Bitetto, Italy, Hosts Works of American Sculptor Greg Wyatt

This article also appears on our Italian Journal page.

The beautiful little town of Bitteto, just outside of Bari in Puglia, Italy will host an exhibit of world famous American sculptor Greg Wyatt. Mr. Wyatt is most noted for his cast bronze figures in the style of Spiritual Realism. Just some of the places where his sculptures appear include New York City (Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Columbia University, Gramercy Park), Washington, D.C. (US Department of State, US House of Representatives, Georgetown University), Paris, France and the UK. In Italy, his work has appeared in Florence at the Giardino Bardini, Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and Casa di Dante and in Sicily, at the Museo Archeologico Regionale di Agrigento.

The current exhibit in Bitetto, called "Alle Origini", is being held at the Convento Domenicani and the Santuario del Beato Giocamo from April 26 - May 24, 2009. This event is presented by the town of Bitteto and the American Friends of Bitteto Foundation. Bitetto and the Foundation are working together on a series of initiatives showcasing historical and artistic endeavors.

To learn more about Greg Wyatt and see images of his work visit g-wyatt.com.

Announcing the Release of Traditional Southern Italian Mandolin and Fiddle Tunes Book and CD Set

This article also appears on our Italian Journal page.

It’s finally here! Mel Bay Publications has released John LaBarbera’s long awaited book teaching the music he’s been perfecting for decades. Here you will find the authentic folk traditions of Campania, Calabria, Puglia, Sicily and Sardinia. The music is placed in context with detailed descriptions of the songs and dances, along with historical and technical information about the tarantella and pizzica.

The music is written in standard notation and mandolin tablature with guitar and mandolin chord accompaniment. The CD helps the student better understand the rhythms and picking styles of this rarely heard music and aids in precise practice.

John was the first to notate Southern Italian folk music when he found himself in the midst of its revival in 1970’s Italy. Until that point, the music had never been written down and was passed orally through the generations (to learn more about these experiences, listen to John’s podcast here).

You can purchase Traditional Southern Italian Mandolin and Fiddle Tunes here.

To view a slideshow about the history of the mandolin in Italy, click here.

A Troubadour's Journey, Part 2

This is a transcript of the podcast appearing on our Podcast Page.

Carolyn: In Part 1, John made his way from America to Italy to London and back to Italy again. With his guitars and mandolins, he met other street musicians in Florence and they formed the group, 'Pupi e Fresedde' which means Puppets and Bread. Together they became an integral part of the 1970's revival of Southern Italian folk music.

In 1977, Pupi e Fresedde toured in the United States with the Domestic Resurrection Circus of the famous Bread & Puppet Theater, based in Vermont. It's astonishing but, despite the similar name, Bread & Puppet was not affiliated with Pupi e Fresedde.

Bread and Puppet was a politically radical puppet theater, founded in the 1960s. It's signature was 10 to 15 foot high puppets that they used in anti-war and other political demonstrations.

Stefan Brecht, the son of poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht, devoted much of his life to documenting the events of Bread & Puppet Theater. John and Stefan's paths would soon cross in a small New York cafe.

John: So then in '76 when we were doing the show at the Washington square church at 4th street. First he wanted me to go to the Chelsea hotel, and I said no, I'm not going there.

Carolyn: (laughter) Are you nuts?

John: I'm busy, I'm going to be down at the cafe. across from the church, come and visit me there. So then he said, "OK, OK, I'll be there." So we sit at a table at Caffe Vittorio, La Lanterna on McDougal Street and he starts asking me, so what about this music, what does it mean? I didn't know what he was doing. He said he was doing research.

Fast forward to 1986 when John, now living in New York, visits his old friends at the Bread & Puppet Theater.

John: So about 10 years later I was up in Vermont at the Bread and Puppet Theater and there were all these books out. And Stefan Brecht, had been writting an anthology, he's got 2 thick volumes of almost every single day in the life of Bread and Puppet. It's his lifelong work. So I see this book and I start looking thru it. Then I start seeing photographs of when we were in Vermont.

Carolyn: Not only were John's photos in the book, but an entire chapter was devoted to the conversation he had with Stefan 10 years earlier, at Cafe Vittorio, about Southern Italian folk music.

Rewind to 1977. After the U.S. tour, John, along with Pupi e Fresedde, returned to Italy. As they performed throughout Northern Italy, the rhythms and lyrics of Southern Italian Folk Music were heard in many places, for the very first time. John lived this dream for years, but then things started to get complicated.

John: from the early 70's to 79. I would come back to NY and as soon as I came back to NY they would call me, to do like the Biennale in Venice, or something. And I was so torn. I wanted to go back but at the same time my father had a heart attack and then I felt, you know, I wanted to be close my family, it was hard, it was getting hard. Now I had met Alessandra. I met her one of the occasions when I came back to visit my family, I met her in 1975-76.

Carolyn: Alessandra is Alessandra Belloni, who would become a singer, composer, and world renowned percussionist. But no one knew that at the time.

John: She came to visit me in Italy and met me and the group, Pupi e Fresedde.

Carolyn: So she got to see what you guys were doing?

John: And by that time the revival was really pretty strong.

Carolyn: Had the two of you been talking about this revival of Southern Italian music?

John: No, we just liked it and then she wound up writing to me and said you know, if you come back to NY, I want to start a group and I think we can do something like this in NY. and I said well, I don't know. I didn't think it was going to be the same because I was used to being in Italy, playing in the piazzas and playing these beautiful places and how could I recreate that again? So she kind of like convinced me. She said she met this actor, Claudio Saponi, and he does all these different characters. He does Arlechinno, he does Pulchinello. So then when I came back I met with him. So this is around 1980. So I decided to stay in New York.

I would supply all the music, I had guitar and mandolin. In italy we had violins, frame drums, and then all these different voices, and all we had was just me playing the music and Alessandra singing and I said, this is not enough. But we started to do some stuff, and we would go to the Italian communities like in Brooklyn, out to LI. The older people, they remembered this kind of stuff, but the younger people didn't know what we were doing. They never heard this kind of music before.

Carolyn: And they weren't part of the revival, certainly.

John: No, that never touched them, because American-Italian immigration was totally on a different path. Unless someone's grandparents remembered it, from before they left Italy, maybe 50-60 years ago. So we had a lot to do. We have to teach these people about their culture, about this music because it got lost and they're not going to know about it. And I really loved it. So we felt like we wanted to bring it into the Italian communities and maybe the younger people would start listening to it and liking it and let it grow. Because for me, I didn't know it existed. I went there and had to learn it and be exposed to it and fell in love with it and I felt like I need to bring it back here. At that time after playing with Pupi E Fresedde all those years, I had started to transcribe all the music.

Carolyn: So it was written down?

John: I wrote it down.

Carolyn: For the first time, maybe?

John: Yeah, I started collecting it. I had suitcases full of this music.

Carolyn: So this is music that even back in the 50's hadn't been written?

John: No. Nobody would write that down.

Carolyn: John, Alessandra and Claudio continued to try to get their music heard. It wasn't an easy road, and at times it was quite discouraging. Overall, John's experiences performing in America were not what he was accustomed to in Italy.

John: Coming back to New York, with me in my little Volkswagon, traveling to Brooklyn with costumes, props. We tried to recreate it with just the 3 of us. Here I was coming from a whole big troupe and traveling all over Europe and here we are my little Volkswagen trying to bring Italian music.

Carolyn: From the sublime to the ridiculous!

John: Yeah. But Alessandra had a vision to pursue. I couldn't feel that same enthusiasm because I was still nostalgic for being in Italy and doing it there on a grand scale and then starting all over again, playing in the small little school yard, or a school gym, I was like, oh, this is so depressing!

And you know, in Italy, we would go to the town and they would give us the town wine and the food, and it was like, where is this all? What's wrong? But then we kept pursuing it. One time we had to play for this agent, they didn't know where to place us. So one time they said, "Oh, we have a tour for you guys and we want you to play in the A&P in the Italian Deli department"

Carolyn: Where? In New York?

John: In Long Island. We would go from one A&P to the next, playing in front of the Italian Deli section.

Carolyn: Oh my gosh, here you're playing piazzas, palazzos and concert halls in Europe and you're here and you're playing the deli section!

John: And people would say, "Excuse me, I've got to get my rolls!"

Carolyn: In those moments, you had to have doubted, you had to have been thinking...

John: I know, what am I doing here? I felt like we were this tiny little melody trying to survive in the rash of noise.

Carolyn: So how did it develop? Was is just a series of small steps or was there..?

John: Yeah, a series of small steps. I got a job working in Brooklyn at a senior citizen's center, they were all retired Italian musicians there, that were like the string virtuosi from the '20's. I had to get them together to do a concert every Wednesday for the dance.

Carolyn: So there was a dance at the Center?

John: Yes, and they were all these mandolinists, retired mandolin players. And I would put together groups with them. So I got to know the people in the Italian community and there was a church there and this Irish priest, Fr. Kelly.

Carolyn: That's ironic.

John: I know. He loved us. He'd always bring us back, really be pushing us to do things in St. Finbar's in Brooklyn. So we wound up doing a lot of things in Brooklyn, for senior citizens. They thought, it was entertaining for them. They knew Pulchinella, so we'd do a lot of comedy skits and stuff.

Carolyn: So it sounds like in this phase you're rekindling these traditions with this group of people who knew them when they were children, and here it is again.

John: Yeah, that's how it all started. So I knew that the music needed to have more musicians and more arrangements to it. Then the people that I met from Bread and Puppet, they were living on 9th street. They loved the music because they remembered Pupi E Fresedde, and they loved the music and they wanted to be part of it somehow.

Carolyn: So how did you go from this to the more polished group that you have now with Alessandra? Were you calling yourselves Giulliari di Piazza at the time?

John: Yeah. And then I started to do more polished arrangements with the music, writing out parts, making it as easy for the musicians as possible and yet letting them hear the style. We've had so many musicians working with us over the years, people who never heard it before. Most of them weren't even Italian; they just liked the music. So then we started to get a grant. But what really helped us to really keep it going was the fact that we had a friend from New York University, who was the chairman of the Italian Department, Luigi Ballerini, who saw a lot of potential in us and he supported us a lot and gave us the space at NYU. Because where were we going to meet, in the cafe? We couldn't put anything together there. As we went on we tried to do more elaborate productions, and then I think our first opera was, we did the Cantata dei Pastori.

We stuck to it all these years. And then I wanted to write more for film and theater. I didn't know it was going to go from classical guitar to writing for theater and film, but how things evolve. But all thru this music, which is what kept leading me, throughout my whole life, in this direction.

Carolyn: The performance troupe that John founded with Alessandra Belloni, called I Giulliari di Piazza or the Jesters of the Square, is still performing the folk music of Southern Italy. John composed, arranged and performed this music with Alessandra and the troupe for theater productions of Dance of the Ancient Spider and Techno Tarantella, as well as various CDs they recorded together.

On his own, John arranges and composes music for stage and screen. From off Broadway productions with John Turturo to the soundtrack of the award winning documentary, Sacco and Vanzetti, to writing a book called Southern Italian Mandolin and Fiddle Tunes, published by Mel Bay, John continues his troubadour's journey. No one knows where he'll turn up next.

To learn more about John, go to his website, www.johntlabarbera.com.

To download some of John's music, go here.

To learn more about the musical program in Siena, founded by Joseph Del Principe, go to www.sienamusic.org.

A Troubadour's Journey, Part 1

This is a transcript of the podcast appearing on our Podcast page.

Carolyn: John T. LaBarbera is an Italian-American who has been playing traditional Italian music for over 30 years. He has recorded numerous CDs and composed many film soundtracks, including the critically acclaimed documentary Sacco and Vanzetti. His theater credits include several off-Broadway productions, most notably Souls of Naples with John Turturro, and productions by the Italian Music and Theater Company, I Giullari di Piazza, which he co-founded with world renowned percussionist, Alessandra Belloni.

For JLB, the vision of someday going to Italy was planted in his mind as a child, listening to his grandfather's stories of his own boyhood in Italy. His grandfather died without returning to his homeland, but the dream stayed with John as he grew.

John's Italian journeys brought him into contact with amazing people, unexpected twists and turns, and experiences that spanned the sublime to the ridiculous. Little did he know he would play an integral role in the 1970's revival of Southern Italian folk music, including the Tarantella Pizzica. John would team with Alessandra Belloni and bring this music to America, laying the groundwork for its continued performance.

But that's the end of our story. Let's start at the beginning. John loved music and had his own band at 13. He continued studying classical guitar at Connecticut's Hart School of Music and met a professor who would change the course of John's life.

John: I got a degree in classical guitar and my last year in college, a friend of my mine who was also teaching there, he was a professor, he said, "you know, you belong in Italy". His name was del Principe. And he said, "you know, I've been going to Siena and I want to start a school there. I want to take students from the college." So, Del Principe kind of like gave me a scholarship to go to Italy and to help him out, you know, it was kind of like he was teaching me a lot of stuff so he made me like his assistant.

Carolyn: Did you have any sense at this point how long you would be in Italy?

John: No. Actually, my real plan, because you know I was fascinated by Italy but somehow, I knew that when I graduated from college I was thinking of going to London, because I had a teacher who had invited me. He said I could try to help you get some work in London at the Guitar Center. Del Principe said, "You know, come to Italy. Come for the summer and at the end of the summer, go to England."

Carolyn: John had no idea what his friend, Joseph Del Principe, had in store for him.

John: He was a student at the Accademia Chigiana, where he studied composition and there was this Principessa Segardi who has the Piccolo Teatro and she's giving us a space in Siena. It's a palace, a 17th century palace and we could have the school there. So, my entrance way to Italy I wound up living in a palace. So the room I was in had a chandelier, this Venetian glass chandelier, with all these secret passageways, canopy bed, I was living in a dream world. It's still there. And the Baronessa also had a dance school there. She loved music and she was a sponsor for Del Principe to bring his school to Siena.

Carolyn: John's journey as a troubadour was about to begin.

John: We would rehearse and, at that time I really loved Renaissance music. With Del Prindipe, he was a composer but he also was very close to the early music. At the school we had some very fine musicians with us there who were Renaissance musicians who were among the first groups from the '50s that started the whole revival in the U.S. So I felt like, OK, here I am in this medieval city playing this Renaissance music, living in a palace. And we would go to the towns in Tuscany and play concerts in the towns, San Sepulcro, San Gimignano, Monteriggioni.

He wanted us to not only just to work on our music, performing our music, but also, realize that you're in Italy, and it's a very special place. And that you have to know the people, hang out in the piazza, spend time knowing the culture. Now I feel like I'm at home, you know. This place is amazing. Here I am in a foreign country and I felt like this is my home. Everything just seemed very natural to me. And it was Siena, you know, and my family was from Southern Italy. But there was something about Siena, you know, still to this day I'm so attached to Siena.

The main concert that we did at the end of the summer was in the duomo of Siena. And then we went to Assisi. We'd take a choral group and we had a full orchestra as well. We were traveling with a full orchestra, a choir, and chamber ensembles. I would always lead the Renaissance and Medieval music.

While I was in Siena that first summer, '73, we went to Florence, my first tour to Florence. And one of the students said, "You know, there's a music school, a graduate school in Florence and they teach guitar there." So then I said, maybe I should go find out about it. So then I went to audition and they said, "You know, we could give you a scholarship to study here and our teacher was supposed to have Segovia come and do a method class in the fall."

So now, here I am, I auditioned, I got accepted into this school, and I had this job offer in London. So I was like really torn. What am I going to do now? So when the Siena program finished, which was the end of August, the school in Florence wasn't supposed to start until October. So I had like, a month. I had to go to London to find out about this Guitar Center where I could teach.

Carolyn: At this point, John left for London in true troubadour fashion.

John: So I leave Italy and at that time I didn't have a backpack or anything like that. All I had was my guitar, heavy guitar case, and like heavy suitcases with handles. I was loaded with books. So the thing like weighed a ton, getting on the train, schlepping everything. So many trains in the middle of the night, with no seat. so I would sleep on the floor. I would lay on the floor and go to sleep. I would sit on my suitcase, that was my seat, for like hours, up to London. When I got there the suitcase broke, the handle.

Carolyn: Oh, no! So now you have to hold it with both hands?

John: Well, I rigged up a thing with my belt.

Carolyn: OK, McGyver lives!

John: And you know, I had to schlep it with, you know, my guitar. At the same time I'm carrying this bottle of really good Chianti which they said, "this is a very special Chianti" and I wanted to bring it as a present, to my friends. So, I was like holding onto that bottle of Chianti, all throughout that train trip.

Carolyn: Sleeping with it.

John: Ah, everything! I wouldn't let it out of my sight. And it was in one of those old fashioned Chianti bottles, remember?

Carolyn: With the basket? The raffia?

John: Yeah. I wanted to give it as a gift to my friends. And I started hitchhiking up to Manchester. So then I wound up hitchhiking all over England. I went to that Guitar Center but it seemed like, they really didn't have any work for me. They said, "Well, we can't really promise you how many students you'll have" and I was like, you know, this is very strange. I was like walking around London and you know what was very strange for me, I was born in New York City, I'm used to a big city. But after being a Siena for a month or two, I'm used that walled city. And the security, that small, I know everybody in the piazza, I see the same people up and down. I got so used to that, that closeness, that when I went to London I felt, this city's too big for me, I don't know what I'm doing here. I've got to get back to Italy.

Carolyn: So John returned to Italy, the country that never really let him go. But as usual, things didn't go as expected.

John: So I'm going to go to the school in Florence. They have a student meeting introducing the new students and the faculty and everything. So when I get back there, they tell me, "Oh, we have some bad news for you." "Oh, now what?" So he's like, "Well, your guitar teacher quit, so there's not going to be a guitar program". I was looking for that for my graduate studies. So now I said, now what?

So they said, "Well, we can, you could study music history" and I was like, music history? I didn't really want to study music history, but I said, OK I'll try it out. It was a graduate school for the arts, so they had fine arts, too. They had painters and lot of art restoration. There were people there working on the restoration from the flood.

Carolyn: In the '60's?

John: Yes, at the Suboratu (sp?) Studio they had, they were incredible. And they taught that, they taught art restoration.

Carolyn: What an atmosphere that must have been!

John: It was a beautiful villa. Actually, it was called Villa Schifanoia. Believe it or not! And it was run by the nuns from Rosary College in Indiana.

Carolyn: In Indiana? All right, that took a second to get it into my head!

John: I know! Believe it or not, they had this villa outside of Florence on the way to Fiesole, in this small little burb called San Domenico. And that was a beautiful villa. And they had the art studios there, the music studios there. I was like in heaven. But I was kind of disappointed because I was gonna study guitar. But I met some of the people there and they were like, "Whatss the matter with you?" and I said I'm not gonna have guitar lessons, I'm gonna have to study music history. And this guy, Rob Saunders, he was an art major. He said, "Well, you need a place to stay?" I said "Yeah, I'm like, staying in this youth hostel, I don't have any money" and he said, "I'm looking for a roommate, but you can stay at my place until I find a roommate."

So I wound up staying with him. So the, while I was staying with him I needed to make some money so I used to play by the Uffizi museum

Carolyn: Just like it is today, the space outside of the Uffizi museum in the 1970's was filled with musicians, singers and acrobats. While John was playing his music, one of his fellow street performers was none other than Roberto Benigni, who honed his comedic skills in a clown and comedy troupe. Years later Benigni would win an Oscar for La Vita e' Bella or Life is Beautiful. But of course, no one knew that then. Just like no one knew that this is where John's journey would intersect with the folk music of Southern Italy.

John: I played classical guitar and then I met this violinist, this Dutch girl from Holland and we started to do duets. So when I was playing that's when I met these street performers. These 3 guys singing beautiful harmonies, and I became friends with them.

They played a little guitar, they all played the frame drum, they were masters of it. And they used to make their own tambourines. So when I first met them they would say, you know, we're looking for a guitarist and we'd go to someone's house and they'd start singing and then they'd start showing me how to play. They would tell me, this chord, that chord. None of the music was written out. They didn't write music and none of it was, it was just oral tradition. They were all from Puglia, all from Taranto.

Carolyn: So were they singing the tarantellas?

John: Yeah. Some of the stuff that we've recorded later, we still do as part of our repertoire.

Until that time I had not known of the Italian folk music. But the interesting thing was, in the '70's was when the first wave of the Italian folk revival started. And that's because before that, none of the folk music was really recorded, it was only sung in the fields. People didn't perform folk music. It was done outside, while people were working.

Then in the '50's, a musicologist named Alan Lomax. He was studying the folk music from different countries. And he teamed up with an Italian musicologist and together in the '50's they started to record people from the villages and towns and they put out an album in 1963.

In the '60's, very few people had record players. But some of these records were starting to become available. So the music started to become more accessible. Then by '68-'69, the music was there but you know nobody was really listening to it. In Italy they were listening tot the Beatles and Rolling Stones. By '71-'72, people began to see, you know, our folk music is dying out. People are just listening to American music. And the people weren't singing in the fields anymore like they used to. So a lot of the students, it was like a political movement to bring back the folk music, to revive it. We started out doing stuff in the piazzas.

Carolyn: So you had some costumes.

John: They would make these costumes and you know they had the masks, commedia dell'arte masks, and they would make their own instruments, the tambourines.

Carolyn: How did they know what kind of costumes to wear, the colors to wear?

John: They remembered that from their towns, from their growing up. They actually remembered from their parents and grandparents because they were all from these small towns. You know, a lot of those traditions were dying out. But then they started doing research also. But they knew a lot of these customs that were still done in the piazzas. because in the 50's, there were still, there were like storytellers used to come to town.
And so they were very connected to it. But no one was really doing it before this generation on a performance level.

Carolyn: What kind of a response were they getting for their performances?

John: People were, you could see, people would gather around in the streets of Florence. Of course this is a southern tradition, it wasn't very popular in Tuscany. And people were really interested with it, they never saw anything like this before.

Carolyn: Over time, this group was sponsored by the city of Florence and chose the name, Pupi e Fresedde. Pupi means puppets, and fresedde is a type of bread. Puppets and Bread toured throughout Italy and was sponsored by different facets of Italian Tourism. One of the most famous programs was called Arrivano del Mare, or They Arrive from the Sea.

John: That was actually sponsored by Teatro di Roma. It was our group and several other theater groups together that they had chosen. So, the Teatro di Roma organized it and they set it up in all the towns, they had posters. They would organize a tour of the different coastal towns of the Adriatic and Mediterranean coasts of Italy. We would go to the town, a location a little bit outside the main port and we would all get on a boat, and we would all assemble on the boat, all the theatrical troupes, and we would make a circle and go around the harbor and then come in thru the main port of the town. And then they'd open up the boat and we'd all come out. We'd all be in costume, with our instruments, and do a parade, una parata.

Carolyn: I assume then all the spectators are lined up at the port at the main piazza waiting for you?

John: Yeah and then they would follow us. Then we would go, in the town they would have different locations, like they actually had shows lined up for the rest of the day. That was our entranceway and then we would go and then say at 3:00, we have this troupe playing and then at 4:00 another group, and all thru the night at different times in the evening, It was really nice, it was like a festival, but it was a moving festival on the coast.

Carolyn: That's the end of Part 1 of A Troubadour's Journey, the story of John T. La Barbera's musical adventures. Please join us for Part 2, when John returns to New York with his love for Southern Italian folk music. As his unconventional story continues, unexpected people and events shape his experiences.

To learn more about John, go to his website, www.johntlabarbera.com.

To download some of John's music, go here.

To learn more about the musical program in Siena, founded by Joseph Del Principe, go to www.sienamusic.org.

Italy and Chocolate: An Affair to Remember

This is the transcipt of the podcast appearing on our podcast page.

Carolyn: Ahhh, chocolate! It makes everything better. It enhances romance, creates mouthwatering desserts and warms cold, wintery nights. Beautiful cacao trees grow in humid climates and are graced with small, pink flowers. The fruit of the tree is a brightly colored pod containing 20 to 60 seeds, or what we know as cocoa beans.

Here to speak with us about the history of chocolate and Italy is food historian, writer and lecturer Francine Segan. Francine appears regularly on radio and TV including CBS, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel and of course, the Food Network. Francine is the author of such wonderful cookbooks as The Philosopher’s Kitchen, Movie Menus, Shakespeare’s Kitchen and the Opera Lovers CookBook.

In this program, Francine takes us on a journey through the history of Italy’s unique relationship with chocolate, past and present.

Francine: For me, chocolate and Italy are extremely tied. The first connection is that Columbus was the first European to set eyes on cocoa beans. On his 3rd trip over, he was gathering things, looking for trading vessels and he saw a Mayan trading ship near what’s now modern day Honduras, he got on the ship and with sign language he saw this basket filled with these beans. He called them almonds, he couldn’t tell what they were, he’d never seen this. He knew they were very expensive so he wanted to bring some back to Queen Isabella. So he was the first European, so he “discovered” cocoa beans just like he “discovered” America and brought them over to Europe. So he’s the very first.

So it’s got, like immediately we’ve got the Italian connection. And then the next big wave of connection just from an historic point of view. What happened was then, the Spanish were the main ones who were doing first trade. So chocolate first came into Spain, but then scooted right into Italy. When the Italians got a hold of it, they immediately, just like they do with ingredients, they played around.

The Italians first saw chocolate as a drink. That is the way chocolate was for most of its history, 90% of its history. It was a ceremonial drink in the New World, when it went to Mexico it was a drink. In Spain all they did was make hot chocolate, just like, that’s what they had heard that it’s done in the New World, that’s all they did.

The Italians used it as drink, they did it as a drink, but again, because they liked playing with food, they said, “Wait a minute! We have espresso. I think espresso and hot chocolate would go well together.” So they mixed it.

So they made a drink called bicerin which was very popular up in the north, near Torino, where it was created. The saucer was really invented because of hot chocolate. The fancy ladies were drinking the hot chocolate and it would spill on their gowns. So they started to make more of a bigger base of a saucer and more of a base for where the space goes for the cup. And that’s all because of hot chocolate.

Carolyn: This was just the beginning of Italian innovations with chocolate.

Francine: The Italians said, “Wait a minute! This is a seed. We have other seeds, fennel seeds. We cook with fennel seeds. We could grind these. We can cook with this. Why are we only making a drink? Let’s grind this and see what happens. They were the very first. It is not the Mexicans with mole sauce. Mole sauce was a sauce that was an old, old Mexican recipe, but only the addition of chocolate happened a little bit later actually than the Italians.

It’s kind of like that double invention. They both came up with it. I’m not saying the Italians came over and showed the Mexicans. It was kind of, both of them did it at the same-ish time, but it was the Italians first. More documented. They would grate it, grind these little cocoa beans after they toasted them, put it on polenta, risotto and pasta dishes. Then they did a lot of sauces for wild game.

Rabbit, duck, boar that had a little cocoa. Little chocolate. And still today you’ll find it, especially in the Piedmont area and Tuscany. Just that little hint of chocolate. Again, just like a seasoning. It’s not incredibly overpowering. The Italians were very wise about how they just put things in little tiny measures so you taste every ingredient. Now all the gourmet restaurants have some kind of chocolate savory dish. But the Italians were the first.

They were also the first to flavor chocolate with flowers. There was a very famous scientist who was actually a physician to Cosimo de Medici and his name is Francesco Redi. But he’s also known for saying, “If I put some nice jasmine flowers into these ground up cocoa beans I think it will taste good.” And so he made a flower infused chocolate which nowadays, we infuse flowers in so many flavors. But he was the first.

Carolyn: No chocolate journey is complete without understanding how it took on its most famous form: chocolate candy.

Francine: and so he made a flower infused chocolate which nowadays, we infuse flowers in so many flavors. But he was the first.

Italy then played more and they made the very first paper coated piece of candy. What happened was in the middle of the 1800s there was a war, there was embargo, there were shortages. And Northern Italy, the very rich part who loved their chocolate didn’t get enough chocolate from the New World. The ships were too busy fighting.

So they said, “What are we going to do? We need to expand, extend this chocolate, we need to stick in some other ingredient.” But they don’t like to put fillers; Italians love pure flavors. So they said, “We don’t have any more cocoa beans, we’re running out, what can we do to expand it a little? We have hazelnuts. Let’s toast it, grind it, see if it goes together.”

It was delicious. And that’s how was born a candy that’s the #1 selling candy in Italy now, Gianduiotti. That’s that little upside canoe looking candy of hazelnut and chocolate. And then in the 1800’s they made it out of the machines and it comes into this little long form and it was about 50% hazelnut and 50% chocolate. So they got to have double the candy for half the chocolate and they wrapped it in paper so they could toss it out at Carnevale as a way to introduce it to people.

It became a huge, huge best seller and it was an Italian chocolate company called Caffarel who invented it. And still today, they’re up in Piemonte making wonderful chocolate and specializing in Gianduiotti and other candies.

and that whole wonderful arc of the Italians being so fantastic with chocolate treating it as the spice that it really is, and using it in savory foods, playing around with it and creating wonderful candies that are floral infused or treated with hazelnut. Of course they invented Nutella.

That was the same thing. A shortage after WWII caused the need for the Italians to say whoops, what are we going to do? We have expand this chocolate. So they took the Gianduiotti idea and did the hazelnut but made it a little bit more creamy so it can be a spread.

And Ferrero who makes Nutella just recently did a wonderful show in the town where the factory is located, in Alba, an art exhibit, artifacts and antiques, tracing chocolate’s history from the ancient Mayan times thru to today. Showing the way the Mayans ground it, the pictures and paintings that were done of it, of all the kinds of drinks, the wonderful hot chocolate cups that were used.

Carolyn: Each region of Italy treats chocolate differently.

Francine: I feel like what the Italians do is, they look at something and they say, ok, I want to do this, too, I want to make something chocolate. What can I do to put my fingerprint on this?

I love the Baci! There’s a whole hazelnut in there! and that ground up hazelnut, it’s like a perfect thing in your mouth.

Peyrano in Torino, an old, old company does this wonderful chocolate with spirits. Sicilian chocolate is known for retaining the style of making chocolate back to the way it was in ancient times. They stone grind it only, so it’s coarse, it’s not conched, it’s not made fine, fine, fine so there’s a kind of graininess, earthiness to it. That comes because when they got it, they chose to keep it to that old style of making it. Sicily is like a different country!

Carolyn: Just ask them!

Francine: Tuscany is like a different country. I mean, they feel like they were just unified a few minutes ago.

Carolyn: Exactly! And it’s not going to stick!

Francine: I can point to so many chocolate companies like Venchi which is a chocolate company in Cuneo, up in Piemonte. They do something called chocolate caviar. That’s like little pearls of wonderfulness in your mouth.

It looks like caviar but it’s these little tumbled pearls of perfect shiny, beautiful chocolate that you could eat plain, you could sprinkle on ice cream. But it’s also perfect in savory dishes. You could just sprinkle a little on pasta that’s made with a little sage and butter. In fact the person who invented it, one of the principals of the company did it as honoring the 175th anniversary of the company, because he wanted to kind of play around with that idea of just a little morsel of chocolate presented in this special way. And there’s nobody else in the world making chocolate caviar.

Anyway, I think every region of Italy that deals with chocolate, everybody treats it in a wonderful and unique and interesting way. It’s another reason to travel to Italy in the damp and dreary cold weather, because that’s when you get more chocolate.

Carolyn: Italy’s chocolate legacy continues today by dominating the awards at world chocolate competitions. A Tuscan company, Amedei, is an artisanal manufacturer of gourmet chocolates. From 2006-2009, Amedei swept the gold medals from the London-based Academy of Chocolate. Amedei won the Academy’s highest award, the Golden Bean, for the best bean-to-bar chocolate, for its creation, Amedei '9' or Amedei Nine.

Francine: Best makers of chocolate, of really taking it from the bean, from the source, getting the best ingredients, then toasting them perfectly, grinding them beautifully and creating the most wonderful chocolate.

When you open it, it’s got all the hallmarks of great chocolate. It really makes you, you open the wrapping paper and right away you see that it’s beautifully glossy which shows that it’s perfectly tempered. Then when you crack it you hear a very crisp crack, which shows again that it’s beautifully tempered. There’s not a little crumbs that fall or a little bendy feel. It’s just very crisp. And then the aroma. It’s very aromatic so that you really can connect back with the fact that this bean is in a fruit, it’s in the tropics. It’s got floral scents and nut scents. And the taste!

They also these single origin which is very popular, mono-origin. Because just like wine from the Bordeaux region tastes a certain way, Barolo is a certain way because it comes from a certain region, where the cocoa beans grow affects how it tastes.

And Amedei does a wonderful line of single origin chocolates, so that you taste, what does Ecuador chocolate taste like if the beans only come from Ecuador, versus San Tomei, Madagascar in Africa?. Each of these tastes different even though the percentage of chocolate is exactly the same, techniques are the same. It’s kind of fun to just explore a food and see how nuanced it can be.

And I think that is what the Italians thru time have consistently done in a wonderful way that’s very satisfying for a foodie. They take an ingredient and you really, they respect it, they treat it well, they don’t over-treat it, and you as the taster get to taste the true ingredient. So many foods you kind of sit there like, “Can I have the menu back? I don’t remember what I ordered. What is in this?” Not with Italian food, not with good Italian food. You know what you’re eating.

So it’s a wonderful full circle of the Italian being the first European to set eyes on coca beans to now an Italian again, bringing the Bean to Bar at such a high level.

If you live in the Westchester County, New York area, you can catch Francine Segan at the WICC in Tuckahoe, NY on April 21, 2009, where she will present a lively talk on Italian Entertaining through the Ages.

To learn more about this event and all of Francine’s upcoming appearances, go to francinesegan.com and click on Events and Appearances.

This is Carolyn Masone for essenceofitaly.net. Thanks for listening!

Blood Type: Ragu

This is the transcipt of the podcast appearing on our podcast page.

Carolyn: Frank Ingrasciotta is a veteran of the New York stage and television. He is also the heart and soul behind his one man show, Blood Type: Ragu, currently at the Actors’ Playhouse in Greenwich Village, New York City. Raised in Brooklyn by his Sicilian immigrant parents, Frank became the bridge not only between each of his parents, but also between his parents and 1960’s America. This created pressure and confusion for Frank and his siblings, and they each coped in the best way they knew how. Blood Type: Ragu distills the poignancy and hilarity of a dysfunctional Italian American family in a time of turbulence in America. Andy Webster of the New York Times says, “It’s the understanding and forgiveness that gives Blood Type: Ragu its lasting, rewarding flavor.”

Tell me about how the show has evolved. Tell me where it started.

Frank: I always had these stories that I would tell my friends and they would always crack up. And I thought it was normal, but I found out it wasn’t normal by the way everyone was cracking up. Because you know it’s funny as a kid you grow up as a first generation child in a house that I have to imagine that not just Italian Americans go through this but I’m sure every culture that’s coming into this county goes through this, whether it’s Chinese or Latino. And it would be one life in your house and one life in your more Americanized friends’ house. So, I knew those stories were always something that I would recount to my friends and by the way they laughed at the stories, my non-Italian friends, I knew that there must have been something there.

So they kept saying you really should make it into a stand-up comedy act. So when I married Theresa, the gift of the story came out. When meeting a Sicilian woman and marrying her and reconnecting to her family, that was a big Italian family. And I had pretty much divorced myself from the culture from everything that I had been through. I was reintroduced to the culture in a more positive way and also it afforded me the opportunity to open myself up And Theresa kept saying to me, “You know, the last time you saw your family there you were 7. Why don’t you go look them up?”

I was already in my mid-30s at that time and I was so scared. Because every time she would mention it, the shame of the whole story coming out of like, I would feel it. The idea of knocking door was just reminding me of the whole story. Because my mother and father were ashamed of their own relationship they divorced themselves from the entire family.

And then I thought, OK, I’m going to go there, I’m going to find the courage, I’ll go. And then the rest of the story you’ll come and see the show and see what happens. I was in the elevator after I had met my aunt and uncle. I turned to Theresa and said, I’ve been given a gift. A gift of the ending. Now I’ve just got to thread it together. But this is the story. And I know I had something wild and it was a gift, I thank God every day for it, you know?

So I sat, I started to write. And then from there I did a reading at Dixon Place and from there I got a producer at the Belmont Playhouse in Little Italy in the Bronx brought me in. I was supposed to last there 4 weeks, I lasted there 4 months. Then, after that, I always thought I was going to put it down but I’d get a booking here, solo performance festivals, and then it built a momentum. But it took 9 years.

Carolyn: The show doesn’t present the expected romanticized view of an Italian American upbringing. Why did you make the choice to go a more complex route and have you encountered problems?

Frank: My reasoning for presenting it in this way is because I wanted to tell a truthful story from my experience and I felt there was more to be said between the dynamics of a mother/son relationship and a father/son relationship and I wanted to show what the holy trinity is like when the mother and father are having problems and a child takes on the roles that the mother and father should be giving each other more fully.

So I thought there was a lot to be said to talking about a story that had a little more depth than just the romanticism of it. I mean I do romanticize things, but it’s been done. The food has been done. I wanted to tell a deeper story.

Carolyn: And you definitely do. The story takes you in so many different directions in terms of, it’s very, very funny in certain spots and I’m still repeating certain lines from the show, because they are just so funny. But then, you’re laughing and then the next second something happens and then you’re shocked. It really takes your breath away, it’s like “Wow! He went there!” It’s amazing. So that takes tremendous courage on your part.

Frank: Thank you. Well, I watch one man shows, and I’ve studied them. And some of the most brilliant people that I admire and respect, when I see them going there, what they tend to do is cut it with a punch line, or not go deep. and I think there’s a fear of that, and I knew what I was doing when I went there and I wanted to take the risk to do it I was afraid in the beginning and I’d be lying to say I wasn’t because I thought ‘are people really going to get this?’ but I thought, the more truth I tell, as long as it’s from an honest place I feel, at least, I can’t go wrong, you know?

Carolyn: Well, I think it certainly makes it more universal. It’s getting beyond the Italian story, it’s a very human story.

Frank: Thank you. That’s what I really intended. Thank you. Because you see, people, it’s so funny. Like some people who were thinking of wanting to produce this piece, they didn’t take the time to read the script and I always knew when they did and when they didn’t.

Because when they started saying things to me like, ‘Well I don’t know if it’s universal or it’s just for Italians’ I was like, ‘you didn’t read the script’. So of course if you’re Italian you get it in a much more visceral way, but it’s for anybody who’s grown up in a family, and we all have.

Carolyn: One of the things I’d like to discuss which I found so refreshing about the content of the show is the poetry and there’s a literary quality to the writing that I appreciated so much and the audience appreciated so much. There’s this unspoken respect from your writing that, my audience, they’re smart people, they’re going to get this. So can you talk a little bit about this, because I think that’s pretty unusual on stage and in a lot of entertainment.

Frank: Italian, to me, is poetry. Because growing up it was never just, you know, ‘drop dead’ it was, your tongue should whither and fall out’, you know? It was never just saying a curse word, but it was just, ‘go back to the womb of your mother’. It was just these things, and even as a child I would say, that’s like pretty intense as a form of expression. There’s a poetry even in the way they put each other down and curse each other out. ‘Face of a cow turd’, those kinds of things.

Frank: I think in the way things are described in the culture it’s always so visual, it creates pictures in your mind, there’s such an imagery there. I really feel that’s part of what makes Italian culture so special.

I didn’t just want to say, ‘my mother left the kitchen’, but I put it in a way where I was saying, ‘a malfunction exiled the holy mother’s conveyer belt arms from the dinner table to the kitchen where she now eats alone as a declaration of her independence.’

Now there’s a lot of metaphor coming at people, there’s a lot of images, and I know that’s like 4 or 5 of them there. And I also have learned to simplify some things. But I want people to think about what that means, you know?

Carolyn: And they do. I can tell you as an audience member, when I left, I was still thinking about the story, I was still thinking about the language. It clings to you. It’s a story and a presentation with a lot of depth.

When Frank was 7 years old he traveled to Sicily with his mother. There, he was exposed to a life he never imagined existed. His time in Sicily created some of his show’s most unforgettable moments.

Frank: And I got off the plane and it was just a whole other world and back then, in the late ‘60s, Sicily was a different place than what it is now. Now I want to go live there, they live better than us. They’re not coming here anymore. They have it together and they know how to live, much better than we do. But back then it was primitive. The chickens were still running thru the streets and the mule was still in the basement in the stall, and they didn’t have indoor plumbing. My grandmother had one running water faucet down in the basement.

I had this photographic memory of images growing up as a boy and those 4 months I spent there as a child at the age of 7 was such a culture shock from what I knew. And I was not warned, I was not told, I just showed up.

There’s a scene in the play where my mother takes me to Rimina Vendura, a soothsayer, to rub a curse off of us that was put on the family by, supposedly a family member. And that really did happen, that was true. I still have memories of that woman with olive oil smeared on her eyelids, rubbing me down to take the curse out. I had to… (laughter).

Carolyn: So you’re rubbed down with olive oil.

Frank: Right. Ragu, garlic and olive oil, that was the 3 ingredients she used. My grandmother was there, my mother was there and I was there. I don’t recall if she actually rubbed down my mother’s stomach to take the curse out, or my grandmother’s stomach, but I distinctly remember incantations and prayers and I still remember what she said.

I just remember that this is freaky and spooky. And I was a big fan of Bugs Bunny growing up, and I thought she was a Bugs Bunny character. That’s why I mentioned that in the show.

Carolyn: One thing that impressed me in the show was your acknowledgement of the tarantella, the phenomenon of tarantate, tarantismo, the whole thing. Many people don’t refer to that or if they do they refer to it in a very traditional kind of wedding dance sort of way and not the phenomenon of the bite of the tarantula. But tell me your thinking. Why did you bring that in and how?

Frank: I saw this wonderful documentary about the history of the tarantella that I actually still have on some old video somewhere that explained the whole mystery behind it. Women would have these little mini breakdowns out in the fields, from whatever they were going thru, everybody would gather around that woman who was having the emotional breakdown and they would play instruments to exorcise out the evil spirits. It was literally an exorcism. So, I brought in the whole notion of the tarantella because of that story with the fattura and the curse and her taking it out of me and I needed to find something that connected the play in the beginning to what happens in the end.

The tarantella is misunderstood, maybe not misunderstood, it’s just not known, what the history is. And they think it’s just a celebration dance that’s played at weddings where everybody just dances around and holds hands and does the grapevine, but that’s not what it is.

Carolyn: It has such deep cultural meaning,

Frank: Right. And because of the metaphor of the exorcism that’s what it took for me to get where I am now in my life and what I talk about, so what perfect metaphor than to use the image of the tarantella because it was my journey, as well.

Carolyn: I’d like to talk a little bit about the challenges of doing a one man show in terms of the stamina that you need. You do about 22 characters, right?

Frank: I do 22 characters, men and women. And it’s a challenge.

So it’s all about preparation. I have to take care of my voice, I have to pick and choose who I want to talk to on the telephone. I’m under the care of a chiropractor and a naturopath. I’m on a high vitamin, high protein diet and that’s what I’m doing. Just lots of tea and herbal drops and I have to just pace myself to be able to do it. Because I’ve never done 8 shows a week, and that’s what I’m doing. Two on Wednesday, two on Saturday, two on Sunday, so it’s a lot.

To do two in a day, and on the weekend I do five. An hour and a half just me on stage. So I’m just so grateful I can do it. I did the first week and now I’m like, OK, I’m going to build a rhythm, I’m going to figure it out. And I am. You have to really pace yourself.

Blood Type: Ragu opened on March 5, 2009 at the Actors Playhouse on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, New York City, for an open ended run. To learn more, visit www.bloodtyperagu.com.

From the Ground Up - Creating an International Art Exhibit

This is a transcript of a podcast appearing on our Podcast page.

Carolyn: Walking through an art exhibit is both relaxing and exhilarating. Seeing objects up close that were created an ocean away, there’s a feeling of appreciation and connection. Have you ever wondered how an international exhibit comes together? How does it go from the original inspiration all the way to shipping one of a kind pieces of art across an ocean? I had the chance to pose these questions to Dr. Evelyn Rossetti, Executive Director of the Westchester Italian Cultural Center in Tuckahoe, New York. In this program, Dr. Rossetti explains the details of how 2 art exhibits, one a collection of ceramics from Este, Italy and the other, paintings from Venice, made their way from concept to opening day in Tuckahoe, New York.

Evelyn: When you’re involved in planning an exhibition it’s all very exciting and I think people frequently think about the end result, as they should, because you need to start at the end and work backwards. But as they say, the devil’s in the details. And there are so many details that go into planning an exhibit. How many pieces and how will the pieces get here?

Carolyn: Especially when you’re dealing with overseas, original works of art. It requires so much creativity and patience and detailed planning on your part.

Evelyn: And diligence. You really need to believe in it and you really need to want to make sure it comes out correctly. So one works very hard at that and engages a variety of professionals to help with that. Making sure there’s proper insurance to protect the shipping of the artwork, and making sure the artwork does get out of customs. And on the walls, as it should .Which is what everyone wants at the end of the day. They want to see the artwork on the walls!

Carolyn: We’ll begin with Ceramica Magnifica Exhibit. Ceramica Magnifica was part of about 67 exhibitions taking place throughout Westchester County, New York under the umbrella of an initiative called All Fired Up. The Westchester Arts Council created All Fired Up in order to celebrate the ceramics tradition across a broad range of styles and countries.



Ceramica Magnifica at the Westchester Italian Cultural Center ran from Oct. 7 through Nov. 30, 2008. All of the pieces were produced in the town of Este, just outside of Venice Italy.

Walking through the exhibit at the Center was a calm, almost serene experience, with each piece lit just so to bring out its shape, color and character. But how did all of this come together?

Evelyn: I had the occasion to meet one of the curators, Dr. Judith Schwartz who’s at NYU who is the chair of the ceramics program at NYU, and Judy said, “Have I got a show for you! This is a perfect show for the Westchester Italian Cultural Center.” I learned more about it, I met with Federika Marangoni who is a renowned artist and also curated the show for us and I said yeah, it’s a perfect fit. It was a year in planning.

Carolyn: I guess that’s what you have to do to create things like this, they don’t just come together in 15 minutes.

Evelyn: Our meeting did, and knowing that we would do this did, but the shipping of it, the planning, the curating, preparation of the catalogue that took much longer.

Carolyn: I would think the shipping from Italy and you have to wait for it to come thru customs. How long did it take to get here?

Evelyn: All tolled, it probably took between 3 or 4 weeks, which, at the end of the day wasn’t terrible at all. But we were very well prepared, the show was very well planned out, the artists were very enthusiastic.

Carolyn: The town of Este, Italy has a ceramics tradition that dates back 6,000 years.

Evelyn: It’s remarkable; 6,000 years. They’re very, very proud of their ceramics tradition. However, with modern times some of the interest in ceramics production had started to wane, and so to reinvigorate an interest and to keep the tradition alive the town of Este created a juried art exhibition every 3 years, much like the Venice Biennale. They are doing the Este Triennale, all focused on ceramics, contemporary ceramics design and it brings a wealth of ideas and variety of artists to the town.

Carolyn: The Ceramica Magnifica exhibition is a survey of pieces over 3 years: 2001, 2004 and 2007. Not all of the artists in the show are Italian, but all of the pieces were produced in the town of Este in its rich tradition.

The artists participating in this exhibition are from various disciplines; fashion designers, architects and graphic designers. These artists interpreted their particular visions into ceramic pieces.

Evelyn: There are American artists in it, people like Allison Sky, Ultraviolet who was a contemporary of Andy Warhol, John Loring, Missoni, Krizia, Massimo Vignelli and Adam Tehani. The show celebrates not just ceramic artists per se, but also people who are creative and who have created these very interesting, very compelling, very provocative designs.

Some of the pieces are very useful, they can be a plate for example. And some of them are very whimsical and some of them are very provocative. It really plays with the possibilities of what ceramics can be. So it’s really a show that’s on the cutting edge but celebrating traditions, and carrying forth lots of traditions. It was also very exciting for the town of Este in fact, the gentleman whose workshop, whose factory produced all of the ceramics was here the night of the Opening and the mayor of the town of Este was here.

Carolyn: Some of the artists were also in attendance at the Opening.

Evelyn: Armando Milani was here, and he’s just a treat, Ultraviolet, Angie Churchill was here. Angie Churchill was interesting because she had been the Chair of Ceramic Arts at NYU some years ago, and she was originally from Milano, so this exhibition had a very special resonance for her as a professional artist, as a professor, as an Italian American woman.

Carolyn: After Ceramica Magnifica’s run at the Westchester Italian Cultural Center, it will be brought to different museums and galleries in the Westchester County area

Evelyn: so that this tradition and this wonderfully, beautifully curated show with some 65 artists in it will continue on.



Carolyn: The next exhibit we examined was the paintings of Roberto Merelli, which appeared at the Westchester Italian Cultural Center from February – April, 2008. Merelli is 86 years of age and lives and works in Venice. His work first came to the attention of the Center when David Pope, the President and CEO of the Generoso Pope Foundation, happened to see it while he was on vacation in Italy.

Evelyn: Some years ago David Anthony Pope was on vacation in Venice with his wife, saw Merelli’s work and fell in love with it and said one day we’re going to do an exhibition. And then, back in the summer of 2007, Patricia Calce who’s our Director of Programs, was in Italy and she met with Roberto Merelli and discussed the possibility of doing an exhibition.

Carolyn: Roberto Merelli does not exhibit often in America and as such, is not a household name. But he is well known outside of the US.

Evelyn: He’s exhibited in the Venice Biennale, he’s exhibited with Salvador Dali, but he does not exhibit often in America. In fact, there’s only one other gallery in the US that carries his work from time to time. So he’s getting older, I think the idea of having a real exhibition, a one man show in New York was very exciting to him, and so he agreed to do the exhibition.

Carolyn: Some of the challenges of transporting the paintings from Italy to the United States were similar to those of the Ceramica Magnifica exhibit. How many pieces to bring over and which ones? What is the best method of transport? Who are the correct professionals to handle the details? Is there sufficient insurance?

Evelyn: It’s always an experience and yes there were some challenges. Some of the paintings were held up in customs for a couple of days. All of the paintings were ultimately released, but the drama of the story and the excitement of the story was that we didn’t get to pick them up until the morning of the Opening.

Carolyn: That’s an aspect of directing a show like that the average person doesn’t think about.

Evelyn: That’s right.

Carolyn: Of course, this final delay meant that the pieces were picked up at customs, brought to the Center, unpacked, and hung on the same day as the Opening Reception, when hundreds of guests were expected to walk through the door. It’s not for the faint of heart!

Evelyn: I will say that was our first real major exhibition. So we were very excited to bring this Venetian painter, well known in Italy, well known amongst artists and people who are art connoisseurs, but not very well known in New York. It was incredibly well received. He captures the spirit and the light of Venice like no one else we’ve ever seen.

Carolyn: To learn about future exhibits, visit wiccny.org.