Imagining Venice

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.

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!

I have finally been shamed into posting a blog. Dr. Dru out blogs me by three to one! But I have not been sitting idly by doing nothing. I fly to Richmond, Virgina on Wednesday to go to the Southeastern College Art Conference where I will present a paper on Imagining Venice. The session is entitled The Renaissance of the Pilgrimage. Our trip to Venice is a pilgrimage to the sites of my art heroes and my paper describes our journey to create the course and the trip. I would post it here as a manifesto but I am still looking around for a journal that might want to publish the paper. It certainly will be posted under blackboard for all of you who enroll for the spring. Speaking of enrolling, remember that our class is from 4-6pm on Wednesdays. We have been told that there will be an information session soon but I don’t have the date and time yet. Watch for info from Study Abroad and this site!

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

The photo to the left shows my makeshift workspace today as I abandon the overheated loft office of my apartment for the (relatively) cooler dining-room table. I’m taking this day off in my lecture schedule to work on my short story about an alternative, alchemical Venice.

“Imagining Venice” isn’t just a task for our students, you see. Earlier this year, when I signed a contract to write a short YA romance for an upcoming anthology, I decided that I was going to take the opportunity to imagine a Venice of my own and set my story within it. My Venice is one in which the Venetians made alchemical pacts with the elements around them, especially the undine of the lagoon and Adriatic. It’s a Venice in which that pact successfully thwarted the French invasion of 1797 and allowed the republic to retain its independence. It’s a Venice in which, on May 4, 1815, my young heroine is caught in one last, brutal French assault against the city as its alchemical bond with the sea is about to expire….

It’s a Venice I wish had been: a Venice in which Doge Lodovico Manin had been able to rally the resources and military might to block the French and to prevent the fall of the once-great republic. But imagining that Venice has led me to immerse myself even more deeply in this Venice, as the books and maps (and one Italian dictionary) on my dining room table will attest….

I hope our students will find themselves drawn into similar research efforts as they pursue their own creative interpretations of La Serenissima!

In preparation for our course in the spring, Dr. Dru and I need to brush up on our Italian. She needs brushing up; I need to completely remodel my language skills. So to that end, I am going to try something different at Friday Open Studio. We will be painting and learning Italian at the same time. I think we will have about an hour of Italian beginning at 3:30. Before that, I will be available for artistic commentary and watercolor skill building. Open Studio is open to anyone and if you are interested in coming to Venice, you should drop in to learn some of the language. Open Studio is held on Friday afternoons from 2-5 pm in my classroom B1. B1 is located next to the ceramic studio in the building to the west of the Ahmanson Science Center. Open Studio begins September 10th. Ci vediamo li!