Th Special effects team recreating Shakespeares London

The Shakespeare Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard's Unknown Travels

There is a feast of Shakespeare at the moment in London...with Italy never too far away....Where was the setting for The Taming of the Shrew ??? and Where did Portia of The Merchant of Venice come from ?you guessed it..Padova!

.The title of this post is taken from the theory espoused by Richard Roe in his book of the same name ,whose lifelong research was dedicated to Shakespeares Italian plays. Shakespeare was a well-travelled Englishman of intimate Italianate sensibilities ...dont get mislead by the buffoon portrayal of Shakespeare in the film Anonymous-despite its seductive high tech recreation of  London during the brief glory of Elizabethan theatre -see http://vimeo.com/35682569
Shakespeare was a man of means, with a well-rounded education -Oxford graduates as his teachers, his father was the mayor of Stratford and he wrote 8 plays after the Earl of Oxford died .The only other possible theory was that Christpher Marlowe may have staged his own death and lived secretly in Italy and co-authored the plays with Shakepeare. In the end who cares-this mystery only adds to the fascination of this awesome unraveler of the human condition .
Last night I saw the splendid and haunting BBC production of the The Hollow Crown -Richard II in the openair courtyard of The British Museum during their Shakespeare season.Maybe to relieve myself of the intensity of Ben Wishlaws portrayal of the frail boy-king, I kept on gazing up at the pillars of the museum and pinching myself to see if this was real or just a Midsummers Dream....... I had vivid  memories of my mother and father quoting famous lines in relation to their life experiences .
My partner has the same recerence for Shakespeare as well. He had an English teacher who was an Oxford graduate and he remembered the power and beauty of the words as his teacher spoke them even though he didnt undertsand what they meant..this was 50 years ago. in a Middle Eastern desert city ....in the hands of the Bard, theatre has power in any language ..recently theatre companies from around the world performed the plays in their own languages at The Globe--
..All the world is a Stage...rings true again..

Julius Ceasar being performed in Swahili at The Globe Theatre London 2012

This reproduction gown on display at The Globes Museum cost 20,000 pounds as the fabric was specially woven in Genova which is the only place where the authenic woven damask imported form Italy in 16th centuary is still being made----we hope these textile treasures continue to be produced..

 It is good to see Shakespeare is being honoured side by side the London Olympics but there is another sadbut true tale about a precedent to The Globe where Marlowe and Shakespeare performed-remnants of the first theatre in Elizabethan London , in danger of sinking and disintegrating-like Venice..the Rose Theatre but thats another  Shakespearian drama  unfolding as we speak !!!

Follow the link..www.rosetheatre.org.uk

Skakespeares Italian Inspiration

La Primavera and the silk worms are frenetic....

Visiting the

Sericulture Centre

Padova , a city of Veneto,

 that has a Sericulture research         

where you can see at first hand the specially humidified   

rooms which house trays of burgeoning

silkworms. We will visit when

the silkworms grow to their maximum

size. At that stage they have

voracious appetites and the sound of

them munching accompanies their frenzied growth cycle that
needs constant sustenance...

The Stazione Bacologica Sperimentale,

in which silkworm eggs are available

each year to interested silkworm 

like me. It was founded in 1871

by a decree of Vittorio Emanuele II,

though the actual founder was Enrico

Verson. It is a section of the Institute

TEXERE Newsletter Spring 2011

for the Experimental Agrarian Zoology

of Florence. The current director is Dr.

Luciano Cappellozza and the Institute

building is owned by the Provincial

Administration of Padua, which has

developed a museum with live collections

of insects. This includes exhibitions

on sericulture, apiculture and a

general display of Lepidoptera. The

sericulture part shows the silk collections

of the section as well as old tools

and machines used for the rearing of

the silkworms and the reeling of the

cocoon, which is ideal fo children

to obtain first hand experience of

these processes.

The institute is involved in scientific

projects on sericulture and moriculture

and contributes to the conservation

of two germplasm banks of about

50 varieties of Morus spp and about

120 strains of Bombyx mori. The institution

owns a mulberry field, also

used for experiments, that provides

the leaves necessary for the rearing

and breeding of the various Bombyx

strains.

Italy has been one of the main centres

of silk production in the world

since the 13th century and was third

in importance after China and Japan.

The Como region of Italy has always

been the main centre of silk production,

but the Veneto area has also

been very important and from medieval

times the Venetian traders flourished

from the production and trading

of silk cloth. The sericulture industry

was still a vital moneymaking practice

for the farm people in Veneto a

century ago. There was an Octogenarian

who struck up a conversation

when they saw us gathering mulberry

leaves who remembered the small

lean-tos attached to the houses where

silkworms were reared, a room of

their own - needing warmth at night

to survive.

The variety of colours of the cocoons

which are genetic variants of bombyx

mori is remarkable and not due to

feeding the creatures different leaves

(see photo). The frequency of groves

of mulberry trees in Northern Italy is

the only indication these days of the

silk-rearing industry which provided

income a hundred years ago thanks

to the industrious and short lived life

cycle of Bombyx whose cocoons were

consigned to Como where industrial

mills produced silk for ties, clothing

and scarves for the middle classes.

Another use was silk for upholstery

and jacquards which are still being

woven at Fondazione Lisio (www.fondazionelisio.

org) where I teach shibori resist dye  workshops every year.

Carnevale in Via Reggio -Art reflects larger than life..

Carnevale has come and gone for 2012 but the most extraordinary manifestation of this 

traditional festival is in Via Reggio , Tuscany with a procession of floats each more amazing than the last.

Its oversized - decidedly irreverent with spectators share the jokes as they spot the famous Italian or infamous ones!

 The sheer scale of the floats is staggering and local artisans are employed year round to create uptodate satircial digs at politicians and topical themes..the local community of all ages participates in exuberate spirits with wild abandon from gaily dressed babies to senior citizens in hula skirts and cocouts!

The movement sequences of each float are even more marvellous knowing each movement is achieved through the local volunteers operating a series of mechanical pulleys and levers inside the body of the carts  and given the procession lasts for hours these operators are the unsung heroes of this uncompromising and enduring spectacle

February is short and bitter...but not in Venice...!

      In Veneto,they say the month of February is short and bitter but in Venice,as the snowflakes swirl , works of Alessandro ,a metal sculptor whose tiny atelier in San Polo is full of light and imagination.

Its a Calvino-esque world of moons and whales that oscillate in starlit spaces. Lampshades in naturalistic forms and branches of trees with glowing light eggs.
You can even but a sigil in Renaissance style to imprint on the wax to send a letter to send to

www.mano.it




Shibori silk with moulded glass for Biosfera exhibition 2006. Photo Alvise Guardagnano


Another contempoaray emerging artist who uses the light and reflections of Venice is photographer Alvise Guardagnano  .His formative years were spent literaly above  the studio of Tintoretto
in Canereggio revealing itself in his use of refections,mirages and optical illusions  .

Tintorettos miraculous rendition of light and dark in his fescoes still inspires us
who, many centuries later ,use light boxes instead of pens and paint -both illusionists of light and dark..


 Venice has many frescoes of Tinteretto but my favourite is at the Chiesa Madonna del Orto, a dark brooding flurry of tangled figures reminding us of  universal esxistential themes , in that ebbing and flowing struggle between light and darkness under the sceptre of eternity...