Yesterday we took a very long day trip to the islands, starting at Murano and then going to Burano and Torcello. Many of the students chose to pay the 5 euro to see a glassblowing demonstration on Murano, as well as do the usual shopping and the not-so-usual, but expected, “making of art.”

We ate lunch at beautiful Burano and then broke apart to pursue individual artistic pursuits. A number of the students gravitated to a park to enjoy the greenery — a rare site in Venice — and some shady respite from the 80-degree weather.

Then we were off to the final stop, Torcello, which we talked about in class as the first Venetian settlement and oldest Venetian church. Several students sketched the church before heading out to look around this green, rural island. The photo here shows some of them sitting on Ponte di Diavolo, or the bridge of the devil, which can be found on the walkway between the vaporetto stop and the church.

This morning we all got up early to paint San Giorgio Maggiore from the Molo (next to Piazza San Marco) in the gorgeously clear dawn sunlight. After that, everyone was free until 11, when we agreed to meet up at the Frari Church. Several of our students raced in to attend Mass at the Frari, while the others split up to hunt down groceries for tonight’s home-cooked Sunday dinner or to do a little more painting. Here are our painters, sitting by the edge of the canal gazing at the Frari as they work.

All of the painting has attracted a lot of tourist attention! It’s surprising how fascinated people are by the sight of somebody painting and sketching. I imagine some of this class are going to find photos of themselves online someday, in a complete stranger’s Venice photo-blog….

Unfortunately, masses at the Frari didn’t get out until 1, instead of 11, as we’d thought, so we weren’t able to go in (except those who’d attended Mass). We’ll get there later, though.

We arrived in Venice and have settled down in our fabulous palazzo; it’s about 11:30 p.m. and all the students are settling in, taking showers, and getting ready to get up bright and early to visit Saint Mark’s square tomorrow morning.

In this first photo, all the students (except MaryBeth, who left with Prof. Spehar-Fahey on an earlier flight) are at LAX, waiting around for our flight. The SwissAir flight went very well, and we arrived in Zurich a bit early.

Switzerland seems like a lovely country! We all wished we could stay a day and tour, but unfortunately we were out of there two hours later for a quick hop over the Alps — what a stunning view from the airplane window! — and our arrival in Venice’s airport.

In the second photo, the students are waiting outside the Alilaguna water-bus stop; it was a long wait through sunset for the next bus, and we ended up getting into Venice after dark. Terry and MaryBeth met us at the Sant Angelo stop and guided us to our palazzo, where we ate the apples, cheese, and meats they’d bought that day as our late dinner.

It’s beautiful here, and I can’t wait to show the students the city in daylight tomorrow!

Ciao, tutti! Study Abroad has made reservations for us in Florence — we’ll be staying at the Hotel Lombardi, about 15 minutes from the Uffizi and the cathedral, according to its website.

Barring last-minute changes, the room division will be 5 twins, 1 triple (gentlemen, that’s probably yours….) and two singles (professorial dibs!). And best of all, it says it has wi-fi…!

And in case you’ve forgotten, we’ve rented the three floors of the gorgeous-looking Palazzo degli Angeli for the duration of our stay in Venice. Remember that it’s not a hotel but a bunch of apartments, so you won’t get maid and restaurant service while were in Venice.

Our next step will be to reserve the plane tickets and start buying museum and train tickets….

We’re making a fun addition to itinerary! On Friday, May 20, we’ll be visiting the Goldoni Museum in Venice for a special screening of the film Carlo Goldoni: Venice Grand Theatre of the World (Bettero, 2007). This docudrama, which will be subtitled in English, was shot on location in France and Venice and includes fictional scenes, interviews with contemporary actors and directors, and footage from Goldoni’s plays.

Carlo Goldoni with his European theatrical reform was a forerunner of the French Revolution: he did away with the character masks of the ”Commedia dell’Arte” of the time and revealed the true faces and emotions of the middle class in the Age of Enlightenment. In those days Venice was at the centre of a clash between the tradition of the ”Commedia dell’Arte”, the works of Carlo Gozzi, and the new theatre of Carlo Goldoni, or the so-called “theatre of character”, which had done away with masks, improvisation, classical myths, the gods, heroes, stories of unreal or fantastic characters, in favour of characters taken from real life, such as the middle classes, merchants and commoners, brought on to the stage and made to speak the language of ordinary people.

Goldoni’s reform provoked envy and rancour. And the conflicts that derived from these, often bitter, culminated on the occasion of the feast of Carnival of 1762: Goldoni’s last in Venice, before his departure for Paris, where he spent the last 31 years of his life.

The movie will be screened for us at the Goldoni Museum, which is located in the house where Goldoni was born, and will cost us only the museum ticket price. (Watch a 2-minute museum preview video here)

I think it’s going to be a great way to spend Friday evening away from the maddening crowds, and when we get out of the film we can all go to dinner with our imaginations full of extravagant 18th-century costumes and settings!

On Campus Poster

You may not register for ART/COMM 285: Imagining Venice without an instructor’s approval. If you haven’t picked up an application form from Study Abroad already, be certain to do it now: fill it in and get a faculty member’s recommendation sent back to the office by Nov. 29.

Terry and I will be choosing about 14 to 16 students from the applicant pool.

If you’d like more information about the trip before you make a decision, please come see us at the Imagining Venice information session in the Nelson Room (behind the Study Abroad office, on the parking-lot side of the building). We’ll be there tomorrow — Tuesday — 11/9 at 4:30 p.m. to answer questions. Much of the information we expect to go over is already here on the website, but this will be a chance to ask anything we haven’t covered already.    If your parents are local and want to drop by to ask questions, that’s fine with us, as well!

Terry scouted out backpacks for us and recommended I buy the same one she did, this Eagle Creek Voyage Travel Pack 65L, which has a detachable daypack. So here’s my new backpack, with my laptop and iPad next to it for size comparison. Students — can you get yourself down to something about this size when you go to Venice with us? If this seems too small, you might try an 80L pack. It won’t be carry-on sized, but I’m not sure this one will count for international flights, anyway. Put a backpack on your Christmas wish list or email this blog post to your parents….!

What about a duffel bag? When I went to India and Japan with students, I packed everything into a duffel. However, I’m not getting any younger, and carrying all that weight on one shoulder, or even on my back with the strap across my chest, is too much. Time to get that weight settled comfortably around my hips, instead, like a proper hiker. If you can handle a duffel, go for it, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

What about a suitcase? We’re recommending backpacks because of the unique nature of Venice — it’s a city paved in cobblestone with lots of stair-step bridges over the canals. If you try to roll a suitcase, you’ll just break its wheels, and you’ll have to lift it over the bridges and into the train to Florence, anyway. Trust us; a backpack will be far more convenient, and if some of you decide to keep traveling through Italy or Europe after Florence, you’ll definitely want a pack you can run in as you catch trains and buses.

65L, though? Yeah, pack light and layered; buy travel clothing that remains relatively wrinkle-free and dries overnight. (I gave my Tilley‘s wish list to my family for Christmas! Who thought I’d ever ask for underwear?) Remember, (a) you can buy shampoo and toothpaste and so forth in Italy, so you don’t need to carry big tubes with you; (b) you’ll probably want to buy clothes and shoes in Italy, if fashion’s your thing; and (c) you can either mail home souvenirs or buy another duffel there if you decide you need one.

That said, I’m going to do a practice pack or two before my 30-day return warranty wears out. I was hoping to bring my MacBook Pro as well as my iPad, but I’m not sure this pack leaves me enough room for all the computers and wires I’d be packing along with clothes and art supplies. If I left the laptop behind, though, I’d need a plug-in keyboard for the iPad, because I’m a writer and detest its little touch-pad… Hmm. Yes, definitely a practice pack or two to see how well this works!

Our students may have the opportunity to visit the 16th-century church of San Sebastiano to view the art restoration project going on there, thanks to the generosity of Save Venice. San Sebastiano, one of five churches in Venice built to thank God after the plague passed through the city, is noted for its cycle of paintings by Paolo Veronese, who is buried there. Other notable pieces in the church include works by Sansovino, Tintoretto, and Titian.

Saint Sebastian is believed to offer protection from the bubonic plague and is the patron saint of archers and athletes. He is often depicted in his martyrdom, tied to a post and shot with arrows.

Save Venice’s restoration work at the church includes conserving the walls and ceiling, to protect Veronese’s work, and to restore the marble floor and replaster the church’s facade and exterior walls. This work will give Save Venice a chance to further study Veronese’s work.

Save Venice was founded in 1967 and has completed more than 200 restorations in Venice. One of my personal favorites is the astounding work it did on Santa Maria dei Miracoli, a small marble-covered church close to the apartment I stayed in during my sabbatical in Venice; the restoration turned it from a dull, gray building to a bright, glittering jewel.

Vivaldi is Venice’s pet composer — you can’t walk through the city without noticing numerous signs advertising Vivaldi concerts at various churches and music schools. Thus it seems appropriate to draw attention to the latest news about the discovery of one part of a flute concerto by Vivaldi thought to be lost. (Excerpt)

According to an article in the BBC,

A lost flute concerto by the composer Vivaldi has been discovered at the National Archives of Scotland.

Il Gran Mogol, which belonged to a quartet of lost concertos, has been authenticated as the work of the 18th Century Italian composer.

Southampton University research fellow Andrew Woolley found the piece among the Marquesses of Lothian’s family papers at the archives in Edinburgh.

It will receive its modern day premiere at Perth Concert Hall in January.

The other pieces of the quartet – La Francia, La Spagna and L’Inghilterro — remain lost.

Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice in 1678. He became a priest in 1703; due to his red hair, he became known known as “Prete Rosso.” As a young man he worked as the master of violin at the orphanage and music school Ospedale della Pietà, where his works and the children’s performances began drew favorable attention. (You can still attend concerts there today.) Over the course of his life he wrote numerous pieces, both liturgical and secular, but he is best known today for his Four Seasons, which he wrote in 1725. Vivaldi died in 1741 after garnering international popularity as a composer.

Although Vivaldi’s music fell out of favor after his death and for centuries thereafter, interest was revived in the early 1900s when a collection of his works was discovered in the library of a Piedmontese boarding school and eventually purchased and donated to the Turin Library. After the war, a Venetian enthusiast established the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi, and the works began to be recorded and disseminated once again, catching the attention of modern audiences (BaroqueMusic.Org).

Other Vivaldi works have been discovered since — besides this year’s discovery, Vivaldi works have been most recently unearthed in 2004, 2005, and 2006. It’s thought that many others may exist that have yet to be found.

We plan to take students to a Vivaldi concert while in Venice, although when and where depends on the schedule once we get there. I went to a little concert in a church while I was last there in 2006, and having seen how many are offered, I’m not worried about our finding a suitable performance while we’re there. Rick Steeves advises, “There’s music most nights at Scuola San Teodoro (east side of Rialto Bridge) and San Vitale Church (north end of Accademia Bridge), among others. Consider the venue carefully. The general rule of thumb: musicians in wigs and tights offer better spectacle, musicians in black and white suits are better performers.” I admit that I love to see people in period costume, but since it’s an educational trip, we may have to sacrifice the amusing visuals and go for performance quality, instead.

Image Source: Engraved portrait of Antonio Vivaldi, 1725, François Morellon de La Cave

When Terry and I were working out the syllabus for spring’s class, we checked the local museums for their upcoming exhibit schedule. LACMA’s  Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915 was one of the exhibits that seemed relevant, since 18th and 19th century Venice are often popularly depicted in film and literature. The Los Angeles Times just published a blurb about the exhibit that shows off two gorgeously ornate men’s jackets. It also notes that the exhibit seems to have been pushed back a month; when we’d first created the syllabus, LACMA had it listed as opening in September; now it seems to be opening in October.

Either way, I encourage students to go; it will be open until April 3, so students taking our class will have ample opportunity to attend during the spring semester and earn some extra credit. I certainly intend to go, probably well before spring; I adore 18th and 19th-century fashion! One of the museums in Venice that we won’t be requiring students to visit, although I found it fascinating and hope some students may end up there on their own, is Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo, a study center for the history of costumes and textiles. It’s a small museum on only one floor of the palazzo but displays several sumptuous Venetian outfits as well as the furniture and decor of the time. Tucked in a rather obscure corner of the city, Palazzo Mocenigo doesn’t get much traffic, but I loved it and its catalog has managed to survive all of my decluttering purges over the last four years!

Photo credit: Man’s jacket, circa 1750-75, Palazzo Mocenigo

Terry and I met for several hours yesterday to go over the Venice itinerary day by day, checking museum and church hours; going over plane, train and vaporetto schedules; and trying to reach a happy balance between requiring students to complete their assignments each day and permitting them sufficient free time to do whatever shopping or exploring they’d like to do on their own. I think it’ll work out pretty well, although getting everyone up for a dawn painting session at Saint Mark’s square may be a challenge!

One of biggest changes we’ll be making at this point is turning the trip to Vicenza into a day trip instead of an overnight trip. We want to visit Palladio’s buildings there, including his famous Villa Almerico-Capra, “La Rotunda.” However, La Rotunda is only open on Wednesdays, and the day our visit had fallen on under the old schedule would have been a Thursday. Moreover, Terry discovered that getting from Vicenza to Florence is something of a public transportation pain in the neck, compared to getting from Venice to Florence.

So, we’ve shifted the Vicenza trip back a day and we’ll plan to return to Venice that night. I think that’ll work out much better for us in the long run. We’ve also made a number of other changes, including plugging in real dates. We’ll post a revised-but-still-tentative itinerary later this month, after we’ve given it another look-through.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.