Firenze – October 28th
Take Post
I’ll begin with the end since that was the best part of our day. We did visit the Galleria dell’ Academia and David but I can’t imagine how big Goliath was because David himself is a huge boy. We also did the Uffizi, which was interesting, but we really topped the day off by going to the Opera.
This all started some weeks ago when our friend Craig told us that his brother Ian and his wife Judith were going to be in Firenze about the same time as us. Ian and I connected and he invited us to dinner with another couple, Bonnie and Dennis, then the six of us would go to the Opera at St Marks English Church in Florence.
We dinned at Trattoria La Casalinga just NW of the Palazzo Pitti on the south side of the river. Just around the corner is St Marks. It is an Anglican Church established in 1877 to meet the needs of British visitors to Florence. It is an intimate venue for an opera.
We sat in a semicircle in the centre of the church…Ian made sure we had front row seats as they have been going to these operas for years and are friends with Franz and Ilse Moser who established the Opera in 2002. I have never attended an Opera and I highly recommend this venue for your first experience.
The acoustics were quite impressive and when I say it’s an intimate theatre I mean that you are within 1-2 meters of the performers at various points. Ian suggested that one of the things he enjoyed so much about this Opera is that intimate aspect. We were not sitting so far from the action that we couldn’t see every facial detail and expression. I can’t recall a live theatre performancee I’ve been to where you were so close to the performers but also not overwhelmed by the action.
Tonights opera was Carmen by Bizet featuring:
Raluca Pasquettin as Carmen and Mauro Pagano as Don Jose
Chiara Panacci as Micaela and Ricardo Crampton as Escamillo
I won’t list all of the very fine performers but suffice to say that they all come from different Opera Houses in Tuscany and are professional performers.
The Italian pianist Christiano Manzoni was the accompanist.
If you get to Firenze I highly recommend taking in a performance at St Marks. This is coming to the end of their 15th season though so plan ahead for next year. One other detail and that is that all the proceeds from the performances go to AMALA a charity project for children in South India.
www.concertoclassico..info
www.stmarksitaly.com
While we were having dinner there was some conversation about what I was doing there and I had to point out that the GP occupied by 10 Bty from the 6th to the 8th of August 1944 was actually less than 3 km due south of where we were eating.
I had mentioned previously that, despite Firenze being declared a free city, there was still some danger from enemy action. In fact 8 Bty had established a forward listening post and on the 8th it received a direct hit from a mortar round and Gnr Reeves was killed. I would venture to guess he was the signaller there.
On that sombre note I’ll leave this for the day. Cat and I walked back to the Hotel Plaza Luchezzi and called a cab to take us back to the Mulino. We were both very tired campers and yet we still have to get up at 05:00 to be airport bound.
Oh yes…we set our clocks back tonight…one more hour of snoozing.
Stand Down