Word: neapolitan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...much of a good thing. Originally intended as a guide to superior wines, the DOC stamp of approval now appears on Parmesan cheese, prosciutto crudo, balsamic vinegar and chestnuts, all frequent fare on Italian tables. Among the other items that may soon bear the DOC label: handcrafted ceramics, Neapolitan pasta and pizza...
...naked marchesa are two archrival museums, Washington's National Gallery and New York City's Metropolitan. The National is represented by its director, Andrew Foster -- young, rich, dashing and secretly a CIA agent. The Met's champion is Olivia Cartwright, whose mentor is the omniscient and fabulously wealthy Neapolitan dwarf Count Nerone (a good Velasquezian touch, since the artist painted a fair number of valuable dwarfs). Rivalry soon leads to attraction, which soon turns into love. Before the hammer finally comes down, love has led to Soviet intrigue, data bases, haute cuisine and unintentionally hilarious dialogue. Says the smitten Olivia...
DIED. Eduardo De Filippo, 84, Italian actor, director, playwright and maestro of the still active dialect theater of Naples, whose boisterous, sentimental tragicomedies, including Millionaire Naples (1945), Filumena Marturano (1946) and Inner Voices (1948), celebrated the earthy Neapolitan zest for life; of kidney failure; in Rome. Two of his screenplays, a segment of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963), and Marriage-Italian Style (1964), adapted from Filumena, both starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni and directed by Vittorio De Sica, were among Italy's funniest film comedies of the 1960s...
...class: Who remembers Scopitone? No one? Well, it's a tough question. Scopitone jukeboxes were European imports, vintage early to mid-'60s, which played, for a deposit of 25?, a faded, grainy color picture of, say, Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini with some Neapolitan pop star mouthing the lyrics. It was difficult to determine in what language the lyrics were being mouthed; the sound track was often English, but the lip calisthenics were unmistakably Mediterranean...
...connoisseurs of enigma, there is A Dead Soldier by an unknown Neapolitan hand (all attributions having failed so far), which inspired Manet's Dead Toreador. The painting is a link between Caravaggio's shadow-theater and, through Salvator Rosa, the world of 19th century romanticism. It shows a young man in half-armor lying stiff and composed on the floor of a cave (some mountain charnel-house, perhaps) surrounded by rainy twilight and the glimmer of bones, with a curl of smoke still issuing from an extinguished votive lamp. A vanitas? A more personal lamentation? Impossible...