In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 10 – The Big Finish

©Nigel Summerley

 

There was just one thing I intended not to miss on the road trip across Sicily: a night out at the Teatro Greco in Syracuse.

Happily, journey's end coincided with the last days of this year's festival of ancient drama and the chance to see an epic performance of Fedra – based on a Greek play by Euripides, but here delivered in full-blown Italian.

The amphitheatre has been on this spot for around 2,500 years, and the likes of Euripides and Aeschylus originally had their plays performed here way back. 

The place can seat about 15,000 and was getting pretty full by the time the show started.

It was not a comfortable evening – either for bottoms, squashed onto the hard terraces, or for the emotions, since, as is the way with classic tragedies, there weren't too many of the main characters left standing by the end.

What would Euripides have made of the rock stadium lighting, spooky special effects and over-the-top staging? He probably would have loved it all... The 21st-century crowd, including me, certainly did. 

©Nigel Summerley

©Nigel Summerley

©Nigel Summerley

In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 9 –Strings Attached

 

Museo dei Pupi  ©Nigel Summerley

Ortigia, the old heart of Syracuse, is joined to the mainland city by bridges and maintains its own ecccentric identity. 

Among its many attractions are the Museo dei Pupi (Puppet Museum), a tribute to the fact that puppetry has ancient historical roots here.

The museum and its motionless inhabitants seem to be tinged with a certain melancholy, not least in the case of a boy with an unusually long and pointy nose – in fact, a puppet of a puppet.

Yes, this is Pinocchio, the wooden toy who, in Carlo Collodi's classic story, wanted to be a real boy.

The puppeteering Vaccaro brothers, Saro and Alfredo, also had a dream, back in the middle of the 20th century, to stage their own version of Pinocchio. Saro made the puppets and Alfredo was the script man.

With the growing popularity of the Disney movie of the same name, they thought their luck was in – but of course, it wasn't. They devised their performance around using the music soundtrack from the movie to enhance their show, but they were soon made aware that they would have to pay royalties. They couldn't afford either the royalties or possible legal action, and in the end that brought the curtain down on their Pinocchio.

As an explanatory note in the museum next to the Vaccaros' original aged puppets preserved here explains: "Pinocchio together with his friends were unused. Little by little, their colours and smiles vanished, covered under a veil of dust."

Pinocchio and friends  ©Nigel Summerley

In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 4 – Market Forces

©Nigel Summerley

Palermo's La Vucciria market has changed a lot since Renato Guttuso painted his genuinely iconic picture of it [see this blog – An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Midnight in Sicily, 7 March 2021].

That image – probably not Guttuso's best but certainly his best known – crops up all over Vucciria. 

Everywhere you go, you will get a different story about the painting and what it represents. According to some, the artist put himself in it – some say as a young man, some say as an old man. They also say he included images of his wife and his mistress. But no one seems to know for sure whom those enigmatic figures represent...

The original is there for you to contemplate and draw your own conclusions at the Palazzo Chiaramonte, aka the Steri.

What is not in doubt is that Guttuso depicted a stunning cornucopia of foodstuffs for sale. But today the market has become a tourist magnet, with T-shirts, souvenirs and handbags taking the place of fish, fruit and vegetables.

And if you walk through the area at night, you will find yet another Vucciria: a dark, pulsating party alive with dancing, music, drinking and human noise, as if the place has entered another, wilder universe.

If Guttuso were to paint this contemporary nocturnal Vucciria, it would be very, very different from his original – but definitely just as sensual.

In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 3 – Bella... Bellissima

©Nigel Summerley

There seems to be something particularly grand about grandeur when it's a little faded, a little eccentric.

Hence, the appeal of La Bella Palermo, a palazzo property in Sicily's capital doubling as both a holiday let and a kind of living museum.

The place is lovingly curated by Francesco Cazzaniga, nephew of the owner – who is a collector of objets d'art both weird and wonderful.

With its five bedrooms and vast living areas, La Bella Palermo can be rented only by large families or groups – or couples or individuals who have a lot of money and want some palatial space to themselves.

Every day and night staying here offers up new discoveries. The rooms are so packed with paintings, books and upmarket bric-a brac, that there really never is a dull moment.

And apart from pretending that you're in The Leopard [see this blog – An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – The Leopard, 15 March 2021], you are right in the beating heart of Palermo, a few paces from seductive little streets and the Vucciria market [see this blog – An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Midnight in Sicily, 7 March 2021].

La Bella Palermo is part of the Palazzo Pantelleria; originally a 14th-century fort, it was transformed into a palace in the 16th century.

More information: https://www.labellapalermo.com/

©Nigel Summerley

©Nigel Summerley

In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 1 – Dead Heat

 

This blog has covered Naples extensively – in the two series See Naples and Live and See Naples and Live More – but it hasn't touched on the fact that for the first six decades of the 19th century the city was the capital of what was known as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

The two Sicilies – the whole of southern Italy and the island of Sicily – constituted a kingdom under the rule of the Spanish Bourbon royal family until the unification of Italy.

That unification was a forced marriage of northern Italy and the south which remains a strained relationship even today.

The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies – the south and Sicily – still feels like a different country to that of Rome and Milan.

After spending time in Naples, one can't help finding Palermo to be something of a tribute act to that greater city. Palermo has the churches, the art, the markets, the food, the narrow back alleys, the history of mafia wars and bodies in the streets, and the juxtapositions of light and dark, of life and death... but somehow it doesn't come close to the edginess and perversity of Naples.

However, there's one Napolitan-style aspect in which Palermo can chalk up at least a draw: Naples has catacombs and cadavers aplenty (see this blog See Naples and Live) but the catacombs of the Capuchins in Palermo are a genuinely stunning near-death experience for the visitor.

It all started with the Capuchin monks preserving their fellows' bodies, but in the 19th century it became a fashionable thing to do to have you and your family put on show rather than buried.

Hundreds and hundreds of skeletons hang here in row upon row, many still dressed in their best clothes. In some cases, the clothes have worn much better than their occupants – the material of a dress still has its colour, the fabric still holds together...

The inescapable message is that death comes for all of us... it's the ultimate levelling up. Or maybe that should be levelling down.

They are all here: men, women, old, young... little toddlers in their toddler clothes. Nameless but every one the remainder of a life just like yours or mine or Biden's or Trump's...

Many were plague victims, so sometimes you will be confronted by whole families of skeletons with father, mother and children – all dressed for life but now long dead.

It's unmissable and only €5 to enter. Although I'm not sure what to think about the fact it's free for under-sixes. We all need to face up to death – but maybe that's just a tad too early to be forced to do it?

See Naples and Live – 12: Half Man, Half Fish

 

Strange figures abound on the streets of Naples – some so odd that there is not always agreement as to who they even are...

Just up the road from the apartment in which I stayed in the Universita district was the bas-relief of this intriguing character, adorning a wall.

Some refer to him as "the hairy man", as if he were a kind of urban Bigfoot. But the large dagger he carries has led to him being given more specific identities.

Some claim that this is a depiction of Orion – the giant huntsman who ended up placed among the stars by Zeus.

But most people – including me – prefer to see this as the much more fascinating Cola Pesce (or Nick the Fish), a legendary character bound up strongly with Naples and with Sicily, and also with the ubiquitous Sirens who once held terrifying sway along the Odyssean coasts of south-western Italy (of which more soon in this blog).

Cola (short for Niccolo) was a boy who spent so much time swimming that his mother said he might as well be a fish. And that's what he more or less became, spending most of his time in the sea. When he wanted to travel long distances, he allowed himself to be swallowed by a large fish – and then, when he reached his destination, he used his knife to cut the fish open from the inside and escape.

The king heard of Cola's prowess and used him to locate treasure in the Bay of Naples, and also to report back on how the island of Sicily was supported by vast pillars rising from the seabed.

To find out how deep Cola could go, the king asked him to follow a cannonball fired into the sea. Cola did as he was ordered and caught the cannonball way down in the depths... but then the sea mysteriously closed over him and trapped him there forever.

The image of "the hairy man" or perhaps "the wavy man" is said to have been found in the 13th century but it's been argued that it is much, much older.

It certainly looks like Cola, the boy who grew up to live – and die – in the sea.

But there are other depictions of the marine hero... See below for a more contemporary one, also from the streets of Naples.

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Sicily

Sicily’s health chief, Ruggero Razza, is reported to have resigned as an investigation was taking place into alleged falsification of Covid figures to avoid the island being put into strict lockdown measures.

False accounting? Corruption within the authorities? Callous disregard for people's lives?

Could such things really be taking place in Sicily?

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – The Leopard

So much of the reading that I've been doing about southern Italy has pointed to The Leopard... so, a bit late in the day, I've finally got around to reading this classic novel by Tomasi di Lampedusa.

Ostensibly about one noble Sicilian family facing the reality of the upheaval surrounding the unification of Italy in 1861, it is actually a universal story of human beings, their relationships, their lives and their deaths.

It is also, above all, about Sicily... and about everything having to change in order for everything to remain the same...

The Leopard has been hailed as one of the greatest novels ever written – and I certainly wouldn't argue with that.

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Midnight in Sicily

Peter Robb's sprawling book Street Fight In Naples (see this blog An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Street Fight In Naples) provides some wonderful insights into that city's amazing history, but his later Midnight In Sicily is more focused and even better.

The mafia, politics, violence and corruption loom large – it's about southern Italy after all – but, as with the previous book, there is also much about art.

And especially the remarkable Renato Guttuso, a maverick in the Picasso mould, whose life and – especially – death were bound up with those themes of politics, corruption and organised crime.

His relationship (both artistic and intimate) with his muse, Marta Marzotto, is love story, soap opera, scandal and tragedy, all wrapped up together, and Robb's interview with Marzotto herself is a wonderful piece of theatre.

Guttuso's passionate style managed to make La Vucciria (above), his 1974 study of Palermo's market, as much about hunger as about food. And his many erotic studies of Marta Marzotto (below) encompassed a furious desire as well as an appreciation of beauty.

An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague – 14: Afterword

 

So I made it there and back again. Not at the time that I planned or quite in the way that I planned it... but I made it.

In the end, the gods and the winds and, above all, some wonderful people along the way ensured that the odyssey happened... all the way from London to the Aegean, over the Peloponnese to southern Italy and Sicily, along the Odyssean Coast, to the realm of Circe and finally to Ithaca.

For this to have been possible in a window of time between one wave of the plague and the next makes me one of the most fortunate of travellers.

It was six weeks of hard journeying (after six months of hard planning and re-planning) but with many moments and many places that were truly blissful.

My rather shorter account of the odyssey was published in the December 2020 issue of The Oldie magazine; and I must thank editor Harry Mount (another Odyssean traveller) for having the faith that I would complete the mission... against whatever the odds.

Since I got back, I think I've felt a bit like Frodo after he returned to Hobbiton... I did what I set out to do but it was an experience that took a lot as well as gave a lot.

Now, like Frodo, do I wait for that last journey to the Grey Havens? Or, more like Bilbo, will I be troubled by that unquenchable desire for one more adventure?