them and lots of applause when people left the stage. Even I got into the game applauding when I recognised someone – “Sanzio” (our agricultural advisor) turned up as the owner of the home and then “Mrs Bella Giornata” came on as a women listening to the woes of her daughter’s love life. (I have never got to know Mrs Bella Giornata’s real name but as we always seem to meet in the street when the sun is shining and she always says “Che bella giornata!” this has become her name). The play ended with characters in the play reciting a poem about the value of life and the need to live now and then bright cheerful music was played, the actors bowed and danced while the audience clapped happily in time to the music. Everyone left with a smile on their faces.

The other night we saw  a live performance of Giulio Cesare from Paris. It was relayed to a small cinema in Pesaro. Well as usual Handel was magical and showed his genius as a composer.It was a pity that the Director/Designer felt unable to leave the piece alone and overlayed the work with a mismash of ideas and irrelevancies. Too many times the singers were placed in situations where a mass of supernumeries busied themselves in the background which distracted from the aria and the drama. 

It was interesting to me to see how the manners of Italian audiences have change little.In the 18th and 19th Centuries visitors from Britain regularly commented on the constant talking, the eating and the drinking that went on during a performance. Well now apart from the talking, the major distraction is the mobile phone,which under no circumstances can be turned off ( silent mode maybe).So throughout the performance one was conscious of the faint blue glow of  numerous small screens, whilst owners checked on the latest text from their friends.I wonder if this is so at La Scala?

Despite all this, the singers were excellent with exceptionally touching portraits of the roles of Cornelia and Sesto ( Varduhi Abrahamyan and Isabel Leonard) standing out in my mind. The star, Natalie Dessay, as Cleopatra was bit of a curates egg.When she sung and stood still, she was truly breath-taking but when obliged to move I felt that she ended up looking like a second rate pole-dancer at a disco. Not her fault maybe( the Director again?) but what may work in 19th Century repetoire doesn’t look so good in the early 18th.

 Next offering is the La Fanciulla del West.

On Saturday we went to Ikea near Rimini to look for a chest of drawers. Here in the Marche we are spoilt for choice as there is an Ikea at Rimini and an Ikea at Ancona. Both equidistant and both the same apart from the fact that in one you go round the store clockwise and in the other anti-clockwise. As we had to meet Alba for coffee in Pesaro we opted for the Rimini Ikea and we were just in time to have our Ikea meatballs.

Ikea had been in the news last week as they are opening a new store in Catania in Sicily and are planning to recruit 350 staff. Ton Reijmers who is responsible for Ikea in Italy had arranged a meeting with the governor of the island Raffaele Lombardo.

After waiting outside the Lombardo’s office for over an hour Mr Reijmers was told that the Governor was out of the office and couldn’t see him and that Mr Reijmers would have to speak to the vice Governor. Lombardo is angry with Ikea because many of the jobs being offered are part time and also that Ikea are not taking on ex workers from local firms. In fact Ikea have recruited their staff through an internet questionaire and this is perhaps the rub. The “Ikea method” is in conflict with Lombardo’s method where he uses his influence to get people jobs who then vote for him. An ex supporter of Lombardo was quoted as saying that “for Lombardo transparency is inconceivable and to selet using the internet means no-one must pay politicians for a job”