UN TEATRO DI CARTA D' ASSISI - AN ITALIAN TOY THEATRE

Ever since my childhood I've always had an interest in the theatre and the performing arts. My mum was heavily mixed up with amateur dramatics - not in a stage sense, but in relation to helping organize social events for a local dramatic society and I recall on two occasions going off to a wonderful and perfectly preserved Edwardian theatre called the City Varieties in Leeds to see traditional music hall shows recorded by the BBC for their series "The Good Old Days".

For several years before I went off to University I took part in various productions connected with the local amateur dramatic and operatic society in the town where I was brought up in Yorkshire. My favourite recollection - playing the role of one of Mr Snow's children in a production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel"!! This general interest in drama also extended to puppetry and miniature theatres. I have distinctive and fond memories of visiting Harry Corbett's private "Sooty" theatre in Shipley, near Bradford in the 1960's and actually having the real Sooty puppet on my hand. Harry was a cousin of a cousin, so it was a real privilege to meet such a famous puppet character. I was so enthused I made copies of puppets I'd seen them creating from hard sponge balls and milk bottles on a well know children's television programme. I also enlisted the help of my dad in helping to make a toy theatre which involved him constructing a rectangular wooden box for the stage and various cut out pieces of plywood for the proscenium, flats and backdrop scenery. I, not surprisingly, did all the creative stuff - painting and decorating the proscenium, making the curtains for the stage and selecting and writing the story lines and the end result was small productions in our "front room" for my mum and dad, brother and a few friends. I don't know what happened to it - it probably got chucked out in one of our many house removals and I haven't thought about it for years. Reflecting on all of this I think I must have picked all these drama related foibles from my Mum and I chuckle as I think of it all as a stereotypically "gay" set of interests.

It's strange how writing this blog was first prompted by my desire to write about my new life in Italy, but doing it has also extended to relating what I do now to episodes from my earlier life. Does everyone do this as they get in to their 60's? It might seem negative to be constantly looking backwards, but in fact for me it's the opposite. My professional life has typically been concerned with studying and teaching about the past so its seems natural for me to reflect on my own life now I am almost 64. Instead of being depressing I think it's rather fun to deepen one's understanding of present happenings by better understanding why they can bring so much pleasure in my 'silver' years. Anyway, I feel I'm getting a bit too self indulgent and philosophical now so it's time to get back to the focus of this posting.

When we stayed in Florence at the Degli Orafi at Christmas 2012 I discovered a little shop between our hotel and the Ponte Vecchio which specialised in Florentine paper products and crafts. I think I've mentioned before that I can't walk past shops like this and I always end up coming out with hand made leather bound notebooks, sheets of paper with  renaissance inspired designs and various other desk related paraphernalia. Jon says I've got obsessive compulsive disorder and I haven't disagreed with that analysis. This Florentine chain of shops (I think there are three or four of them in the city - there's certainly another one I've been in just down the side of the Palazzo Vecchio) also sells artisan made dioramas (miniature constructions of historic interiors of such things as Florentine shops)  and also small theatres in the style of larger versions popular as toys in the 19th century. They are quite charming if a bit on the expensive side! However, you know what I'm going to say next - I couldn't resist buying a small one as a memento of our trip and its shown in the photograph below. At 38 euros for a model that's only about six inches square I daren't tell Jon how much I was spending. When I did get round to settling the bill, he nearly fainted when he had to get our debit card out to pay for it - but it now has pride of place on one of the shelves in our sitting room and I see it every day.

Miniature Teatro bought in Florence at Christimas in 2012.
The scenery is of the Arno and the city from Piazza Michelangelo and the two characters shown
are Harlequin and Columbine from the Italian Commedia dell Arte

When we spend time in Italy there is nothing I like to do better than go "antiquing" at local junk and curio markets and there are lots of them in the Umbrian and Tuscan regions. The best is held once a month at Arezzo and I'll tell you about that one in another posting, but there are others held regularly in Orvieto, Perugia and Assisi. We've been to them all. Assisi holds its antique market on the second Sunday of each month so a couple of weeks ago we got up at 6am to drive over to have a look round. This wonderful town is about 15 kilometres south east of Perugia so at that time of the morning it took just over an hour to get there. The organisers hold the market in the piazza directly next to the impressive and monumental  basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels - so when we'd finished looking round the market we went next door for some serious culture and I already have it in mind to write about that experience in the near future.

The market is not huge and this being another very hot day in the offing all of the sixty or so stalls were covered with various types of awning to provide shade for the dealers from the  already intense sun.  After parking the car behind the basilica we discovered the market was getting busier by the minute and we all know that the "early bird get's the worm" so we set off systematically up the first aisle to look at the vast range of items for sale. As is the case in the UK there were different types of dealer - some with general stock and others with a specialism such as restored country bygones, furniture, ceramics and one lady who sold only table linen which she'd carefully laundered before doing the market. There was another dealer who had lots of leather goods and vintage hand bags - the sort of thing that would no doubt go down well with customers back home. Not much chance of taking stuff back on a flight with Ryanair however!! Just across the road  the locals and flocks of tourists were turning up for morning mass at the church and this all added to the general hustle and bustle in the piazza. Very soon Jon had left me behind. He has the concentration of a gnat when it comes to looking at junk so I wasn't surprised to see he'd disappeared. After about fifteen minutes I hadn't made any discoveries and I was already beginning to think about sitting down for an espresso in one of the many bars round the square when Jon came up and tapped me on the shoulder.

 Assisi Antiques Market
It's held on the second Sunday of each month.

"You'd better come over here" he said - "there's something you are going to want."
"What is it?"  I said, exasperated at being asked to deviate from my systematically planned route round the square. "Come over here and see for yourself" he repeated and walked off towards the other side of the market. I forgot about the espresso and followed his path towards the stalls immediately next to the arcade at the back of the fair to find him chatting to the couple who were running the stall and there on a shelf at the back of it was the most delightful toy theatre and I knew then that I had to have it. I edged up to the side of the stall to take a closer look. It was obvious the theatre had been restored and had had quite a lot of work done to it, but overall it was complete with scenery and several characters on the typical sticks used to move them from side to side on the stage. On closer examination it rather looked to me like a reproduction - its amazing what can be done with coloured photocopiers these days and I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't another one on the stall in a few weeks time! Overall, though I still thought it was charming and decorative.
 I was frightened to ask the price but summoned up the courage and dug deep into my shaky Italian to enquire from the lady dealer - "Buongiorno signora - Quanto costa la teatro?" She looked at me quizzically and I could see she was deciding what to ask for it. "cento quaranto euros signore" she said. I quickly computed she was telling me she wanted 140 euros for it. I mustered up the courage to say "kwel teatro ay troppoh karo" - "it's too expensive"! "Then make me an offer" she said in English and we both laughed. I offered her 80 euros for it and she said that wasn't enough so after much toing and froing we ended up with a price of 105 euros - about 85 pounds - which I thought was a good buy given I'd paid 38 euros for the little one in Florence a couple of years ago. We left it that she and her genial husband would take it to pieces and and pack it up and that I'd call back for it after we'd had a coffee round the corner. They were nice people and I enjoyed haggling and doing business with them in the Italian way. After a good espresso in a street side cafe we collected my teatro from the dealer and went back to put it in the car. We had other things to do including visiting the basilica so I had to put my little prize buy out of my mind for then.

Jon waits patiently for me at an Assisi cafe whilst I do the deal for the teatro

A few hours later we were back home in the apartment and I felt a bit like a school boy when I immediately got the teatro out its packaging and proceeded to set it up on the dining room table. You can see the results in the photographs below. I was delighted with it when it was completed and though I have no plans to put on any performances I was motivated to better understand the history of these 19th century toys.

These two photographs show my Italian teatro on the dining room table.
It's about eighteen inches tall and just over twelve inches wide.
The scenery relates to a town scene and shop interior at the back.
It all takes to pieces which go into the lidded box which is the stage. 

Toy theatres like mine developed across the countries of Europe in the decades of the early 19th century and started as manufactured kits of popular plays; they were then sold in the foyer shops of theatres and bought by adults and parents for their children to create home entertainment. It's been estimated that in England alone more than 300 popular plays were adapted as toys in this way. Manufacturers sent artists to productions to record information about scenery, costumes and even the characterisation of the players in these events. The results were converted into paper prints which could be cut out and stuck down on cardboard and used to make up the theatres . In England the kits could be acquired in black and white or in coloured printed form and the former were popular with those wishing to hand colour the proscenium and scenery themselves.

Transfer Printed designs for a Toy Theatre Proscenium
& characters for the toy theatre version of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

At a time when entertainment in the domestic sphere was homespun and family based, they were a winner. I was also interested to discover they became popular at a time when dramatic productions were underpinned by melodrama and spectacle rather than psychological complexity and that in the later decades of the nineteenth century, when the dramatic arts moved in the latter direction, focusing on "realism" in simpler settings, they went out of fashion. In 1884 the author Robert Louis Stephenson partly aided their revival with a published essay which extolled their virtues in a work entitled "Penny Plain, Twopence Coloured" and celebrities like Oscar Wilde and Hans Christian Anderson are known to have owned and used them. In the 20th century, with the advent of television and computer gadgets, they have enjoyed mixed fortunes but once again they were associated in the mid century with well known figures like F.T. Marienetti, Pablo Picasso, Ingmar Bergman and Orson Welles. In recent times they have become popular with the public again as both novelty and collector's items. There's a shop in Covent Garden which I've visited, owned and run by former Coronation Street actor Peter Baldwin, that specialises in the sale of reproductions of Benjamin Pollock's toy theatres. My Italian toy theatre, called "un teatro di carta", appears to fit exactly within the genre I have described. I plan to leave it in the apartment to get out when I visit rather than to bring it back to the UK.
I hope it will be the first of many treasures I will discover and bring back from the antique markets of Umbria.

Moving from toy theatres to the real thing - I've noticed that in Tuscany and Umbria most towns have 19th century theatres and many of them are still in use today. There is a little gem of an example in Citta della Pieve, the lovely town where we have our apartment. It was constructed at exactly the same time that toy theatres were popular and its almost as if it served as a template for many of the designs for the kit models I've described. It was constructed between 1830 and 1834 to a design by well know Umbrian architect Giovanni Santini and it resembles itself a miniature version of a grand opera house from a larger city. Its four tiered auditorium with boxes on each level seats about four hundred people. Today its official title is "TEATRO COMMUNALE DI CITTA DELLA PIEVE" and it underwent an extensive 10 year restoration between 1990 and the millenium which was carried out by local craftsman Antonio Marroni and his son Mario. The grand stage was renovated and modernised, improvements were carried out to dressing rooms, new technical systems were introduced and the auditorium was refurbished. The end result is lovely and its a credit to the local community. On December 26th last year, in the afternoon, Jon and I joined the Citta locals at a splendid concert of arias from popular operas. The three principals, two men and a woman and a wonderful pianist all came from Perugia and we experienced moving, high quality renderings of works by Verdi, Donizetti,Puccini and others. It made our Christmas. If ever you visit Citta della Pieve you must visit this little theatre and if you can book tickets to see a performance (musical events, plays and other presentations take place throughout the year) you will be in for a real treat.

Teatro Communale di Citta Della Pieve

The lovely auditorium of the Citta Theatre

P.S If you are not familiar with the novels of Donna Leon then you must try them. This American author has lived in Venice for many years and they are all centred round a police commisario called Guido Brunetti. - "Death at La Fenice" has a narrative focussed on the famous Venetian opera house and if you fancy detective stories with an Italian twist then I recommend it. But beware - read one and you'll probably want to read them all!!

"UNA STANZA CON VISTA" A ROOM WITH A VIEW!

I think I've already mentioned our Umbrian apartment has two reception rooms and two bedrooms all of which have large windows overlooking the Chiana valley and the Tuscan hills. We are using the smallest of the two living rooms as a dining room and at one end there is a pair of floor to ceiling french windows with full shutters all of which open to reveal a small cotta tiled terrace with open wrought iron balcony. From the start, even when we viewed the apartment, I found myself reluctant to step out on to it, as on this side of the building we are on the fourth floor and it's a long way down to the ground!! Jon doesn't seem to mind this at all and there's even a small white enamelled table and two chairs in the flat which the professor must have acquired to fit this space which he's suggested we set up when we are in residence, but I haven't been encouraging about this. Am I being mean here? I'm not sure, but I've told him he can sit outside with his glass of red wine and that I'll just perch on a seat inside the doors with mine!!

OUR DINING ROOM IN THE CITTA APARTMENT

What I do love to do, however, is to stand or sit near the open french windows and take in the panorama outside and when we are staying in the apartment I do this several times of day, in the morning, whilst we have lunch and in the evenings too. I've titled this posting "una stanza con vista" which translates as "a room with a view" - the title used by E M Forster in 1908 for his famous novel which begins in Florence and describes the disappointment felt by Lucy Honeychurch and her cousin when they arrive at the Pensione Bertolini in the city to discover they have been given rooms overlooking a courtyard rather than ones with Arno views which they'd requested at the time of booking. Our Italian adventure began in Florence in Christmas 2012 when we stayed in a room overlooking the Arno and the Ponte Vecchio (now the Hotel Degli Oraffi) and which had been used by Merchant Ivory to make their film of Forster's novel in 1985. As I reflect on looking out over the Tuscan hills now from the apartment in Citta,  I don't think I could have adopted the role of the chivalrous and selfless Mr Emerson in giving up my view for another individual to savour instead of me! There is something uplifting and good for the human spirit about a room with a a splendid view and its something I've already come to treasure here on a daily basis. Even when we are back home in the UK I can visualize it when I get depressed with the British weather.

THE VIEW FROM OUR HOTEL IN FLORENCE - CHRISTMAS 2013
THIS WAS IN THE HOTEL DEGLI ORAFFI - THE BUILDING MERCHANT IVORY USED FOR THEIR 1985 FILM OF
E M FORSTER'S NOVEL - "A ROOM WITH A VIEW"

I also like to think of windows in any building as structures which frame the view outside. As an art and design historian I've been used to looking at landscape pictures in frames and artists have used this device as a construct when making landscape compositions for centuries. In European art history a "veduta" is an established and recognized specific type of usually Italian landscape painting, drawing or etching which attempts to accurately represent a specific view. They were probably first produced by northern European artists working in Italy in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and were very popular with English grand tourists in the mid 1700's. I don't have the skills to paint or draw a "veduta" of the landscape visible from our terrace so I think the best thing to do is to show some photographs of it and attempt to describe a selection of things its possible to see from where we sit..

The view is 180 degrees from left to right with a westerly prospect in front of us and with south to the left and north to the right. We look across to a range of mountains opposite which are in Tuscany rather than Umbria and the tallest of them, Monte Cetona, is an extinct volcano and clearly visible on the left. Almost directly opposite we can see the Tuscan hillside town of Cetona and a little further along to the north west - Sarteano. Both of these are visible at night as groups of pinpricks of light against the inky black landscape and look quite charming. A bit further along still and we can catch a glimpse of the famous spa town of Chianciano Terme.

VIEW FROM OUR BALCONY TAKEN IN JANUARY 2014

THE TOP OF SPINDLY ASH TREES OUTSIDE
OUR APARTMENT IN JANUARY 2014

Citta della Pieve is a  medium sized hill top town and our apartment is on the southern edge of the 'centro historico'. Just below us is the road which circumnavigates the old town and it delivers to us a modicum of traffic passing to and from Chiusi and Perugia. Sometimes I wake in the morning to the sound of vehicles passing by beneath us, but its not disturbing and small compensation for the views which we see on a daily basis and which I'm describing now. On the edge of the road is a line of tall and spindly ash trees, full of lovely green and delicate foliage at this time of year and these seem a common tree in the Lake Trasimeno area. I am fascinated to appreciate they are exactly the same kind of delicate tree which feature in many of Perugino's 16th century paintings such as the one of the Adoration of the Magi in the Oratorio of Santa Maria dei Bianchi in the Via Vannucci. The land then falls away to a small terrace with a single, small house on it. I can see it between the slender tree trunks and here an elderly local has cleared a narrow patch to grow vegetables - today he is tending to the canes supporting his beans as I write this piece. He also keeps a small flock of white geese and these honk at various times of day. Beyond this narrow strip the land falls away sharply to reveal steep cliffs with broken ground and what looks like reddish clay slopes. I was fascinated to discover these are the remains of the old clay quarries used to make the bricks from which the old town of Citta was built centuries ago. There were no local supplies of stone here, so the the locals turned to brick making and the results have not only shown huge longevity but are one of Citta's greatest charms today.

PERUGINO - ADORATION OF THE MAGI - 1504
NOTE THE SPINDLY TREES IN THE TRASIMENO LANDSCAPE BACKGROUND

To the left of us its possible to see fragments of the restored old town walls and a range of brick built houses on top of what must have been ramparts with others clustered below; to the immediate right of us is a series of small narrow streets gradually rising up the slope from road level and they are lined with small houses with roofs made of terra cotta pan tiles. These reflect the light in an interesting way and provide a textured patchwork of rectangles and squares all at slightly different angles and producing a picturesque and pleasing end result. In the mid ground a ridge of land runs in front of the eye and falls gradually away from north to south; it has along its edge a range of different sized houses and a mixture of trees including Cypresses and Umbrella trees, both of which produce darkened silhouettes against the lighter landscape behind them.

SPRING 2014 - CETONA & SARTEANO CAN BE SEEN JUST BELOW THE HORIZON

Looking down the broad valley between the hilltop on which Citta is built and the semi-wooded hills in the distance is the broad expanse of the relatively flat Chiana valley which follows a path from south to slighlty north west across our line of view. Here its possible to catch glimpses of the array of cultivated fields on the centuries ago reclaimed land from the marshy river valley and with binoculars its also possible to see some of the farm buildings where the famous hunky Chiana white cattle are reared for the beefsteak so favoured by Umbrian, Tuscan and Florentine restaurants. Evidently they spend virtually no time outside.At the far side of the valley is the A1 toll motorway running between Rome and Florence and also the two railway lines - one for local stopping trains and the other recently constructed to take the high speed pendolino bullet trains which travel between Milan, Florence and Rome. Once again I am reminded of my old geography teacher who would have loved to call this landscape a typical geographical palimpsest. This is a term used by landscape archaeologists to describe the layered physical evidence left behind by different generations of occupants over the centuries. It's an interesting thought that the hillsides opposite us was once occupied by the Etruscans long before the Romans settled in the area. Though I can't quite see the ancient hill top town of old Chiusi from where I am sitting, I know its there and that it was an important Etruscan settlement. We've already been across to see some of the well preserved hillside tombs relating to these ancient and mysterious peoples and they are a reminder that these lands were occupied by highly civilised folk long before Christ was born.

In 1990 I attended a conference of architectural historians in the US city of Boston and I went to a lecture given by a lady who lived in a Frank Lloyd Wright house in the Oak Park suburb of Chicago. Her talk was profusely illustrated with slides she'd take of the landscape surrounding her unique property. She'd photographed it at different times of day, in different weather conditions and through the seasons of the year. The result was a visually stunning selection of images and many of the vistas have remained in my mind to this day. The experience gave me the idea of doing a similar thing here in Citta with our outside vista and though our images have only been taken with an ipad camera, or a point and shoot hand held job, we are pleased with some of the results which I wanted to show you here.

One of my favourite images was taken at the beginning of our most recent stay in the apartment. We arrived in early June to find that the migratory swallows and swifts had arrived in Citta and when we opened the shutters and doors to our dining room on that first early evening we were confronted with hundreds of birds swooping through the air outside our flat. Often they would circle the air in groups and how some of them didn't end up in our dining room I don't know. They swirled, glided and darted through the early evening warm air for a couple of hours securing dinner and chirped and screeched  at the same time. Back home in the UK where we live in the East Midlands these birds have for some reason become rare in recent years and we barely see one or two at a time so this was a real treat. Here in this part of Italy they migrate from north Africa in April and no doubt stay till September. They have become our friends and we enjoy their antics at all times of day, but especially in the evenings. Walking round the streets of town we can see the nests of some of them underneath the eaves of the ancient red brick buildings. Miraculously Jon managed to capture a couple of them on his ipad camera and the result is below. The image is a memory we can take home with us and during the winter months remember our June stay in the apartment; this is a time when the birds themselves will be sunning themselves in the warmer climes of north Africa of course.

SWIFTS IN JUNE OUTSIDE OUR BALCONY WINDOW

During the last week the weather here has been very hot by our standards with temperatures reaching 34 or 35 degrees every day. We are not used to this and have routinely followed the orders of our neighbours to close the shutters at 8am and leave them closed all day to keep the apartment cool. After venturing out in the mornings we've come home, had some lunch, and then retired for our afternoon siesta - just like all the locals sensibly do. Even the traffic dwindled to virtually nothing during these rest hours. A few days ago the weather broke in the early evening with the most amazing thunder storm and on opening the shutters the view from our balcony was unmissable. It was a truly elemental experience and the swirling, constantly moving air and forks of lightening were both dramatic and just a little frightening. After an hour or so the thunder continued to rumble and the sheet lightening continued, but the sun broke through at the same time and this produced some more memorable vistas from our room with a view. I end this posting with just two of the pictures we took that evening.

And the next morning? - it was back to clear blue skies and the prospect of another hot day!