VENICE CARNIVAL PAGE by Pietro Trevisan
INTRODUCTION
The Venice Carnival now isn't more than a pale image of when it was a period of great festivities, culminating with the "Giovedi grasso"; once the Carnival reminded the victory over the Aquileia's patriarch Ulrico, who was obbligated to give as a present one bull and twelve pigs.
After a series of ceremonies, the bull and the pigs had been dejected in the courtyard of the Ducal Palace at the presence of the "doge" and of the dominion the head of the art of the butchers had the privilege of demolish the bull with one broadsword. The "moresca"(a kind of struggle in the "saraceno' style) and other plays and intertainment completed the party.
Now here's a description of the original Carnival in Venice in the 18th century with some photos taken during the modern Carnival.
1.A gondolier.
THE CARNIVAL
A bit surprised and a bit worried, some travellers throught the city on the lagoon at the beginning of the 18th century wrote that in Venice carnival never ends, since it takes up a great part of the year. In fact, carnival in this fortunate city begins in October 15th and goes on until the first day of Lent and actually has a summertime revival at the feast of the Ascension. This is a period in which everybody goes about the city masked, "including the Father Guardian of the Capuchins" (De Brosses).
2.Impressive enough ...
Young Mozart (1771), engrossed in the Carnival in Venice, realized that this wild and rampant festival gives two great social benefits that other European centres of power
and finance cannot offer. Here alone, greeting a mask, whatever it may be, everyone says: "servo suo, signora maschera!" (at your service, Milord!), cancelling in an instant all the public effect of social differences.
3.A tipical kind of mask: Perrot.
The mask seems to overturn the traditional picture af servant and master: the master dresses up like his servant and the servant like his master, and they both bow deeply and answer each other's greetings with affectation. This confusion of social classes, although temporary, marks the limits of the happy territory of a small and fabolous republic that no revolution can touch. And this is the second benefit. Carnival brings together the young and the old, cancelling age differences and incomprehensions between the generation. Young people and children dress up like old people and adults and satisfy their desidere for authority and wisdom by pretending; the aged want to become young and give way to madness and to the noise of youth, shouting, as Mozart observes, the password of the festival, "Solo i morti xe veci" (only the dead are old), while touching wood. And then, too, women become men, and men women.
4.A conversation between two masks.
What does carnival do? It works the miracle of a metamorphosis, it actually changes the three things that pursue as throughout our lives like an enascapable destiny: age, condition, and sex. These three things can interact overtuning and intersecting each other, they can change places or just graze each other so as to become happily different and identical: old man-child, poor man-rich man, woman-man, and this only happens to the rhytm of carnival, which can last a lifetime for those who don't choose to unmask.
5.A gold mask.
The last dazzling carnivals of the old regime announced, throught the smoke, the Industrial Revolutions. Do the enthusiastic and potent modern carnivals announce other great changes? We cannot know what lies ahead. We only know that they had come after the announce the death of the industrial era and mark the post-industrial age. They give off new sparks of will and knowledge, dazzling fragments of a new esthetic of existence, the irridescent colours of a good madness.
6.The people and the "bove" in Piazza San Marco.
Because at last something is being reborn: of that mute and eloquent soul that speaks without a tongue, a man and not a man, serious and playful, that laughs if you laugh, cries if you cry, sings if you sing even though he can neither talk nor be silent, nor lie nor tell the truth, and yet you have evoked him because he breathes with your breath, speaks with your tongue, lives with your life, has your aspect, but is not your face... and that's what a mask is.
7. Two lions (the lion indicate Venice).
The end is here. I hope you enjoy with Venice Carnival.
Pietro Trevisan
Via Cremonino 11 - CAP 35124.
Padova - Italy
