Imagining Venice

Terry and I had to love this answer to our midterm question, “Describe Doge Lodovico Manin’s reaction to Napoleon’s arrival in Venice”:

He’s shorter than I thought.

If only we gave out points for creativity….

Check out the newest blog that I have added under the blogroll. An architect in New York shares his experience of Venice with you. Wednesday is the deadline for arranging your travel plans for your return home. Make sure that Stephanie knows when you want to return to Los Angeles. Dr. Dru and I are staying beyond the 30th of May and I know some of you may also have plans to extend your trips. We are close to confirming the flights. Ciao tutti!

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….

In our Imagining Venice class, we don’t plan to spend too much time discussing contemporary Italian politics, and our focus on social concerns will revolve more around the ways in which pollution and tourism are affecting Venice in particular. But with all of the fuss about Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi that’s been showing up in the media lately, I thought it was worth a quick mention.

The New York Times has published a quick rundown of the latest Berlusconi scandal, titled “Surreal: A Soap Opera Starring Berlusconi,” which describes the accusations that Italy’s prime minister, now 74, had sex with a minor (the now-18 “Ruby Rubacuore”), as well as a number of other women. Those of us who have been watching Berlusconi’s antics from afar over the years know that accusations of marital infidelity are hardly anything new, although the suggestion that he dallied with a minor has raised the scandal bar a few notches.

What’s startling to most U.S. observers is that Berlusconi has gotten away with so much for so long with so little objection from his constituency. The NYT article notes:

…[T]he full drama has been airing for the 17 years that Mr. Berlusconi has been Italy’s most colorful politician, playing to an audience shaped by the sensationalist television culture he helped create in his three decades as Italy’s largest private broadcaster.

No U.S. politician rocked by so many scandals — especially sex scandals — would survive his or her next election, but the voting majority of Italians have been forgiving, probably for several reasons: Berlusconi owns and controls a number of major media outlets in Italy; he’s rich enough to afford the best lawyers and spin doctors; he’s charming and full of jokes; the opposition parties aren’t well-organized; Italians (especially the men) tend to be more forgiving of their politician’s private peccadillos; and until recently Berlusconi’s government was quietly supported by the Vatican. In short, he has been likened to a feudal lord, above reproach, whose charm and wealth have kept his subjects faithful no matter what he does in his castle’s private chambers.

The Church’s recent criticism of his actions may be especially problematic for the prime minister, as it often was for those feudal lords, however. In addition, Berlusconi is still faced with running a country that has the euro region’s second-largest debt burden. He narrowly squeaked past a no-confidence vote in December of last year, however, so it seems that he will remain in power for some time to come.

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!

We are still looking for interested students for Imagining Venice in Spring 2011. The deadline for application has been extended until mid-January. If you missed the prior deadline, please contact the study abroad office for an application packet or for further information. The course will be opened soon for those of you who have applied to enroll in the class. There is room for 4-5 more students on the trip, so please consider joining us. Happy imagining!

I couldn’t resist snapping this quick screen shot from the end credits of Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji) episode 14: His Butler, Supremely Talented. Sebastian and Ciel on a funeral gondola! Very dying-Venice, don’t you think?

(But no, Black Butler isn’t about Venice at all; the image is set on the Thames for some odd reason.)

Fore more on various anime versions of Venice, see my posts about Hetalia and Aria….

I wrote in September that I’d decided to take my own “Imagining Venice” challenge by writing a story about an imaginary Venice. Here’s a bit from the very beginning of that story, “Code of Blood,” which will be published in Corsets & Clockwork in May 2011 — exactly when our class will be leaving for Venice! And yes, we’ll be standing exactly where Chiara’s standing, although I sincerely hope we won’t hear any gunfire while we’re there.

Pushing through the shoulder-to-shoulder mob was impossible. Everybody in the city seemed to have collected along the fondamenta, from fishmongers to foreigners to fashionably dressed nobles, all pressed together without concern for rank or gender. Nobody seemed inclined to make room for anybody else.

Chiara squirmed and twisted to the water’s edge. Ornate, gilded boats bobbed around the massive bulk of the Bucintoro like cygnets around a mother swan. The Bucintoro itself, its great, two-decked body adorned with a riot of gilded clockwork sirens, hydras, putti, and zephyrs, loomed over the Molo. A removable walkway draped with flags and ribbons and wreaths swung from its top deck to the piazzetta.

And there, in the piazzetta, she spotted a crowd of ceremonially robed councilors surrounding her grandfather, the doge of Venezia, Carlo Dandolo.

Somebody jostled her and she nearly lost her footing. Grabbing the nearest arm, Chiara pulled herself away from the water with a quick apology and then darted the bystander’s merry attempt to catch her around the waist. His laughter followed her as she hid behind a group of heavyset grandmothers who were barreling their way through the crowd with the implacable dignity of age and righteousness. Chiara meekly followed in their wake.

Crossing the Ponte di Paglia was another struggle, but her advance guard of nonne battled through, spitting dire imprecations in fierce Veneziano. Chiara stayed close behind.

She had just set foot on the other side of the bridge when she heard a series of sharp reports. For a moment she thought somebody had set off fireworks, but then an explosion ripped through the air and people began screaming….

Thank you, Trisha, for giving me permission to excerpt it here! (If you’re interested in the anthology, you can pre-order it from Amazon here.)

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!

Tap the text below the photo for photos of the Jefferson Hotel in Richmond and more of Monticello.