Word: venetian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Some moments in art history used to seem beyond resuscitation. Seventeenth century Venetian painting was one of them. Nobody bothered about it. It was an orphan, huddled between the father figures of the Venetian cinquecento-Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto-and the effervescent grandeur of the Tiepolos in the 18th century. Even today, when scholarship and the art market have opened every mass grave in search of something to write about and sell, the names of painters like Damiano Mazza or Alessandro Turchi do not make the pulse race...
...Venice, once the amazement of the world and the ruler of a considerable part of it, was starting the long decline into the salty tourist trap the city is today. For almost 200 years, starting with the capture of Constantinople in 1453, the Turks had been snapping off the Venetian colonies in the eastern Mediterranean. Portuguese caravels, rounding the tip of Africa in increasing numbers, had taken away Venice's old monopoly of the spice trade. Venice was turning from an imperial power into a cultural artifact. As such, she was one of the most visited cities of Europe...
That night the claque never materialized. Neither, in a sense, did Scotto's performance. Possibly unnerved by all the squabbling, she was not at her best vocally or dramatically. Pavarotti came through splendidly. Playing a 17th century nobleman who is enmeshed in a conflict with the Venetian Inquisition, he made bold entrances in full cry. His spacious second-act aria, Cielo e mar, which used to serve Caruso well, was traced in long, limpid lines that glowed with emotion. ins voice soared out of the big ensembles, seeming to carry the chorus into the air with him. At the curtain...
...Best bets are the North End, the Italian section of the city where pasta and festivals abound, the Aquarium and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The Gardner Museum is most interesting in winter, when baby's breath bloom throughout the skylighted inner courtyard. A replica of a 15th-century Venetian palace, the Gardner houses an impressive collection of Oriental rugs and pieces by Rembrandt, Matisse, Whistler and Sargent. Three days a week it sponsors concerts...
Spark does not quite bring off this wedding of parody and parable: she is no Evelyn Waugh. But her Venetian affair, buoyed by whimsy, is never in danger of sinking into the sea. As always, her precise images linger: "A waiter came forward with a dazzle of black and white, the black being his trousers and hair, the white being his coat, his teeth, and a napkin folded upon his wrist." This is Spark the peerless observer, in the grand tradition of her The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Abbess of Crewe...