Sumptuous Balls and Flying Angels

Dear Blog Readers,

Last week I went for four days to Venice to cover the official launch of the Carnival season. For Venetians the Carnival season opens on January 7^th after the Feast of the Epiphany. But the official launch of Carnival festivities begins with the Flight of the Angel when a beautiful, young woman is launched from the top of the Bell Tower in St. Mark’s Square on a cable and floats down to a stage in St. Mark’s Square below. This year the Flight of the Angel was on February 7^th and my cameraman APTN’s Gigi Navarra and I stood in the square and filmed her plunge.

Nineteen-year-old Marianna Serena from the nearby town of Mestre made the descent on a long cable from the nearly 100 meter high tower across the length of the square and down to a stage below as thousands of revelers from around the world stared up at her in awe.

She was wearing a plumed outfit with red, yellow, and orange feathers and silvery leggings symbolizing earth, air, wind and fire.  On her head was a blue and white wig.

After she was released from the hook holding her to the cable, Marianna greeted the Doge who was overseeing the ceremony from the stage in St. Mark’s Square. The Doge were the rulers of the Venetian Republic.

(When I sent the photo of the Flying Angel to my daughter Caterina on What’s App she answered saying: “Is that you, Mom?”)  I am pretty passionate about my job — but not enough to put on an outfit  like that and plummet off the Bell Tower.

The Venetian Carnival is a public party lasting for weeks that leads into the Roman Catholic period of Lent.   Its official beginning is two weeks before Ash Wednesday and ends on Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras – February 17^th this year). Interestingly, the Italian version of the word “Carnevale” means “Carne” (meat) “Vale” (counts). In other words, during Carnevale Meat and all other fattening foods are allowed. As soon as Ash Wednesday rolls around meat and sweets should be removed from the diet until Easter.

In the Catholic Church Lent is a period of reflection, repentance, and fasting—so Carnival developed as a last gasp, wild party before the gloomy Lenten period.

Carnival began in Venice in the 11^th century and the Venetians extended the period to roughly two months of festivities.   Over the centuries the Venetian carnival attracted nobility from around Europe allowing them to participate in all sorts of fun – both licit and illicit. Princes and Princesses, Dukes and Duchesses could go to lavish masked balls, extravagant banquets, and the city’s brothels and gambling dens allowed for some extra entertainment.

The key to the Venice Carnival though has always been the street –where social divisions were erased. Young and old, rich and poor paraded through the streets in costume enjoying in the festivities. There were street entertainers—jugglers, musicians, acrobats and parades.

The Carnival also gave rich and poor Venetians a chance to make fun of authority or aristocrats without being recognized.

Still today, the Carnival is a party for everyone. There are cheap Made in China masks that one can buy on the street for a few euros, or fabulous, elaborate costumes costing thousands of euros available from exclusive costume makers.

The advantage of being a journalist is that Gigi and I were able to get a taste of both the Carnevale in the Piazza and the extravagant party. On Saturday evening Gigi and I were given permission to cover the most exclusive ball of the Carnival season, Il Ballo del Doge (the Doge’s Ball).  Luckily we didn’t have to pay to get in, and I certainly could not afford an appropriate costume, so the organizers provided Gigi and me with bordeaux colored velvet kaftans that covered us from neck to toe so we would not stand out as we worked.

The Doge’s Ball – or “Il Ballo Del Doge” –is the brainchild of Venetian Antonia Sautter who in 1994 decided to expand beyond her work as a costume designer and create a ball that would attract people from around the world who wanted to fulfill their dreams. She wanted the ball to promote Venetian arts, culture and traditions.

Sautter works with a staff of roughly 400 people throughout the year to create what she calls a “magical dream” for her guests.  She said she has many guests from Europe but also from Australia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Brazil – noting that what is nice about the Doge’s Ball is “they can share in the dream no matter where they come from.”

For this year’s carnival there are two Doge’s Balls – one on February 7^th and another on February 14^th – the theme this year is “Cupid in Wonderland.” The ball is an all night party that includes a variety of performances with dancers, singers, musicians and acrobats. The performers dig into Italian and Venetian traditions such as opera and the use of characters from Commedia Dell’Arte. In addition there are acrobats, giant butterflies on stilts, a dancing dwarf, and Eve La Plume a French Burlesque performer.

Getting to go to the Doge’s Ball requires money. Guests can pay up to 2500 Euros for a seat near the stage for the performances, and guests who want to come after dinner pay a reduced 800 Euro entrance fee. But the cost is not just the ticket to get in. Guests must come in sumptuous costumes and are encouraged to get them from the Sautter Atelier. Sautter obsesses over every detail of the costumes of her guests – the dress, the wig, the necklace, the fan and the gloves. Everything must be perfect for the Doge’s Ball.

A magnificent costume can be rented for around 600 euros for the night, and the team for “Il Ballo Del Doge” will also do custom-made costumes starting at 1,000 euros and up. As Sautter explained, some customers have extravagant requests including real diamonds on their costumes, which makes the price rise dramatically. One woman once wanted a replica of a dress worn by Marie Antoinette that ended up costing 10,000 euros per meter.

There are other items that push up the price as well. Guests in costume can hire their own make up artists and hairdressers to fix them up before the ball and photographers are available for a 300 euro photo session.

At the Ballo Del Doge, there were a group of entertainers from Commedia Dell’Arte, a form of improvisational theater that first developed in the Italian city of Naples in the 16^th century and spread throughout Europe becoming popular in France and spreading up to England and even Russia.

The Commedia Dell’Arte included a series of stock characters ranging from the most famous Pulcinella (Punch) dressed in white, with a white cone hat and black mask with a large nose and belly, and hunched back –to Harlequin, the silly servant dressed in white with diamond shaped decorations, and Colombina the clever servant girl. The stock characters are involved in a series of typical scenarios usually involving a frustrated love story and a happy ending.

In case the costumed revelers at the Doge’s Ball did not recognize them, the character in the white coned hat and black mask was Pulcinella and his companion was another stock Commedia Dell’Arte character, Il Capitano, a Spanish soldier full of bravado, eager to brag about his exploits, marching about with large, exaggerated steps.

Most of the guests probably recognized the popular figure of Harlequin with his trademark diamond designs on his white outfit.

An important aspect of the Commedia dell’Arte is the mask and there are few places in the world where masks are made with the same techniques used centuries ago.

I felt lucky to find Gualtiero Dall’Osto, who is known as a “mascareri” in Italian, a Master Mask Maker who continues to make Commedia Dell’Arte masks at his workshop at the back of the “Tragicomica” mask store in Venice. As he works on preparing a Harlequin mask he explains the Harlequin figure is one of the “zanni” or the charlatans who make up the servants in Commedia Dall’Arte characters. Harlequin works for the miserly merchant Pantalone but is driven in life by his basic needs – his constant hunger and his love for the servant girl Colombina.

To make his masks, Gualtiero Dall’Osto studies historical documents and paintings – such as the Giambattista Tiepolo painting hanging in the “Tragicomica” shop. Then he works with the face of the actor who will use the mask making a drawing from each side and straight on taking into consideration the anatomy of the actor’s face. The next step is to make a clay sculpture of the mask. He then covers the clay sculpture with a plaster cast creating a “negative” shape. When the “negative” plaster shape is dry, he carefully pushes sheets of papier-mache’ into the gaps to create the mask.

Once hardened, Dall’Osto takes the mask out of the plaster cast and then cuts out the eyes, the nose and around the borders before painting it the correct color. Different characters in Commedia Dall’Arte are required to use different colors. For example, Pulcinella always wears a black mask. As a final step, the mask is given a wax polish.

Two popular female characters from the Commedia Dall’Arte – Smeraldina and Colombina – greeted guests at the door to the Doge’s ball and spent the evening flitting about acting silly. Smeraldina is the “foolish maid” in the Commedia Dell’Arte and Colombina is the clever and comic servant girl.

Another important figure in the Commedia Dell’Arte is Pantalone – the travelling merchant and employer of Harlequin. Gualtiero explains that Pantalone has a distinctive big and “decadent” nose. He is avaricious. His name comes from the Italian “pianta” (to plant) and “leone” (lion) because he plants the lion (the winged lion is the symbol of Venice) wherever he goes.

While the performers at the Doge’s Ball appeared to be goofing around, to the contrary, they were professional performers playing clearly defined roles invented centuries ago.

Speaking of goofy, that is what I look like in my velvet kaftan trying to talk to a woman dressed up as a table.  She was telling me about her very heavy headdress.

There is so much more to say about the Venice Carnival.  We did a long feature on the “Fritole Veneziane” – a fabulous fried, sugar-covered donut-like sweet with warm raisins and pine nuts inside.  For that we spent hours in the kitchens of the best pastry makers in Venice — the Rosa Salva Pasticceria. We spent hours running up and down from one end of the city to another, mostly on the Vaporetto water buses which always provided us amazing views of what must be the most beautiful city in the world.